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Failing RT-N66U, replace with Ubiquity, need bridging as well

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MichaelCG

Very Senior Member
Hello all...I currently have two RT-N66U with one as an AP and one as a media bridge to my upstairs office. The basement RT-N66U appears to have a failing 5GHz radio, so I am looking for a replacement. At this time, my routing duties are being handled via a pfSense FW so I only really need AP and bridge features.

I have been considering the Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LR as the replacements, but am unsure of how to solve my bridge issue. The primary AP resides in the basement while my office with the bridge is up on the 2nd story. There is no option for a direct wired connection, but I have a requirement for Ethernet to connect devices in my office.
-- Basement - Router, FW, AP(RT-N66U), Switch
-- 1st Floor - just user devices
-- 2nd Floor - user devices, Powerline connected Netgear AP, Bridge(RT-N66U) which provides wired PC connections

1.) Can I still use my RT-N66U as a media bridge to the Ubiquiti AP?
-- the upstairs RT-N66U appears to still be stable

2.) Is there a Ubiquiti solution as a media bridge?

3.) Is there a solution that will also give me WiFi upstairs?
-- far upstairs bedroom historically doesn't have the greatest coverage from basement AP
-- currently have another AP connected via PowerLine to the basement (that AP wasn't stable when using the bridge)
-- PowerLine performance stinks, but it is better than nothing

To note, I need to make sure the bridge solution can handle 200Mbps+...I would prefer closer to 500Mbps, but I will take what I can get. This is mostly to support large file transfers with the media server in the basement, but also for downloading large ISO images.
 
Even with no responses....I am carrying on my attempts to stabilize and improve my home network. My basement RT-N66U continues to give me problems on the 5GHz radio on a more regular basis so I ordered a pair of Ubiquiti UAP-LR-AC to start the replacement process.

Not knowing if the UAP-LR-AC could act as a media bridge yet, I plan to keep my upstairs RT-N66U in place for now. I did a little bit of testing to attempt to establish my baseline performance before and after the Ubiquiti equipment is added into the equation. The most important scenario is the performance and stability of the wireless bridge to my upstairs office.

Upstairs RT-N66U to Basement RT-N66U:
- Using wired PC to speedtest.googlefiber.net via Chrome
- 258/250 263/246 311/296 304/295

So when things are working, they are pretty good. Next I moved the upstairs RT-N66U over to the first Ubiquiti AP.

Upstairs RT-N66U to Basement UAP-LR-AC:
- Using wired PC to speedtest.googlefiber.net via Chrome
- 216/206 213/215 206/221

I was a bit perplexed at my speed loss initially....then it finally clicked. In my haste to order, I choose the UAP-LR-AC instead of the UAP-PRO-AC since that is what most people have recommended and to save a few bucks. It didn't even cross my mind that the UAP-LR-AC is only a 2x2 in the 5GHz band while my RT-N66U is a 3x3. So my theoretical max speeds for this combo went from 450Mbps down to 300Mbps. I have confirmed via the GUI on the RT-N66U that my current link rate is 300Mbps and it previously was 450Mbps.

Well poop....so.....I need to do one of the following:
- figure out if the UAP-LR-AC can do bridge mode to replace the upstairs RT-N66U
- purchase some other AC cable bridge device for upstairs
- purchase a UAP-PRO-AC to replace the UAP-LR-AC in the basement
- live with the loss of max speed in the name of stability and not spending anymore money

So the good part....in many parts of the house, my speeds are considerably faster than what they previously were. The following are speeds from two devices sitting near each other on my Living Room couch which is in the center of my house. The APs are roughly a 20' shot diagonally down to the basement.

iPhone6
- RT-N66U - 80/117 103/117
- UAP-LR-AC - 283/202 267/205 265/273

HP Envy Laptop (Broadcom 2x2 AC card)
- RT-N66U - 172/200 161/194
- UAP-LR-AC - 300/312 280/192

How often does it matter that I get the improved speeds? From my phone...it doesn't matter. From the laptop, it is nice when I am copying files to/from my file server. It does save me a trip to the basement to plug it into Gig Ethernet. My real daily use is my upstairs systems since that is where my work laptop resides. For that, speed is more limited by the hardware my employer provides (it tops out just over 50Mbps of routed traffic) so 200Mbps is enough. I just need it to be stable and low latency and I am happy.
 
Roughly one month in and so far still extremely pleased with the Ubiquiti UAP solution. I finally got around to installing my 2nd UAP. So now I have one in my 1st floor stairwell (only place the wife would let me put it on the main floor), and another one in the basement on the opposite side of the house from the stairwell. I have confirmed that my wireless bridge (RT-N66U) can nearly seamlessly move between the APs as each AP rebooted itself today for a config update.

The controller software was a bit of a PITA to get running on Windows, but finally got that working correctly after some google searches and a few tweaks to the config to move the listeners to alternate ports.

On my todo list:
- Research the guest portal options (currently just dropping them directly to my modem outside my home network)
- Tune the Minimum RSSI settings a bit more
- Setup dedicated Linux VM to run the controller software
- determine if UAP devices can act as wireless bridge to replace my RT-N66U
 

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