Fiber on the way, new Unifi system planned

[garage_logician]

I currently have two Asus ZenWiFi AX6600 routers configured in a mesh system. I am getting 2G fiber installed and as part of that move am replacing my current setup with Unifi. I want to make sure that my plan for the new network hardware and installation makes sense.

My house has two levels, a basment and an upstairs. Both floors need to have wifi and wired connections and currently do. My current broadband is xfinity and it enters the house in the basement at the front corner of the house (north and east) house. The router in the basement is connected to a pihole, laser printer, and synology NAS which are all hardwired. There are several wifi devices in the basement.

Upstairs there is a second Asus ZenWiFi AX6600 in the office which is centrally located and at the back side of the house (south). There is a wired hardline between the two routers for increased performance and reliability for the backhaul. The upstairs router has multiple hardwired PC's and a 3D printer. From this router these is also a hardline that runs into the entertainment room that is connected to an 8 port switch which connects multiple game consoles, tv's, streaming stuff (Apple TV), etc. The entertaiment room is towards the west/back side of the house.

My plans are to replace the current setup with a Unifi system. Because of availability I have already ordered a Cloud Gateway Fiber (it came back into stock so I jumped on it). It seems like a solid choice for my needs and now I need to get some AP's and switches. Here is where I am less sure.

For AP's my thoughts were to get 2 of the U7 Pro Wall. But after using the layout tool, it seems I would have a fair number of areas where the signal drops off. My house is ~2500 sq. ft. The basement is mostly open so I thought ohe U7 Wall Pro by the router would be adequate, but the coverage does not extend across the entire basement. The 1st floor, where there are walls to deal with is, as expected, even worse. One thought I had was putting a U7 Wall Pro on the office wall facing towards one of the house. And then, adding another U7 Wall Pro to the other side of the wall facing towards the other end but that seems like it would cause more problems than it would address.

Lastly, I will need to add switches in my office and entertainment area. What would you recommend for switches? I will have to power AP's but not cameras for now. I might add some in the future. My goal is to have 2.5G in all areas, but since the switch in the entertainment room will be linked to the switch in the office should I have 10G ethernet in the office switch to have enough capacity to prevent saturation?

I will be amazed if anyone gets all the way though this without thinking that this guy does not have a clue and then moves on. If you have made it to here I really appreciate it and if you can provide me with some guidance or suggestions I would be grateful indeed!

Let me know if I can provide more info, I do have the exported PDF from the Unifi design center which I can post too if it is useful.

Thanks!
-g

 

[degrub]

How does the basement look on the heat map if you use a ceiling mounted AP centrally located ?
Save yourself some cash and continue to use 1 Gbit/s switches as what you describe for the use case would seem to have more than enough bandwidth with 1 Gb/s . Use power injectors, with the correct supply spec for the APs, instead of a POE switch for now.

WIFI 6 or 6e is likely good enough for the users and use case described since most clients appear to be hardwired. A few phones and tablets with a laptop or two is not much bandwidth. Most will have 2x2 wifi 5 or 6 radios anyway.

i would keep the cameras attached to a NVR/DVR and not on the main network. If not possible, dedicate a switch to them and the NVR/DVR to segment the traffic. You should only need access to the NVR/DVR output over the intra and internet..

Add 10Gbit/s switches when you have a strong use case and the local traffic exceeds what 1 Gbit/s can support. Prices will be down by then as well.

And just use your AX6600s as APs

 

[Tech9]

UCG-Fiber with 2x USW-Flex-2.5G-8 or USW-Flex-2.5G-8-PoE is more than enough Gateway and Switching for home network. Can have 2x 10Gbps uplink to switches, if needed. About APs - you have to find what works best for your needs. Can't suggest anything for an unknown place in unknown region. Multi-AP systems work best with more APs on low power.

 

[garage_logician]

Located in Mpls area,suburb.

Basement, 49 ft. x 25 ft.

Upstairs

 

[garage_logician]

How does the basement look on the heat map if you use a ceiling mounted AP centrally located ?
Save yourself some cash and continue to use 1 Gbit/s switches as what you describe for the use case would seem to have more than enough bandwidth with 1 Gb/s . Use power injectors, with the correct supply spec for the APs, instead of a POE switch for now.

WIFI 6 or 6e is likely good enough for the users and use case described since most clients appear to be hardwired. A few phones and tablets with a laptop or two is not much bandwidth. Most will have 2x2 wifi 5 or 6 radios anyway.

i would keep the cameras attached to a NVR/DVR and not on the main network. If not possible, dedicate a switch to them and the NVR/DVR to segment the traffic. You should only need access to the NVR/DVR output over the intra and internet..

Add 10Gbit/s switches when you have a strong use case and the local traffic exceeds what 1 Gbit/s can support. Prices will be down by then as well.

And just use your AX6600s as APs

Typical usage would be 4-5 laptiops, two or more gaming consoles. I am most concerned about streaming, we have 4 TV's and all use Apple TV, or other streaming. I just want my connections be as stable as possible and to be able to get the most out of my 2G service. The lowest possible latency is also important.

 

[degrub]

The 4 TVs should easily fit within 100 Mbit/s bandwidth. The gaming consoles should be fine in about the same, maybe allow 200 each. Laptops over wifi for typical office/movies/browsing - 50 Mbit/s each, if that.

What are your client experiences now with your existing ISP and ASUS wifi/lan ? Where do you find issues ?
The gaming clients should be on the LAN if at all possible direct to the main router or through a switch off the main router for the lowest latency. If you are double NATed, that is another opportunity to reduce latency a small amount by putting the ISP gear in bridge mode if it isn't only a modem with an ethernet port.

 

[Tech9]

Basement AP location is the worst possible. Half of the AP energy is lost in this concrete wall behind it.

Upstairs AP is also not in optimal location, but the yellow area in heat map is around -65dBm, still good signal.

 

[degrub]

Located in Mpls area,suburb.

Basement, 49 ft. x 25 ft.

View attachment 65911

Upstairs

View attachment 65912

Move the basement AP to the center of the room.
If the white areas of the upstairs are important,
you may need two APs at reduced power, particularly on 2.4 GHz band. Try positioning one on far right or upper/lower walls with a second AP on the left wall somewhere.

Just play with the AP positioning until you get something reasonable.

Where are the upstairs wifi clients most likely to be ?

 

[tgl]

A few thoughts:

• You'd get far more knowledgeable help about UniFi-specific issues on the UI community forum.
• Usual practice with UniFi APs is to run them at less than max Tx power, which means you want more APs than you might've gotten away with in consumer gear. This leads to better power balance between APs and clients, so there is a good reason for it, it's not just trying to get you to buy more gear.
• I'd kind of lean to buying U6-series APs not U7, since you didn't mention even one WiFi 7 device in your current situation. The U6 devices are cheaper (admittedly not by a lot) and more importantly they are thoroughly shaken out. UI are still getting the bugs out of the U7 line, seems like (again, see their community forum).
• IME, PoE injectors are a fine solution as long as you only need one or at most two in any given location. More than that, you soon have a rat's nest --- it's not even the injectors themselves, it's their power cables and extra ethernet patch cables. Future you will thank you for spending money on a PoE-capable switch instead.

 

[garage_logician]

The 4 TVs should easily fit within 100 Mbit/s bandwidth. The gaming consoles should be fine in about the same, maybe allow 200 each. Laptops over wifi for typical office/movies/browsing - 50 Mbit/s each, if that.

What are your client experiences now with your existing ISP and ASUS wifi/lan ? Where do you find issues ?
The gaming clients should be on the LAN if at all possible direct to the main router or through a switch off the main router for the lowest latency. If you are double NATed, that is another opportunity to reduce latency a small amount by putting the ISP gear in bridge mode if it isn't only a modem with an ethernet port.

Issues are intermittent disconnects,sometimes the wireless stuff drops for a couple of minutes. Also, can have terrible latency at times.

All TV's are 4K and use streaming. Not sure what that takes but current broadband provider kept hitting me with a $50 data overage charge (over 2TB/month). Now I am paying for extra data each month.

All the gaming consoles and the streaming devices are wired. I have a hardline from the Asus router to a switch in the entertainment area. This router is hardwired to the other for maximum backhaul performance.

Lastly, we have intermittent pauses with our streaming services. It happens with Netflix, Hulu and Apple. No idea why.

 

[garage_logician]

Basement AP location is the worst possible. Half of the AP energy is lost in this concrete wall behind it.

Upstairs AP is also not in optimal location, but the yellow area in heat map is around -65dBm, still good signal.

I am goinmg to move the basemenmt AP to the back wall, somewhere near the middle of the house. The upstairs is not so easy, would I be ok placing AP's on oppposite sides of the same wall?

 

[garage_logician]

Move the basement AP to the center of the room.
If the white areas of the upstairs are important,
you may need two APs at reduced power, particularly on 2.4 GHz band. Try positioning one on far right or upper/lower walls with a second AP on the left wall somewhere.

Just play with the AP positioning until you get something reasonable.

Where are the upstairs wifi clients most likely to be ?

IN the same room as the initial AP (office) or in the adjacent room. There is a larger working space that is often occupied by 1 or 2 laptops and other various devices (remote work).

 

[garage_logician]

A few thoughts:

• You'd get far more knowledgeable help about UniFi-specific issues on the UI community forum.
• Usual practice with UniFi APs is to run them at less than max Tx power, which means you want more APs than you might've gotten away with in consumer gear. This leads to better power balance between APs and clients, so there is a good reason for it, it's not just trying to get you to buy more gear.
• I'd kind of lean to buying U6-series APs not U7, since you didn't mention even one WiFi 7 device in your current situation. The U6 devices are cheaper (admittedly not by a lot) and more importantly they are thoroughly shaken out. UI are still getting the bugs out of the U7 line, seems like (again, see their community forum).
• IME, PoE injectors are a fine solution as long as you only need one or at most two in any given location. More than that, you soon have a rat's nest --- it's not even the injectors themselves, it's their power cables and extra ethernet patch cables. Future you will thank you for spending money on a PoE-capable switch instead.

Thanks for the link to the UI forums, I was not aware of them.

I do think that more AP's and less power is the way to go. I just need to play around some more with the layout tool and see what I can come up with.

I do have a few wifi 7 devices (iPhones) but expect to have many more whenever Apple gets around to adding WiFi 7 to their macbook pros and ipads. with that in mind I would rather future proof than to look at replacing AP's down the road.

I agree about POE, I would rather get that in the switch and be done with it.