I’m a home networking newbie and would appreciate any advice folks have. I got my house wired for ethernet, but have some areas I was hoping to improve the wifi for my mobile devices with a wired backhaul setup.

I tried looking through the posts here and it seems like most folks don’t recommend going with the mesh systems as it’s paying a premium for a wireless backhaul that I wouldn’t be using. It also sounds like I shouldn’t use any random access points as handoffs between them may not work efficiently. That said, what devices do folks recommend? I saw ubiquity come up a couple times, but wasn’t sure if there were cheaper and/or better options?

  • AdaminCalgary@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Thank you again for this and for letting me know about the dream router’s speed cap. I’ve read a few comments here and there but wasn’t sure if it was just user error or actually true. Right now I have 500 in my house but everyone locally is really pushing gig speed since one of the isp’s recently installed fibre to the house. I like the dream router because I’m reading that it’s better able to handle a lot of smart home devices. It’s just my wife and I so not high demand from us. My current router is getting ancient so it’s time to change and because I want to start adding a number of smart home devices, that seems to be the main criteria for router selection.

    • TiggerLAS@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      There are other routers in the dream series, such as the UDM Pro, UDM Pro SE, etc. . . but those would be a overkill on a 1Gb service, and they don’t have built-in WiFi, so you’d end up needing 2 access points, instead of one.

      Most of the more affordable prosumer routers are wired-only. The EdgeRouter-X, TP-Link ER605, and the TrendNet TWG-431BR are affordable, but will cap out around 925-940Mb, give-or-take.

      What’s going to help with multiple smart home devices isn’t so much the router, but the WiFi source that they are connected to.

      The so-called high-density access points will probably have the biggest impact on your performance.

      The TP-Link EAP620HD (1Gb LAN port) or TP-Link EAP660HD (2.5Gb LAN port) can supposedly handle a ton of clients.

      Unifi also has some access points branded as “HD”.