Question Unifi questions

When planning Wi-Fi, it's a bit of a "rookie mistake" to plan for "an AP on each floor" as that almost invariable means you end up deploying your APs in "circulation" spaces (halls, landing, etc.) and that means all Wi-Fi transmission have to travel through at least one wall between clients and AP's.

Wi-Fi works best with unobstructed like of sight, so it's better to plan to deploy AP's where you expect people to spend most time doing their Wi-Fi'ing. So, lounge, den, bedrooms is better than halls and landings.

Of course, that may require more AP's and thus cost, so if you are on a budget, one AP in the middle of each floor may dictate placement, but that means signalling conditions will be sub-optimal.

You can do bit of heath robinson planning to illustrate this: Grab or create a floor plan for each level - it doesn't have to be super accurate, but it need to be reasonably to scale. Draw in the planned location for each AP. Then colour in the rooms depending on how many walls the transmissions need to pass through between clients and AP - green for no walls, orange for one wall, red for more than one wall. Then take a look to see where you "best" Wi-Fi coverage is and ask whether that's where you want it to be. You can then "play" with this a bit a see how changing AP positions (or deploying more of them) improves conditions in one area to the detriment of others and see what kind of plan you can come up with to deliver the best Wi-Fi experience for the money you are prepared to spend on AP's.

There are "proper" planning tools to do this that do the "colouring in" for you in real time as you drag APs around on screen, (and model the signal attenuation for the structures,) but for free you can mock it up a bit with a paint program, block in the walls and bucket fill the colours.
 
Thanks. Will consider three AP lites now seeing as I have saved elsewhere.

As for my issue, I changed over a ethernet cable yesterday and it ran well last night. They weren't particularly high bitrate files so will stress it today with beefier MKVs
 
Mick, there is also the WAF to be considered here. as somebody who has / does install a lot of these in domestic settings A LOT of wives do not want an additional flying saucer on their ceiling in their living room / dining room / family room. Sometimes circulation spaces are the best compromise as they are fairly central. Husbands on the other hand would plaster their ceilings with their 'tech trophies'

Sometimes with a retro-fit its not always possible to get cables to the ideal location (when the client has decided to laminate all of the bedroom floors) and as creative as you can be, ripping the floors up or the ceilings down just is not an option.

As you say, cost is also a compelling factor. In an ideal world deployment as you describe, with sometimes more APs is best, but the client does not always have deep pockets and will often go for best compromise.

My house my APs are all in circulation spaces as they are central to the property (one on each of the three floors) and I currently have zero deadspots, but I pretty much knew that it was ideal (and the wife was tolerant to those locations).

I guess as you install more of these you get a pretty good idea where the better locations are (although there is always something that throws you a curve-ball!). There are a lot of factors when you install APs and signal strength and permeation through solid objects is only one of them. That is my experience as an installer.
 
Indeed - sometimes there's little/no choice for aesthetic, practical and/or political reasons. Cabling routes presenting issues being the one I've encountered most often, especially in old buildings without all the false floors and so forth of modern offices, or ones that have been "recently decorated" because they didn't think to get IT involved until after the builder had more or less moved out and didn't want to wreck the shiny new decor. I once had an "interesting" conversation with an architect which was more concerned about his "design vision" than how well it was going to work! He didn't want "nasty" looking Wi-Fi AP's cluttering up his "clean lines."
 
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I was having a problem with WiFi in our house so I installed a Unifi USG, Switch, Gen 1 Cloudkey and two in the wall AP's as I'd wired some Cat5 to a couple of back boxes years ago. We have no problem with WiFi now everything is great. Ive got the Ubiquiti app on my phone and on my PC so you can monitor it all.

in the wall AP.jpg


Unifi App.png
 
@mickevh Please dont get me started on 'just redecorated' now can you come and install all of this tech. I was asked to install a back-box and faceplate, with a double CAT6 drop after the client had, the week-before, wall-papered the living room with hand-made (gold mica covered) paper at over £200 a roll and white!!! carpet laid and the wife refused to let me 'damage her wallpaper' or make any dust! whilst needing a 2m vertical chase!! Suffice to say, that did not happen.
 
Looks like I am going to pull the trigger today guys. Any reason why I shouldn't go for the Dream Machine over the pro? Seems I gain a wifi access point and its £100 cheaper. Can also start with just a couple of 8 port switches too.
 
I guess the biggest question is where you want to mount it. If you have a network cabinet or not for example.
 
UDM is designed to sit in an office somewhere to provide WiFi access plus all of its routing, UDMP sits in a rack and has the ability to have a HDD in it for CCTV.
As you have said you effectively gain a NanoHD AP and it control the wireless APs.
I would look at one 8 Port POE switch and one non-POE unless they are going in separate locations and you need POE in both,
 
Or if you want an in-wall and are happy to install a decora back-box

Ubiquiti UniFi HD In-Wall 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi Access Point 4 Port Ethernet Switch: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

These get amazing reviews and have a 4 port switch built into them

I'm thinking of installing a couple of these in my house. Currently have a single AC-HD on the landing (first floor) and a single AC-Lite in the Garage. Most of the time the AC-HD is perfect, and Wi-Fi has been a lot more stable since swapping the two AC-Lites to it, but on the very fringes of the house is can be a little patchy.
 
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For your needs, I think that the UDM is probably a better bet.

Yep think I am going to agree with you too on that one. Plus if you do need to upgrade in the future if you backed your configuration up either locally or to the cloud then you should be able to swap out components easily.
 
I wished that they had done the UDM as a rack-mount without the AP. That would have been perfect for me. I think that this will be the UMG Pro / UXG Pro that they have just announced.
 
I wished that they had done the UDM as a rack-mount without the AP. That would have been perfect for me. I think that this will be the UMG Pro / UXG Pro that they have just announced.

Yeah I don't need Protect, so a rack mounted UDM without an AP would have been perfect, however SFP+ is a nice bonus.
 
I have been itching to pull the trigger on a UDMP but since the UMG Pro was announced I have held fire. Will see what happens over the next few months. Being fair my network has been pretty resilient so am not desperate
 

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