I'm done with Ubiquiti Unifi. Need help with alternatives.

[jinjuku]

To be fair a house on a lake or otherwise rural areas is hardly a challenge for almost any wifi network. Netgear Orbi uses one nice party trick, a second 5ghz radio used exclusively for wireless meshing. This doesn't reduce the speeds of regular 5ghz traffic on wifi, whereas normal 2 radio mesh AP does take a big toll on speed on channels used for a wireless traffic "highway".

Most brands are putting in Software Defined radios where they can flex for backhaul mesh and if they don't they just add it to MiMo.

 

[jinjuku]

I installed Ethernet drops to wire them which works very well.

This is the way...

 

[panteragstk]

I exited the Unifi economy not because of hardware, but because bug ridden operating system releases. I'm told they have corrected the ship in that regard.

I've been happy with TP-Link in the consumer space and FS/Pica8 in the medium business space. Enterprise it's Aruba, Arista, Juniper, Cisco still.

Unifi having breaches and not telling anyone didn't help either, but my main gripe is the crap OS like you said. Massive UI changes without warning.

Omada has been better for me, but it's got it's quirks.

 

[highfigh]

I live in Eagan in the south metro now and have for over five years. The Netgear Mesh has worked fine in both places for years, I also used it in my brother's house in the UK and it has worked well their also. So the systems we have used have been reliable with good measured signals all over the residences. It has been by far the best Wi-Fi system we have ever had. I can honestly say there have been zero issues.

How many APs and what is the coverage distance for each? I'm not asking about extremely long range between APs- that's a different issue.

 

[highfigh]

This is the way...

My posts have three tag lines and the last one is "WiFi is for convenience, hardwired is for performance.". After I hard wire APs, my customers get the message but before, it's a battle over "Why does it work so slow? vs cost, then most say "Wow! This is really fast!" or "Why don't I have problems, like I did before?".

Ever work in a building with wire lath & plaster or actual Faraday Cage shielding? I did a house with wire lath and the homeowner told me they wanted to use WiFi everywhere. I said "Good, for you", then explained why that would be difficult if the devices weren't hardwired. The network was OK, ATT's U-Verse crap caused all kinds of problems.

 

[jinjuku]

My posts have three tag lines and the last one is "WiFi is for convenience, hardwired is for performance.". After I hard wire APs, my customers get the message but before, it's a battle over "Why does it work so slow? vs cost, then most say "Wow! This is really fast!" or "Why don't I have problems, like I did before?".

Ever work in a building with wire lath & plaster or actual Faraday Cage shielding? I did a house with wire lath and the homeowner told me they wanted to use WiFi everywhere. I said "Good, for you", then explained why that would be difficult if the devices weren't hardwired. The network was OK, ATT's U-Verse crap caused all kinds of problems.

WiFi is a bunch a caveats. I think it's 'good enough' when done properly but the moniker 'Different day, different air, different RF' is always front of mind.

The mind blowing thing is the EAP 235's that I have from TP-Link are $60, have a 3 port managed switch on the bottom with PoE pass through, and I have my 5Ghz set at VHT 40 and getting 45Mbps consistently.

Just incredible value and they are stable.

 

[highfigh]

WiFi is a bunch a caveats. I think it's 'good enough' when done properly but the moniker 'Different day, different air, different RF' is always front of mind.

The mind blowing thing is the EAP 235's that I have from TP-Link are $60, have a 3 port managed switch on the bottom with PoE pass through, and I have my 5Ghz set at VHT 40 and getting 45Mbps consistently.

Just incredible value and they are stable.

I use an EAP-225 in my garage and for demo-ing for customers and it covers very well. I like being able to store several SSIDs, so I can leave them as-is and if someone needs a temporary AP after I have demo'd it, I don't need to do anything else- their phones and computers log in as if nothing has changed in their house.

WRT " 'Different day, different air, different RF' is always front of mind.

Do you and your collegues call people "bags of water"? It was usually with the Apple stuff, but some people commented that the WiFi wasn't great when they wre having a big party, so I would explain. I also had to tell them why it doesn't always work great when the house is full of Dyson vacs, Bose/Sonos/Heos/etc wireless stuff on the same 2.4GHz band and had to create new SSIDs for the appliances because they didn't tell me about them.