I’ve tried to search for this, but know so little that I don’t think I know what to really look for. Apologies in advance for needing to be spoon fed. Upgrading equipment, and need to check my understanding and possibly get advice.
The main thing I’m deciding is between putting together a router an ap system, or getting a mesh system and installing with wireless backhaul.
From my understanding these are essentially the same, but I can’t really determine if there’s a difference in the hardware, and if so whether it’s a useless difference driving up cost, or something that will actually benefit me. (IE: the ASUS ET12 looks like it’s got more hardware than a Unifi AP, but will that hardware make a difference?)
I’d like something as easy to manage as possible, which leads me to thinking that I most likely want to stick with a single manufacturer to consolidate the work I have to do down the road (or is that not really the issue I’m making it in my head?).
I’m mainly upgrading for advanced features and would like a VPN server, VPN client (preferably configurable for only certain devices), and dedicated IoT network for smart devices. I’m mainly trying to increase security and have a little more thought out design so that it ages better.
Speed is also an issue, of course. Sprectrum gig service. Not sure if I should go wifi 6E now and ride it until it dies, or go older/cheaper now with the plan of upgrading to wifi 7 in a year or two.
Advice and opinions are welcome, and clarifying any lapse in understanding on the possible differences of the options are greatly appreciated.
Yeah, it’s confusing out there with all the BS marketing and gimmicks to get you to “blanket your house in warm comforting wifi”.
If you’re looking for something to “grow into”, you absolutely want either Ubiquiti UniFi or TP-Link Omada. The big benefit is, of course, is the unified management of all components. It makes things like VLANs easy. You have one pane of glass that manages all your components centrally. I have a UniFi setup with a gateway, controller, seven switches, four APs and four cameras and manage the whole thing with one interface. I literally can plug in a new UniFi device and the controller will detect it. I click a button and it’s a part of my network. If it’s an AP, the settings are automatically populated to it. You can group APs and apply different settings to those groups as well.
Neither wifi 6E or 7 will benefit you unless you have clients that support it. Both of the above brands have wifi 6 APs which will be fine until wifi 7 gains traction in 2 or 3 years and then you can consider whether you want to upgrade one or more access points (indeed, I have only one AX AP, the others are just AC which is fine for 95% of my devices.) Flexibility is another big deal with the SDNs (software defined networks, both UniFi and Omada) Also, plain access points are purpose built for one thing- be an AP. The mesh points have to manage not only client traffic but also traffic between the base and themselves.
Mesh is just wirelessly uplinking APs and is for people who can’t or won’t wire their network. You will get much better performance from a wired system every day of the week. The consumer manufacturers have marketed mesh like it’s The Next Big Thing, and it’s not. There’s lots of hay made about “seamless roaming” like it’s exclusive to mesh. Wifi manages roaming all by itself and the so-called seamless stuff is nothing more than some already defined tech (802.11k/r/v) that assists wifi clients. Mesh can sometimes do it since it’s centrally managed, but so does UniFi (and I think TP-Link does as well.)
I would go with the router, switch, AP wired backhaul. You will prefer it in the long run and it will be much, much better in terms of growing into and upgrade ability.
I have a client that wanted to get a new mesh system to utilize the latest standard. It would have been over 2k. If they wired their house and went with something like unifi. It would be about $700-$1000 for the AP’s. And that’s choosing the latest and greatest AP from Unifi. Unifi.
This is more or less what I’m planning on doing, but may end up getting a Unifi gateway so I can manage everything at once instead of trying to put an Asus router into what would otherwise essentially be a Unifi system.
I’m quickly learning though that there’s probably not huge savings to be had at any turn. I knew the newest mesh systems can be overpriced, but in the grand scheme it didn’t look like there would be major money difference between going recent model consumer grade and lower end Unifi stuff geared more to business.
It’s just expensive all around these days, and not much that can be done about it.