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?
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”.