Whole house wifi

[Soundserge]

For what it's worth, Apple as reportedly stopped developing routers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...uters-ivs0ssec

Apple's airports always worked for me in a similar configuration to Jim's but I recently switched to Ubiquiti Edgerouter and Unifi products because I needed a bit more configurability. I'm pleased with the performance.

Soundserge

[silversurfer6]

This is my terittory. Living in Europe we install multiple Access point to cover even a small apartment since everything is cement, bricks or steel.

The "pro" way to do it is the following: Modem- wired router-switch-poe Access Points.

If you can cover your home with just one wireless router then fine. Otherwise:

1) Routers: Cisco RV042G (old but extremely reliable). Otherwise UBNT Unifi USG or Edgerouter.

2) Switches. We use exlusively Cisco since the 100, 200, 300 are very competitive priced and they are super robust.

3) The gold standard for wifi is Ruckus. Once you try it you never go back. On budget jobs we use unifi AC pros which are fine for what you pay. If you go unifi then always use a cloudkey.

So the main answer is: try Ruckus

P.S I work for a system integrator company

[nicoff]

Originally Posted by silversurfer6

This is my terittory. Living in Europe we install multiple Access point to cover even a small apartment since everything is cement, bricks or steel.



The "pro" way to do it is the following: Modem- wired router-switch-poe Access Points.



If you can cover your home with just one wireless router then fine. Otherwise:



1) Routers: Cisco RV042G (old but extremely reliable). Otherwise UBNT Unifi USG or Edgerouter.



2) Switches. We use exlusively Cisco since the 100, 200, 300 are very competitive priced and they are super robust.



3) The gold standard for wifi is Ruckus. Once you try it you never go back. On budget jobs we use unifi AC pros which are fine for what you pay. If you go unifi then always use a cloudkey.



So the main answer is: try Ruckus



P.S I work for a system integrator company

Thank you for sharing! I will save this post for future reference!

[essjay]

Originally Posted by silversurfer6

This is my terittory. Living in Europe we install multiple Access point to cover even a small apartment since everything is cement, bricks or steel.

The "pro" way to do it is the following: Modem- wired router-switch-poe Access Points.

If you can cover your home with just one wireless router then fine. Otherwise:

1) Routers: Cisco RV042G (old but extremely reliable). Otherwise UBNT Unifi USG or Edgerouter.

2) Switches. We use exlusively Cisco since the 100, 200, 300 are very competitive priced and they are super robust.

3) The gold standard for wifi is Ruckus. Once you try it you never go back. On budget jobs we use unifi AC pros which are fine for what you pay. If you go unifi then always use a cloudkey.

So the main answer is: try Ruckus

P.S I work for a system integrator company

Ruckus a gold standard? cant seem to see them in the Gartner's leader quadrant...which is where Aruba is firmly placed. Ruckus is a niche player at best.

The really nice thing about Aruba Instants aside from their awesome GUI is they don't require a controller, one AP acts as the master and the rest chain to it to pull their configs down. If the master fails, the rest will hold an election and vote a new master in to the cluster for easy and cost effective fault tolerance.

Disclaimer: I work for an HP gold partner, and they bought Aruba last year.

[silversurfer6]

Originally Posted by essjay

Ruckus a gold standard? cant seem to see them in the Gartner's leader quadrant...which is where Aruba is firmly placed. Ruckus is a niche player at best.

Ruckus is one of the very big players just do a better google search. The big players and hence best wifi comes from these: Cisco, Aruba, Ruckus and maybe a few more but these are the top 3.

We have tried all of them from their "cheapest" to their best solutions. Ruckus almost always comes on top and it is a joy to install and to use. Meraki offers an amazing solution with their routers, switches and cloud management. Cisco, well is Cisco and of course has the largest market share. All these are excellent but we have found that Ruckus unleashed (R310, R510, R610) is suitable for residential and the price is almost acceptable.

Just a comparison of Ruckus vs Aruba (by Ruckus)
http://www.connectdata.fr/files/docu...tant-aruba.pdf

The really nice thing about Aruba Instants aside from their awesome GUI is they don't require a controller, one AP acts as the master and the rest chain to it to pull their configs down. If the master fails, the rest will hold an election and vote a new master in to the cluster for easy and cost effective fault tolerance.

It is exactly the same with Ruckus Unleashed. Unleashed supports up to 25 APs. If you need more APs then you need a controller.

[essjay]

Aruba supports up to 100 in instant mode....and I did glance at your linked PDF but its not an independent comparison so it holds not water for me.

Just so we are clear, i am not saying Rukus is bad, its good value for the price it sells at (cheap) but there are better options for enterprise which is where I reside solutions wise.

I am running Cisco 3700's at home now which fixed my coverage issues in my bunker of a pad ( multi story concrete) however I got them free and they are way too expensive for home use. Great coverage though, but the client retired them for Aruba recently due to Cisco not playing ball with certain Apple IOS builds. To be fair Aruba does not work with Chromecast either, and all vendors have their shortfalls.

ps Meraki is Cisco and yes their cloud management UI is very nice but their hardware sux performance wise.

[silversurfer6]

Originally Posted by essjay

Just so we are clear, i am not saying Rukus is bad, its good value for the price it sells at (cheap) but there are better options for enterprise which is where I reside solutions wise.

Isn't the Ruckus pricing similar to Aruba/Cisco? - at least where I am based the prices are similar and you can not really say that Ruckus is cheap.

[W9TR]

It would be more helpful to have a discussion as to why some solutions work in certain residential situations and why other solutions may not.

Apart from brand, what are the things to look for in setting by up a residential wifi network for optimum performance in an AV context?

It is uninteresting to talk about enterprise solutions when most if not all of the people in this forum are trying to optimize residential systems.

Regards,
Tom

[silversurfer6]

Originally Posted by W9TR

It would be more helpful to have a discussion as to why some solutions work in certain residential situations and why other solutions may not.

Apart from brand, what are the things to look for in setting by up a residential wifi network for optimum performance in an AV context?

It is uninteresting to talk about enterprise solutions when most if not all of the people in this forum are trying to optimize residential systems.

Regards,
Tom

Agreed. We do use Ruckus for residential projects and I also have a few APs installed in my house.

Things to look for resi wifi:

1) Start with the whole network, not only the access point

2) setup the network as my above post (modem-router-switch-access points)

3) a robust router is extremely important since a small resi network can now have 20-30 ip devices. Some of the projects we do can have 200 ip devices or more.

4) Use many access points instead of a "high power" one. Lower their power and try to achieve optimum coverage

5) set each access point on one of the main 3 channels (1,6,11) for the 2.4ghz band. Try not to have overlapping for the same channels. Do the same for 5ghz. High-end solutions auto configure this and choose the best channels dynamically

6) Use AC spec access points

7) Use dual concurrent radio access points (2.4 and 5ghz)

8) setup band steering (quite important and usually only the top end solutions do this well)

9) run ethernet cables for additional access points to cover deadspots later (if new house)

10) Zero handoff roaming - only the high end solutions do this well. UBNT supposedely offers it but from my experience it does not work

At the end of the day most of the above features are present in all solutions and even in the cheap consumer ones. Where the top ends solutions differ is that the hardware and the antennas are top notch and hence you get better performance. Also the advertised features work (e.g band steering, zero handoff roaming, e.t.c)

For extreme AV scenarios we will design the network and "split" it into VLANs (virtual lans). Each lan will be assigned a service:
1) General
2) Automation devices
3) AV streamers
4) CCTV
5) VOIP
6) Guests

For most of the time a flat network (no VLANs) is just fine.

Hope this is helpful. More later.

[silversurfer6]

Even for people that just one access point is enough to cover their house I would suggest to buy one Ruckus R510/R610 and try it. Just wait for the unleashed version.