Can I have too many Access Points?

Soldato
Joined
29 Jul 2004
Posts
6,629
Location
Esher
4m6cjyavz93b1.jpg


This is the first floor of my house (well when it's finished!) and I'm currently planning my ethernet feeds across the house.
As you can see on this snapshot I'll have two ports per bedroom, however I need to plan my Ubiquiti access points for WiFi.

I'll be putting two APs on the ground floor as it's open plan (ish) I'm not worried about WiFi 6e being blocked by walls. My second floor will have one AP and again will eventually be WiFi 6e.
The first floor is causing me some confusion, I originally planned to have just one access point in the hallway and that will be perfectly fine for all rooms. However with WiFi continually getting better I want to plan for WiFi 6e and beyond.
One of the APs I've currently got is Unifi WiFi 6 and when I was staying in my house even though the AP was where the middle window is I wouldn't be able to get a consistent WiFi 6 connection from the next room! These are solid brick walls from 1930 so they're proper solid.
Would it cause a problem if I put a WiFi 6e access point above every bedroom door? I'm not planning on doing that straight away but I need to plan the cabling for the future. I worry about interference from having too many APs around.
TBH I'm leaning on just having the cable in a bit of trunking with a cover over it and whenever I need to install the AP I can remove the cover and pop it on

Any help or suggestions?
I'm going to be using UniFi equipment and will probably buy their dream machine or whatever their AP manager is.
 
Seems massively overkill, but can be done, and as long as the power levels of each access point are turned down, shouldn't be a huge problem.

The bigger question in my mind, is do you really need Wifi6E speeds in every room for individual devices? If you need coverage then 2.4Ghz wifi is still the best option, and if you need speed and reliability then wired is still the best option :)
It's hugely overkill and tbh it's something that might never be done, but it's something I want to plan for as if I ever need to do it then all the cabling is already in place.
I still am a huge proponent for hard wiring wherever possible, and on the ground floor diagram you'll see 4 ports where I think my TV will go, but I don't want to limit it in the bedroom. For example that bedroom which has P5 in it, that is a "bedroom" but I'll be using that as a home office, hence why the ethernet ports are there but say that becomes a bedroom then those ports will be kinda useless. Therefore if it had a good strong fast WiFi signal I'll never need to worry about streaming legal remuxes.

Also how the hell do I lower the power levels to each room? Is that something Ubiquiti APs are capable of?
 
You can set the Transmit power per access point on Ubiquiti:

Leaving it at Auto and the controller should manage it, but evidence from users has suggested it doesn't necessarily. So you can set it between High, Medium, Low or Custom

LdHqkAzl.png
Marvellous!
Overkill, nope, these things only tend to be too much initially, then you want more because if it's there you can use it and do, I max out 1Gb wifi all the time.

Somethings aren't wireable or wiring is a pain like anything portable, I pretty much have a similar wifi AP loadout and have gigabit wifi in each main use room with an AP in each room as well as a couple upstairs, walls in my house are similaly solid which does mean that I don't have much issue with AP overlap but power levels can be adjusted.

I've not upgraded my APs to 6E deciding to skip 6E for Wifi7 and get multigig wifi but will have similar issues with wall blockages so worth planning for it.

~3Gb capable Wifi7 Mesh from Tplink just out, more dropping soon. Sure I only have 6E devices now but won't be long before I upgrade.

I don't think I'll max it out like you do, but occasionally the remuxes I stream can be quite sizeable.
How big is the house? I'm approx 200 sqm and have 3 x Unifi AP and get full coverage throughout.
I think it'll be around 200sqm. Even before the work started it was fairly large and I had 2 APs which gave wifi across the entire property but the aim is to have brilliant connections everywhere.
This is all pipeline though, it's all planned for what might come. Obviously I can't plan for every eventuality but this is fairly simple I reckon
I can understand if you plan to go all wireless, but seeing you're planning to feed ethernet around the house anyway I would have PCs/consoles/etc wired up instead. For phones/laptops and any other portable devices, even 5GHz WiFi 5/6 will be more than enough.

That would be the best option. See how a single AP works in the hallway, and if you find yourself actually needing 6e (or more specifically, the 6GHz band) in a certain room, then add the AP later on.
Basically anything that can be wired will be wired (to a degree) but with WiFi continually improving and tablets/laptops without ethernet ports becoming more and more common place this is to solve a problem that may or may not exist in the future.
 
Back
Top Bottom