network advice

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Soldato
Joined
21 Nov 2004
Posts
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Location
Wishaw
current home network is shall we say a "tad cobbled together" with no mesh, no fall over APs and 3 different wifi networks in the house.
in other words an absolute mess

wanting to streamline things a bit and was looking at the Ubiquiti Dream router and a couple of APs to tie everything into one seamless setup
I have read some appalling reviews on the Dream router especially when used with gigabit connections (Virgin Gig1) and not being able to offer the speeds..........

so looking for suggestions on a router and Aps for full gigabit connection on wired and at least 4-500 meg on wireless with Wifi 6 support typical semi 2 up 2 down with hard runs of 6e between floors

was going to go router with an AP in the living room downstairs AP in the hall upstairs and just an unmanaged switch in the home office for wired devices

budget - sensible( say sub £600 all in) but open to spending more for a marked improvement
 
Why limit Wifi to 500Mb on a new install, you should be picking up the latest gear, the VM Hub5 will give you over 1Gb on wifi, It does at least 1.3-1.4Gb to stuff on the network(assuming clean enough environment to use 160Mhz) would you not want to repeat that level around the house on wifi6/6E?

What wifi specs do your devices support?

What are your requirements for a router if its just home use and the hub 5 does all you need, you could just run some good APs off of the Hub5 and provide full bandwidth to all the house?
 
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The idea being I want my wired connections for things like plex server full speed downloads for things like Xbox/ps5 downloads utorrent etc

Where’s my wireless devices don’t really need full fat gigabit speed. It would be a nice thing to have but certainly not essential. As they generally have a much lighter use profile than hardwired devices
 
Fair enough then it doesn't matter if your APs have 1Gb interfaces, you had mentioned Wifi6 and Gig1, so thought you might want full wifi performance, in which case you would need an AP with 2.5Gb ports and POE to match, but if 900Mb is enough on wifi you can do it with 1Gb gear if your wifi devices have 160Mhz ability and your niegbourhood is not wifi congested.

There are many ways you can do it for 600 budget.

Most of the things you mention needing full downloads can be done of off the HUB5 with some 2.5Gb hubs dotted about for wired and a good ceiling mount AP if the property will allow, just depends if you need anything more advanced from your router, I tend to keep things quite simple.

Not sure how best to test if a ceiling mount will work for your property but for some they can get away with just the one, I picked one up where I knew I could return without hassle.
 
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How many wired devices do you have?

No need to replace the router if you're happy with the LAN throughput.

You could buy a switch that has some gigabit Poe ports. Then buy 3 or 4 access points - Unifi 6 Lite. Disable the WiFi on the router. Install software Unifi controller on your pc, use this to set up and configure the APs.

You don't need 2.5gbe ports on everything.
 
I did a budget option. With a superhub 4.

Got a cheap I3-6100 PC running pfsense £40.
4 Port 1gbit card £15
10gbit card £60 (Probably should have just gone 2.5gbe).
QSW-2104-2T £120
1 x AX3 Quad (£40)
3 x AX3 Dual (£90)


The 4 port all goes to the superhub
1 10gb goes to the switch
The integrated lan goes to the wan on the AX3 quad the AX3 duals are all wired to this
Each PC has a cable going to the switch.

The only negative is I use the AX3 quad for DHCP so for any pc i want to get the full (1150ish) i have to set manual gateway. As i only have 2 devices with faster network ports not a big issue right now. Get 5-600mbit over wifi around the house. 900ish through the AX3 and as mentioned full 1150ish through the pfsense box.
 
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