Unifi / Ubiquiti to replace Eero as a Mesh Network

[geoffaire]

Back in 2019 I replaced my venerable Airport Extreme and AirPort Express with a set of 2nd Gen Eeros. The change was Night and Day with coverage right to the end of the garden and a significant amount less moaning by the other inhabitants of our home.

This was before Amazon bought Eero.

I’m in the position now that the Eeros are struggling and needing semi regular reboots to remain functional for us.

So after speaking to a couple of our IT team at work and listening to the chat here (including he MPU episode) about Ubiquiti I’m seriously tempted to go for a Dream Router 7 (I’ve read about Russia) which I think would cover our home and a bit further afield, but I want to be prepared in case that’s not the case especially for my daughter who cables her X-Box via Ethernet into an Eero AP to get less lag, and for our office space which is at the other end of the house from where the DR7 will sit.

I’m not clear on Mesh capabilities without an Ethernet connection between the DR7 and any AP. I don’t have ethernet cabling in my house so while I can implement a Unify switch with POE to provide power (or I would guess you can buy power blocks instead), what I can’t do is provide a physical connection from the router to the AP.

Does anyone have experience with these things please?

[darranwest]

We use Unifi equipment at the school where I work. From what our IT technicians have told me this is what I know.

• You can create a wireless network that uses multiple access points (AP). At work we have two networks and they are all available from every AP. As I move around the building any devices jumps to the AP with the best signal.
• All of the APs use power over Ethernet (PoE). I don’t think there is a way to mesh them together using a wireless backhaul. All of that is done via Ethernet and the switch. Therefore I think you would have to run network cable to the locations where you want an AP.

Hope this helps a little. I’m sure there are people on here who know far more about this than me.

Darran

[CLewis]

You can buy ethernet power adapters to power the APs (I did this before getting ethernet run through my house). I would also look at MOCA 2 adapters if you have coax run through the house as an alternative to ethernet. Again, I ran these in my house prior to ethernet conversion. If you go MOCA 2, you can use your coax as the backbone of your network connecting APs and other switches on the network. It will not be as fast as ethernet but works well in these situations.

Depending on your budget and availability, I would also look at local vendors to come add ethernet runs to your house. A very worth while investment IMO.

[carlsson]

All UI equipment have built in Mesh, but nobody recommends it. It uses the same bandwidth as the WiFi itself, making it slower and unreliable (according to all the pro’s).

I also wanted to replace my TP Deco EX75 with UI Mesh. Instead, I’m running cables to all the access points (which is a nightmare in a 100-year-old house). But it will be extremely good when it’s done.

[AppleGuy]

I have two Ubiquiti AP’s. I called my ISP (I’m in Canada YMMV), and asked them to disable the wifi on their provided box. My house was wired with ethernet jacks at the time it was built and they all terminate in my basement beside the ISP box. So, I plugged in AP in down in my basement (finished area) at the front of my house and one AP in on the second floor at the back of my house all leading into the ISP box/router. I can go anywhere in my house and get a really good signal. Certainly better than the ISP provided box ever could on its own.

The Ubiquiti set up can be as simple or as complex as you want. Fire things up and run defaults, or spend a week in the 14th settings page; either way, it’s up to you.

Mine have been rock-solid and if you can, a system that runs on ethernet will beat any “mesh” system that relies on WiFi/wireless in my opinion.

[tomalmy]

YMMV, of course, but I’ve got Wifi signal in all of our 1/4 acre lot and 2300 sq ft single level home from a single Ubiquiti AP! This is far better than their range claims. I was prepared to set up one or two additional APs but found out that I didn’t need them. This was with a basically now obsolete UAP-AC-LR.

All my Ubiquiti gear (I also use a Cloud Gateway Ultra which replace a Security Gateway) has run without ever crashing or other hangup for over 5 years now.

[geoffaire]

@tomalmy

MMV, of course, but I’ve got Wifi signal in all of our 1/4 acre lot and 2300 sq ft single level home from a single Ubiquiti AP! This is far better than their range claims. I was prepared to set up one or two additional APs but found out that I didn’t need them.

Thank you, I won’t be buying an AP out of the box, but want to have the option if I need it.

@darranwest

You can create a wireless network that uses multiple access points (AP). At work we have two networks and they are all available from every AP. As I move around the building any devices jumps to the AP with the best signal.

We used to do this with Meraki back in the early 2010s before Cisco ruined, er bought them.

@CLewis

Depending on your budget and availability, I would also look at local vendors to come add ethernet runs to your house. A very worth while investment IMO.

I’d be tempted except it would be very intrusive on the house, and on my head from my wife. With wireless these days you don’t need cabling (but if I was buying a house today, one of the jobs before moving in would be multiple drops in each room.

@AppleGuy

I called my ISP (I’m in Canada YMMV), and asked them to disable the wifi on their provided box.

I disabled Wifi on my ISP provided router and have used the Eeros in Bridge mode. Now I have Fibre, I may be able to have a direct hookup to a new AP.

[SpivR]

A few things I’ve learned and rely on after designing/installing a lot of home networks.

Wired, of course, is always best. Wired using MOCA or other adapters over existing coax, and sometimes powerline adapters, is usually better than fancy mesh wireless.

All recent and current UniFi AP’s can be connected using wireless backhaul. The presence of lack of the word “mesh” in the marketing name of the AP is just that - meaningless marketing words.

However, and this can be the controversial bit, UniFi doesn’t make any triple-radio AP’s like Eero Pro and a few other consumer brands that emphasize wireless mesh setups.

Earlier deployments of UniFi definitely saw a decrease in bandwidth by 50% as the backhaul traffic had to share the same radio used for client traffic.

In the past few years, with multiple frequencies and multiple bands in dual radio AP’s, UniFi seems to have gotten smarter in assigning bands and multiplexing traffic.

I’ve never seen a definitive analysis by unbiased third parties, and I’ve never had a setup where I could a side-by-side comparison that I trust the results myself, but anecdotally, if a installation is primarily wireless mesh, I still prefer other brands instead of UniFi, but UniFi mesh can be more than ok for most homes.

Be careful using the LR (long-range) version of UniFi AP’s for residential installs. These AP’s are designed for high density, high-throughput environments like sports arenas, theaters, hotel lobbies, etc.

They are not necessarily best suited for home use. With the higher bands of Wi-Fi having even less ability to travel through a single wall, let alone multiple walls, a more robust deployment strategy is to have multiple lower-power, smaller range AP’s than one “mega” AP to try and cover any particular area.

Keep in mind that Wi-Fi networking is two-way communications. Just because you have a mega-AP with multiple radios and high power, doesn’t mean the client at the other end can communicate back to it effectively. (Edit: technically Wi-Fi is half-duplex while wired Ethernet is full-duplex, but the end desire is two-way comms in both cases.)

Think of a huge radio tower on a hill trying to make a high-bandwidth two-way connection to a hearing-aid size radio in your pocket.

(Remember iPhone “your holding it wrong” antenna gate?)

Lastly, and this is more an observation about Wi-Fi versus wired in general - techies sometimes like to claim their skill in mapping out the coverage of Wi-Fi AP’s, their ability to manually tune radio channels and AP power levels, allows them to create the “perfect” Wi-Fi coverage.

All the best Wi-Fi designs need to keep one thing in mind - you can’t fix your neighbor’s bad Wi-Fi installation. If Wi-Fi signals bleed over or overlap with yours, what is optimal at first can change at any time when a neighbor changes their network.

For many of the client projects I have worked on, aesthetics was more important than theoretical ideal performance. We tended to use more AP’s than necessary, and mount them in the ceiling in closets, cabinets, and other out-of-sight locations.

Putting a UFO on the ceiling in the center of beautiful home, no matter how “ideal” that location should be, was not allowed.

[svsmailus]

@mlevison

Ubiquiti sells equipment to the Russian military.

It must be good then?

[csf111]

As others have mentioned, Yes, you can wirelessly connect a (Ubiquiti) AP to a DR7. I’m not sure about other AP brands. This creates a wireless backhaul (aka mesh) network, and there is some performance drop-off.

To help mitigate that, as you are looking at DR 7 which has wifi 7, you should look at the UniFi U7 Pro access point (if needed), because what you REALLY want is MLO (Multi Link Operation) which binds all 3 wifi radios.

Ubiquity does not (yet) support MLO Wireless Meshing. There is buzz, but no commitment. I think your choice of the DR7 is a good one, and I would watch for MLO support.