Help and advice sought - how to properly identify what I want (detailed in post)?

[EngChi]

Greetings,

I have a 2 story house with a basement in which pfsense box receives 2 ISP connections (cable + Uverse) and servers as firewall and router. I also have Asus RT-N56U which was my old router and now serves as AP connected to gigabit port of the switch, located on the first floor in the center of the house. I have gigabit switches (4-8 ports) on each floor including the basement with CAT5E connecting the floors. Network wise everything works but what I would like is
a) improve the wifi coverage
b) improve the speed from what RT-N56U provides me with.
c) ideally have an AP on each floor, and may be a something different mounted outside so that device can extend Wifi when not in the house

What should I be looking for? When I search for "Access Point" companies are trying to sell me a device that connects to Wifi network and exposes it over Eithernet. I can search for another switch and try to run that in AP mode (similar to what RT-N56U is doing) but aren't I then buying what I do not need?

Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thank you!

 

[abailey]

For consumer home gear, there are very few access points for sell. The ones that are for sell generally cost as much as a wifi router. So if you are going to stick to consumer lever gear just look for a good wifi router and run it in AP mode. If you want professional gear that is a good value look at the Ubiquiti Unifi AP's or maybe the Engenius AP's. They are dedicated AP's and are generally better than consumer AP's but they will most likely cost as much as a consumer Wifi Router.