Two story apartment WiFi

[Ois]

Hello,

I am soon to move into a new apartment which I have purchased. The construction is still ongoing and the electricians will start in the next two weeks.
I am trying to decide what the best WiFi solution will be....the apartment comprises of two 820 sqft (75+ sqm) floors separated by a concrete floor with underfloor heating and insulation.
Each room will receive several Cat 7 LAN ports.

I am however trying to decide where to have an AP for AC 2.4/5GHz + whatever comes in the future. Would it be overkill to have a lan port placed in the ceiling of the landing/hall in each floor for a ceiling PoE AP?
Is the apartment small enough to get by with just one AP somewhere?

Thanks!

 

[CaptainSTX]

Hello,

I am soon to move into a new apartment which I have purchased. The construction is still ongoing and the electricians will start in the next two weeks.
I am trying to decide what the best WiFi solution will be....the apartment comprises of two 820 sqft (75+ sqm) floors separated by a concrete floor with underfloor heating and insulation.
Each room will receive several Cat 7 LAN ports.

I am however trying to decide where to have an AP for AC 2.4/5GHz + whatever comes in the future. Would it be overkill to have a lan port placed in the ceiling of the landing/hall in each floor for a ceiling PoE AP?
Is the apartment small enough to get by with just one AP somewhere?

Thanks!

You will be much better off in a dense WiFi environment (urban apartment building ) to first plan to connect every device possible to a Ethernet ports on your LAN. Video streaming works consistently well using Ethernet and can be highly variable using WiFi.

Secondly install several APs that devices can connect to using the 5 Ghz band as you have more non overlapping channels to connect to. You probably will need several APs for 5 Ghz as its range and penetrating power is much less than 2.4 Ghz.

 

[L&LD]

With each room having several CAT7 LAN cable runs, I don't think you need to worry about this right now.

Pulling a LAN run for a ceiling AP is the last thing I would do or suggest for a residential installation of such modest size.

One thing to consider though is having enough Ethernet cable runs to be able to connect any consumer router you may consider today and use all the LAN ports it offers (today, that would be 9 or 10 LAN runs for the RT-AC88U for the 8 LAN ports and the single WAN port plus one extra). This would be placed in the 3D center of the area to be covered and with the concrete and heated floor, possible repeated on each floor of the apartment.

I would be surprised if you will require several AP's for such a space. The less you have, the better (the area being so small, relatively, they will interfere with each other regardless of what your neighbors will have setup.

Will all Ethernet runs go to a single location within your home (usually where the ISP connection comes in)?

Can you give us a floor plan? We may be able to suggest something with more and better details.

 

[sfx2000]

total of two AP's - one per floor, connected via ethernet - you'll be more than fine for WiFi considering what you're lighting up - two 820 sq ft platforms...

the bigger challenge is the neighbors and their WiFi, but even then, less of a problem than most folks might expect.

 

[stevech]

I live in 1700 sq. ft, two story. Router downstairs. Upstairs opposite end from router, one $50 AP connected by ethernet (could have been MoCA or power line).
Just fine.

Zillions of SSIDs nearby. Not a problem. None are bandwidth hogs.

 

[sfx2000]

I live in 1700 sq. ft, two story. Router downstairs. Upstairs opposite end from router, one $50 AP connected by ethernet (could have been MoCA or power line).
Just fine.

Zillions of SSIDs nearby. Not a problem. None are bandwidth hogs.

Depends on the location - suburban apartments/townhomes, probably ok, but in downtown high-rises, the amount of noise from adjacent networks can be a real challenge...

 

[stevech]

Could be. But in travels in big hotels, and even where I live, I see 15 SSIDs in just 2.4. In the 10 story medical building, every office with WiFi for the staff (paperless doctors!), I see maybe 20 SSIDs. None more than a couple of floors away. Many commercial buildings have floors that are a steel pan with concrete poured atop. That's rather RF lossy.

So it always depends on if there's a nearby bandwidth hog in prime time using a channel similar to the one you're using (+/- 3).

 

[sfx2000]

Could be. But in travels in big hotels, and even where I live, I see 15 SSIDs in just 2.4.

So it always depends on if there's a nearby bandwidth hog in prime time using a channel similar to the one you're using (+/- 3).

I've travelled to place where there are so many private AP's - e.g. residential - that it just causes the client software to outright crash...

 

[stevech]

I've travelled to place where there are so many private AP's - e.g. residential - that it just causes the client software to outright crash...

I've never had that with my HTC or Samsung or iPhone clients, nor an iPad. But that's a limited set of devices.

 

[Ois]

hhmm...okay, thanks fr the advice.

I do not yet know me neighbours, but since this is a city apartment surrounded with other apartments, it's probably safe to expect plenty of noise.
The construction uses steel and concrete so it might be quite lossy.....so, judging by what I have read here, I will need an AP on each floor.
I'll probably get a cable put in the ceiling in that case, it looks nicer than a router in the corner and the ceiling models available are great in many ways.

 

[kitsvancouver]

I live in a house about 4,000 square feet that spans three floors, separated by radiant heating. You might be able to get by with one AP if it's placed well, but ended up placing an AP on each floor because the concrete floor made performance somewhat unpredictable.

 

[sfx2000]

hhmm...okay, thanks fr the advice.

I do not yet know me neighbours, but since this is a city apartment surrounded with other apartments, it's probably safe to expect plenty of noise.
The construction uses steel and concrete so it might be quite lossy.....so, judging by what I have read here, I will need an AP on each floor.
I'll probably get a cable put in the ceiling in that case, it looks nicer than a router in the corner and the ceiling models available are great in many ways.

Try one first - but I suspect that you'll need two because of high density of WLAN's in the area, and also to punch thru walls/floors...