Ubiquiti Announces $89 AC1200 Access Point

[wopper]

DFS support is in the next beta trail (4.9) available.

How did you manage the roaming?


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[lancer73]

@wopper, thnx.

I managed the roaming with a combination of power settings and minimal RSSI. Set 2.4GHz to medium power, while 5GHz is set to high. This prevents the tablets and phones trying to roam from 5GHz to 2.4 on the same AP.

Then set minimal RSSI to -73dBm. When this works out I'll try to set it to -70dBm to see if this further improves the situation.


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[wopper]

Ok cool let me try it myself.

Do you know about the "band steering" option? To force them to 5G ? It works in a lot of cases but not all.

I need the high power on 2.4 because of the concrete (with steel) walls to get signal outside in the backyard. When I move to medium power the upload is better than the download measured from the client. I.e the AP is unable to serve the client a stable good quality signal on medium power.


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[lancer73]

I got band steering enabled as well. A far as I can see it works. Even my laptop is on 5GHz. The driver prefers 2.4GHz, I can set it to 5, but I am a Windows Insider, so I go through an upgrade process every 2-4 weeks which resets the driver settings.

I'm a bit worried about the extremities of the backyard too. Guess I'll find out in spring. If it is really bad I can experiment by setting the power of the ground floor AP to full. Or,... I just add another AP outside.


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[wopper]

@wopper, thnx.

I managed the roaming with a combination of power settings and minimal RSSI. Set 2.4GHz to medium power, while 5GHz is set to high. This prevents the tablets and phones trying to roam from 5GHz to 2.4 on the same AP.

Then set minimal RSSI to -73dBm. When this works out I'll try to set it to -70dBm to see if this further improves the situation.


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Dit you enable minRSSI on 2.4 and 5? Because with BandSteering enable and minRSSI set to -73 the MacBook will not select the 5G as it did before.

 

[lancer73]

Yes I did. The one MacBook we have is still connecting at 5GHz. What was the RSSI of the macbook according to the controller before configuring? (MacBook might have switched during the provisioning that occurred after changing the settings)


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[wopper]

Hmmm i did not read the value before configuring. Just took over your -73

Tested the roaming and it works well without. So I'll proceed when I have more time.


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[lancer73]

-70dBm is considered a minimal value for reliable data transport. When the RSSI is below the set value, the AP send a disconnect frame (same happens when you push the "reconnect" button in the client list interface)




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[WirelessWonk]

I noticed the SNB AP review list is really short, I am looking at the UAP-AC-PRO but I have noted a few places have reported its throughput as less than the current TP-Link Archer and even the Apple Airport Extreme. I would have to special order it as well, no one has local stock of these things.

 

[bman212121]

Someone I know was able to pick one up off Amazon for ~$150. That's the first I've heard of them being in the same ballpark. I'm certainly not a good review case but my friend has seen good performance out of his with a diverse client load. I personally don't worry too much about trying to get maximum throughput out of a single client test as that's pretty unusual for how a real world AP is used. With a mix of G, N, and AC clients setup with the legacy devices in 2.4 and the faster devices in 5ghz, he was a lot happier with a single AC-Pro than with the previous Cisco / Linksys router that he had. I think he was around a dozen devices on wifi when doing some testing.

 

[WirelessWonk]

Pulled the trigger on the UAP-AC-PRO as I really wanted band steering and a more reliable setup... Haven't done extensive testing but it is besting my ASUS RT-AC68U in usable range on both 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. I seem to be topping out throughput on my AC and N devices as well, at least when on the same floor.. As I suspected I will probably need two if I want full speed on all floors in the house, but at least wifi reaches all corners of the house now.

 

[LoneWolf]

I have had my UAP-AC-PRO for about a month (it took me a month just to get the access point, they were backordered by most suppliers). Note: I had to exchange my first one due to a firmware flash that bricked it (after clicking "Upgrade" from my controller, a Linux VM running on one of my servers, it just never came back up) that I couldn't TFTP recover the unit from. A Ubiquiti forum employee went above and beyond in helping me get a new unit, and I even got a CloudKey in the bargain, which is a sweet little device that I'm running off my PoE Cisco primary switch. I'm running the access point off my Netgear PoE switch on another floor.
I can only say, the unit flat-out kills my previous ASUS RT-AC87R. I've not seen a device either in my IT work experience or at home that devices connect faster to (gaining an IP from my firewall and finalizing the connection is noticeably faster than anything else I've seen). I had planned on getting one, and then adding a second after playing with this one and so far, there has been no need; the unit has enough range to cover my modest house, and I might have to turn the radio power down if I did get a second. The wireless connection via my laptop with 3 x 3 802.11N (Centrino Ultimate-6300N on my laptop) can deliver my maximum 85Mbps/12Mbps throughput. The 2 x 2 802.11AC bridge in my SO's office that runs her desktop and connects our Dell color laser printer connects flawlessly. Band-steering also works well, guiding 5GHz clients over to that radio on one SSID.
Ubiquiti Unifi forums are filled with a lot of dedicated employees, some of whom are engineers working on the code to assist with issues. I won't say the v2 AC access point line is 100% trouble free for everyone, but you can see how proactive they are when there is a real issue, which is very encouraging. As I only have one unit, I also may not experience issues that a multi-WAP environment might. I wish I had done this sooner though --it's unlikely I'll ever purchase an enthusiast router again, given the much better protection of a UTM firewall, and the much better wireless performance of even an SMB access point solution.

 

[WirelessWonk]

2.4 absolutely covers my whole home reliably now. 5 just can't penetrate enough of the house however so I might still end up getting a second unit. The thing is however that most of the dead zones would only be used by lower bandwidth devices anyway and the 2.4 signal is so much more stable than my Asus 68U in those areas.

I would love to see a proper review of the AC pro to see how it stacks up.

 

[LoneWolf]

2.4 absolutely covers my whole home reliably now. 5 just can't penetrate enough of the house however so I might still end up getting a second unit. The thing is however that most of the dead zones would only be used by lower bandwidth devices anyway and the 2.4 signal is so much more stable than my Asus 68U in those areas.

I would love to see a proper review of the AC pro to see how it stacks up.

The Cloudkey is a pretty neat device too. Possibly overkill if you're an enthusiast that could just spin up a Linux or Windows virtual machine to run the Unifi controller software, but it's a solid, small PC-on-a-stick powered by PoE that can do the job and back up your Unifi controller configuration to MicroSD card. The other advantage is, if you have multiple Cloudkeys (e.g, your house, your parents who you manage the Wifi of, that college sorority you did an IT favor for because you were hoping to get in good with them) you can optionally link them all to a free Ubiquiti cloud account and manage them all from one place. If you don't like the idea of having your Cloudkeys linked like that, you can remote access them individually via VPN. There are no licensing costs, though it's estimated that one Cloudkey can support a maximum of 100 access points (single quad-core SoC with 1GB RAM). And it comes with an 8GB MicroSD card.

 

[WirelessWonk]

No need for a cloud key, I have the controller running in a VM on my home server.

Was tempted to just use the new mobile app setup but I wanted the metrics

 

[LoneWolf]

No need for a cloud key, I have the controller running in a VM on my home server.

Was tempted to just use the new mobile app setup but I wanted the metrics

I didn't have a need either, but due to needing to exchange my AP once, I acquired one due to the thoughtfulness of one of their engineers, which means I no longer need the Ubuntu LTS VM I was running on my home server, though I still use it to play with a little for other reasons.

 

[dunkin]

I have had my Unifi AP-AC-Lite running for several weeks. So far so good. The best thing I love is that works great with my ASUS RT-AC87R router. Ubnt Unifi AP-AC-Lite has Min. RSSI setting, and RT-AC87R has Roaming Assistance. They work together perfectly on 5G, make my laptops and phones roaming with 802.11AC connections seamlessly around my house.

The only downside of AP-AC-Lite is, its AC performance is way worse than RT-AC87R. Yes it is not the pro version, has 866M only. But its throughput is still too low compare to the 1300M Asus router. Test in a very close range, my Macbook Pro 2015 can reach 700~800M bps with RT-AC87R, but can only reach 300Mbps with AP-AC-Lite.

 

[WirelessWonk]

I have had my Unifi AP-AC-Lite running for several weeks. So far so good. The best thing I love is that works great with my ASUS RT-AC87R router. Ubnt Unifi AP-AC-Lite has Min. RSSI setting, and RT-AC87R has Roaming Assistance. They work together perfectly on 5G, make my laptops and phones roaming with 802.11AC connections seamlessly around my house.

The only downside of AP-AC-Lite is, its AC performance is way worse than RT-AC87R. Yes it is not the pro version, has 866M only. But its throughput is still too low compare to the 1300M Asus router. Test in a very close range, my Macbook Pro 2015 can reach 700~800M bps with RT-AC87R, but can only reach 300Mbps with AP-AC-Lite.

One thing most people don't pay attention to is the number of STREAMs routers and clients support.

Your MacBook should support 3 spatial streams, but your AP-AC-Lite only supports 2 per channel... The AP-AC-PRO supports three, your RT-AC87R supports four.

In short you should expect your AP-AC-Lite to be slower, however it seams to be half as fast.. Did you have other devices on the network during the test? Because the AP-AC-Lite supports only 2 streams other devices would have a higher impact on performance as well.

 

[NickF1227]

Any word on a review coming Tim?