Whole Home Suggestions For Gigabit Symmetrical Connection

[Ducs_Of_Hazzard]

Hi There!

Just looking for a little advice from the experts here.

I have a fairly large home 4,000 - 5,000 SF spread across 4 - 5 Levels. Since my house was wired with Cat6 to every room I have options for a whole home wireless setup.

Currently my ISP Router is set to Bridge Mode with Broadcasting turned off. So it’s set to be a basic Modem (I can use iPv4 or iPv6) and I use an Apple Time Capsule as my Router, connected to an HP ProCurve 8-Port Gigabit Switch (1920 Model I Believe) and 4 Apple AirPort Extreme’s (Latest Tower Model) as “Access Points” set to Bridge Mode throughout my house connected to the Switch.

I recently upgraded to a new 1,000 Mbps Symmetrical Internet Connection. Obviously my 5 - 10 year old Time Capsule & Extreme’s can’t handle that speed.

I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a system that will allow me take full advantage of my new ISP Internet Speed (Download & Upload)?

Reading in here I’m not sure I need a “Mesh” System or a setup like I have now (Router & Access Points - Guess some may call that a mesh system). Since I have Ethernet to every room I don’t want a System with a Wireless Backhaul.

I’ve read a lot about the Ubiquiti System (Pro 4, Switch, AP’s) but am a little nervous that it’s setup may be a bit over my head. I’m not a Network Engineer so I like the technical sides of the setup to be more Plug N’ Play with automatic configuration. I am familiar with port forwarding, reservations, etc. as I’ve set those up on my AirPort Time Capsule in the past so I’m not totally inept.

The other Router / System that caught my eye is the Synology MR2200AC just because I use Synology NAS’s and feel that they make a good product. Unfortunately it won’t be able to handle full Gigabit speeds though. I believe it tops out at 800 - 900 Mbps. It is a mesh system with Ethernet backhaul though.

I feel that I need more of a entry level “Enterprise” system to get what I want and not something off the shelf of Best Buy, but not sure really.

Any thoughts or suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks
MD

 

[tannebil]

Most consumer mesh products work with both wired and wireless backhaul. I've installed Plume in two houses (1x wired, 1x wireless) and eero in three more (2x wireless, 1x mixed wired and wireless). The primary advantages of wired is that you can place the units where they provide the best client performance vs having to balance the client and backhaul performance. It's a great way to provide maximum performance vs "good enough" performance.

Mesh isn't just about "magical" wireless backhaul. It provides a single point of management of the network and has a variety of value added services like various kinds of guest networks, bandwidth shaping, firewalling, and ad blocking (the exact offerings depend on the manufacturer and implementation details). The intent is to offer an easy to install, easy to manage WiFi solution. The price is that you are locked into that manufacturer's product. For me, it's less of a "going out of business" risk (changing networks wouldn't cost much) but it's likely that a specific vendor might bring out the next generation of WiFi products slower than I might like.

Ubiquiti has a lot of fans here but it does expect you to know more about networking and gives you lots of knobs and buttons to customize your network if you know what you are doing. Personally, I decided that I'd rather not spend my time fiddling with power transmit levels for individual access points to improve roaming if I could by a low maintenance system that delivered a consistently "good enough" experience.

Right now, I have five Plume Pods (3x gen 1, 2x gen 2) in a 2600sf 1.5 story house all on wired GB backhaul. That gives me 300+ mb speed everywhere I regularly use WiFi (I have 400/15mb Internet service. My only real complaints are that it only provides device level network usage for wireless devices, doesn't break out Internet vs local traffic usage data, and that a lot of IoT device vendors freak out if you say you have a mesh network that blends 5/2.4 into a single SSID. At the end of the day, it's never actually been a deal breaker for me but it's the first thing that support blames.

 

[Ducs_Of_Hazzard]

Thanks for the suggestions! Will take a look at the Plume.

MD

 

[RogerSC]

You might also take a look at the eero. Don't know what your situation is relative to wireless backhaul or wired backhaul, but any mesh that works with wired backhaul should be faster and more reliable. I'm using MoCA 2 here for backhaul, and it works really well. Full ISP speeds at all 3 nodes. The eero worked well with wireless backhaul before I put in the wired-equivalent backhaul, so either way I've found it to be a really good, solid mesh wireless router system.

 

[Trip]

As usual, all depends on requirements, budget and skill level.

For something approachable and only a few hundred bucks, Eero Pro generally gets the nod as the most workable SOHO mesh product. If you go that route, make sure to get the full-size Pro satellites (not the Beacons), as they'll be needed for wired backhaul. Also, you can run Eero in "bridge" mode as just a wifi delivery layer, allowing for a more robust wired solution to handle things underneath, should you prefer that.

Re- UniFi, I'd skip it unless you're thinking of going *all* UniFi with your entire stack (gateway/router, switching and wifi), as that's really where it's strength is. Individually, the USG is still a bit ho-hum when compared to other gateway options (UBNT's own ER series, Untangle, pfSense, etc.). The switches are decent but better performance and support can be had elsewhere (Cisco SG, HPE, even Netgear) and even the wifi itself is not necessarily the best in all scenarios. Nothing against it in particular, but it's definitely not the panacea it's made out to be by some.

There's also other SMB-class stuff like TP-Link Omada, but I'd be leery and do your research on them, as many aren't fully baked/mature.

The top of the heap is of course actual enterprise stuff, which tends to offer superior radio management (better beam-forming, interference mitigation, automatic power level adjusting, etc.), roaming that actually works, granular controls and policies, even controller-less hardware options. Examples would be Ruckus and Aruba. They'll smoke the pants off basically anything previously mentioned, but of course they come at a premium: anywhere from $200 to $1K per AP, plus extra licensing for certain functionality/support. If you have a networking skillset and/or are willing to invest the time into learning and a bit of trial and error, you can probably self-service; otherwise, you'd want to have it installed by a pro.

After all that mumbling on, I'm assuming Eero would probably fit the bill here, but just wanted to paint the full picture, for grins if nothing else.

 

[tannebil]

I had eero for six months or so. It was fine. I've installed and support it at a couple of friends' houses (one is all wireless original units, the other is 3x wired new units plus a Beacon) and it working well for both of them.

Each has some minor advantages and disadvantages but I'd rate them as pretty even in ease of install, customer service, technical support, and performance. I've had a few more flakey problems that required replacing units with eero but they were really good about it. I like being able to just plug the Plume Pods into the wall but some people hate wall warts and it's easier to fine tune the placement with a corded unit.

Plume is cheaper once you get past a trivial install. For example, a starter pack of 3 SuperPods + lifetime membership is $259 compared to $499 for three eeros. Plume also includes ad blocking and security scanning at no additional charge which are part of the $99/year eero Plus subscription (which also includes additional services not available on Plume). That cost saving is important to some people.

I have a slight personal preference for Plume but would be perfectly happy to with eero.