Wireless setup for a 3300sq/ft house on 2 acres, need good hand-off

[Brettcp]

I have a 3300sq/ft single level home, on approximately 2 acres (all flat). Closest neighbor is 500 ft away.

My ISP speed is 385mb/down, 35mb/up from Cox cable.

I currently have two Asus RT-AC68U's (one in router mode, the other in AP-only mode) on opposite sides of my house. While this works, and I do get coverage for the entire 2 acre property, the hand-off is terrible. If I get to the edge of having signal from one of my Asus units, it won't have enough signal to actually transmit/receive data, but it still has enough signal to prevent it from switching to the other (nearest) access point. This is very frustrating as it creates dead-spots in my house. Wireless speed in the house is also lacking - I get 385mb/down via wired connection, but only ~40-50mb/down via wireless.

I'd love to get into a better solution, and I was looking at the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter with two or three of the UAP-AC-PRO access points. Would these do a better "hand-off" between access points than my Asus units? I have approximately 40-50 devices on the network (about 25 wired, 25 wireless). I do have a 16 port PoE gigabit switch.

I've setup Cisco and Ruckus in the past so I'm comfortable with a more technical setup if needed.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[sfx2000]

I currently have two Asus RT-AC68U's (one in router mode, the other in AP-only mode) on opposite sides of my house. While this works, and I do get coverage for the entire 2 acre property, the hand-off is terrible

Common SSID or discrete SSID's for your two AP's? Sounds like you're doing the old-school home user approach..

Recommend - footprint of that size, common SSID/Passphrases across both radios for both AP's, using 2.4GHz as a backstop, and letting the devices hand up - most clients these days lock on to the SSID, not the BSSID, and they do better service rescans..

 

[Brettcp]

Common SSID or discrete SSID's for your two AP's? Sounds like you're doing the old-school home user approach..

Recommend - footprint of that size, common SSID/Passphrases across both radios for both AP's, using 2.4GHz as a backstop, and letting the devices hand up - most clients these days lock on to the SSID, not the BSSID, and they do better service rescans..

I'm using the same SSID and passphrase on both devices. Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[coxhaus]

These 25 wireless devices, are they all pretty much grouped around one wireless device rather than spread across both devices? Maybe you do need to divide and conquer. 25 active devices can be a load for one wireless device especially if you are trying to run wide bandwidth.

 

[Brettcp]

These 25 wireless devices, are they all pretty much grouped around one wireless device rather than spread across both devices? Maybe you do need to divide and conquer. 25 active devices can be a load for one wireless device especially if you are trying to run wide bandwidth.

The ~25 wireless devices are spread all throughout the house, but most are low bandwidth devices (Nest thermostats, washer/dryer, iPad, etc). A friend in the networking business suggested putting a single Ubiquiti UAP-OUTDOOR+ outside on my chimney (which is about at the center of my home) and use this as my only AP, as he's seen great results with these in the past.. Going to try it out tomorrow.

 

[abailey]

The ~25 wireless devices are spread all throughout the house, but most are low bandwidth devices (Nest thermostats, washer/dryer, iPad, etc). A friend in the networking business suggested putting a single Ubiquiti UAP-OUTDOOR+ outside on my chimney (which is about at the center of my home) and use this as my only AP, as he's seen great results with these in the past.. Going to try it out tomorrow.

If you want to go that route I would definitively try a Ubiquiti UAP-AC outdoor, not the UAP-Outdoor+. You already have AC compatible routers and AP's. The UAP-Outdoor+ is 2.4ghz only. I would see it as a step back, even if the signal was a little better.

 

[System Error Message]

im not sure how well ubiquiti UAP ACs do but try one and see if it works better. Technically they should do well just not sure how well they do when communicating with lower powered wifi devices that do not output as much as the AP. I think it depends a lot on the amplifier and antenna used. 2.4 Ghz sees improvements with bigger antennas.

If you have only a certain area that you need wifi covered than it would do better with directional antennas.

The UAPs should have POE in if you want to simplify your setup. Hopefully you can use POE and still get gigabit ethernet.