I’m thinking about upgrading my W-Fi and I was curious what wireless access points (WAP) people are using. I’m currently using a Netgear R7800 running OpenWRT.
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Fritzbox boxes.
They tick all the checkboxes
- good standards support (including dect protocol if you want to have an ip phone or even iot protocols)
- fast wifi speeds
- cheap (at least for the second hand in ebay)
- super stable, never had a problem with them in 5 years or more
- fast roaming support out of the box
It is a well known brand in Germany but pretty unknown outside that country. Honestly it is the best bang for buck I was able to get.
Honestly, I would spend 10 minutes checking on them
I really like them but they do have two downsides for “more advanced” users (or at least for me) - it is a home device as after all.
- No support for VLAN or VLAN tagging - you can set up you WiFi and a guest WiFi. You can also map the guest network to an Ethernet port. But that’s about it.
- There is no way to change the DNS suffix (*. fritz.box) to another value - I do own a domain that I use for the local services on my home server, etc. which then allows for Let’s Encrypt certificates, but I cannot use it “out of the box”.
If you’re an advanced user, there’s plenty of ways around that, though. I just wished that these two thing were to exist in the firmware to have less work with my home infrastructure.
2nd hand Ruckus.
They’re decent quality that you’d see in a commercial / enterprise setting (so PoE), but Ruckus also have their “Unleashed” firmware which removes the need for a WLC.
I have 2 in a mesh at home and easily support many IoT devices, phones, laptops, etc on multiple SSIDs
Used 2nd hand sounds great, but the price range online is huge. Which units would you recommend and about how much should I expect to pay for them?
I’m using R600 - these are now EOL, so their price should be more reasonable (ie <60 £/$/€) - up to you if you want / need to pay a little more for someone to have flashed Unleashed onto it.
But definitely check there’s a download of Ruckus Unleashed for the model you want.
Thanks. That’s helpful. I decided to get an R720 I found on Ebay for $60. I’m not sure if it was a good choice but I’m excited to try it out!
That looks like a better choice if you have multiple clients because of the Wave2 and 4x4, so, yes, should be good… Something I might look at in the future. Enjoy.
Went all in with UniFi some time back. No regrets.
Currently running a few U6s. No real motivation to upgrade to U7s.
I use the Unifi access points. They work well and are fairly inexpensive. The management software can change settings on all of them at once, which is really handy if you have several.
Which ones do you have? Which ones would you get if you were buying now?
If you’re looking for top radio performance, not necessarily the fastest speed, get the Pro models, older gen / second hand if needed, especially if you have suboptimal physical conditions. E.g. concrete walls, metal, etc. I had AC Lite, AC LR and AC Pro in use at some point. All of them were very good but the Pro had the best overall radio performance. If you’re in a wooden house with drywall partitions, probably all would do well enough.
Ruckus APs with wired backhaul OpnSense box runs the network.
Is Ruckus not crazy expensive? We used it for customers and they are like €500 an access point.
Used on eBay and flashed with the Unleashed firmware. It’s the same price range as Ubiquiti stuff.
Used 2nd hand sounds great, but the price range online is huge. Which units would you recommend and about how much should I expect to pay for them?
