My son and I both have offices in the basement. The current APs are offset so the basement one also covers the bedrooms above.
Definitely seems like we have a winner and its name is Ubiquiti 
I was curious about one more aspect, though: I went thru the apartment this morning running Speedtest from my phone in several areas and it seems like my current router does cover the place OK (100+ Mbps download speeds, even more for upload), except for one area, which, while not a dead spot, does see my speed drop into the 40 Mbps range.
This is pretty much the area I had in mind when first asking the question here - it’s the front corner of my apartment and it also leads to one extra annoyance, the fact that I exit the apartment and have a few meters of “limbo”, in which the WiFi signal is not quite enough for the internet to work, but the phone does not switch to 4G either…thus, I often have to manually turn off WiFi on the phone when waiting at the entrance for an Uber to arrive, for example.
Given the situation, I was considering waiting for Ubiquiti to release their WiFi6 stuff and upgrading the whole infrastructure at that point. To tide me over in the meantime, though, what do you think of maybe getting a range extender and running it in AP Mode (wired connection to my router, since I have an RJ45 plug in that corner as well) with the same SSID as the router? The extender I was thinking of (Linksys RE6500) is also AC1200, same as the router, so naming both networks the same should not lead to decreased performance because I’m connecting to the extender/AP instead of the router, no?
I live in a 200 sqm house, one floor with thick concrete walls. I use Orbi Pro. One router, one indoor satellite and one outdoor. Backhaul is wired. I have 50+ devices and have never had any problem. It is superfast everywhere. With the new fw update the device limit is 253. Its pricy but I want something I can trust. There will come a W6 version now but I have no need for it
I did not realize until last night, but we all owe Ubiquiti thanks for their contributions to Home Assistant.
Personally, I think it’s going to be awhile before WiFi 6 really becomes mainstream and there’s market saturation of devices to take advantage of it. I personally wouldn’t wait around for it, but that is just me. That being said, if you don’t want to build out a full setup yet, two Unifi AP’s wouldn’t be super expensive and should be enough to make a difference (and I think would work better than trying to use a range extender). Turn the WiFi off on your router and connect one AP to it right where it is. Put the second AP on that wired connection where you were going to put the extender. A couple of AC Lites should get the job done for under $175.
I have about 35-40 devices on my wifi, 54m2 (smallish apartment).
I hate slow wifi and weak spots (my walls are thick breezeblock which doesn’t help), so I decided to run cat 6 to three points around the house, and placed Google Wifi points at each one. It works perfectly, with a “mesh” network setup automatically through the ethernet backhaul. Plus they look quite nice on the shelf, you can dim the LED if it’s in a bedroom. Nice environmental settings. Also, it’s Google: their algorithms take care of the “what’s the best channel??” worries for you.
I would have gone with Ubiquiti but the ideal placement is up high on the wall or on the ceiling. Potential WAF was very low (even I didn’t like the idea of a power and/or ethernet cable snaking up the wall).
My AP looks like a smoke detector on the ceiling, and I have it positioned in line with some can lights, so it looks quite natural up there. Ran the cable through the ceiling (no need for power cable with POE available), and the LED can be turned off so it’s not noticeable. Honestly, my wife was fine with it as soon as I showed her what it looked like on the ceiling.
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Aha, you’re lucky to have a cavity up there. Mine is solid concrete (apartment life) 
UniFi access points FTW! Also, if you’re nearby other people’s WiFi networks, just focus on 5.8GHz and maybe trying to find a clear channel there. One school of thought is that you really don’t have effective multiple channels available on 2.4GHz because the RF stages in the various radios still get impaired by adjacent channels. So putting all your stuff on one channel may help prevent collisions/interference by improving the detection of other stations transmitting. Or just give up and leave 2.4GHz to the less performance sensitive applications (like ESP8266 device) and microwave ovens.
I run the UniFI software stack as another container on the same Ubuntu 18.04 Linux “NUC” I run Home Assistant on (and other stuff).
Had same issue
3’ long 1/4"concrete bit and a hammer drill and 3minutes and now AP is in place
Same here - concrete ceiling, thick cinderblock walls Might end up getting the party started with at least one Unifi AP, let’s see…
I 2nd, 3rd, or 4th the vote for Ubiquiti. These have great range and a number of configurable options that you may or may not need without being overly complicated.
I run 2 Ubiquiti AC Pros (overkill) for my ~1500 sqft along with 2 cisco switches (SG300-28P & SG300-10) with a RPi for the Unify controller (may change to a VM) and running a dedicated PfSense pc. At last check there were a total of 22 ports connected on the Ciscos and 34 wireless (sometimes higher depending on RPi projects) running 6 VLANs (although I have the APs set to 4).
Firmware wise I’m a big fan of the Tomato family… pick a flavor that offers the best support for your particular device.
It allows stuff like running all your IoT/Home Assistant stuff in a isolated LAN and SSID, hosting OpenVPN for remote access, etc.
I’ve been running Tomato on my Linksys EAxxxx for years, but recently bought an Asus RT-AC68U which is a relatively expensive router and comes with Asus’s own port of Tomato firmware. Really nice.
Yes, in the US there are only 3 non-overlapping 2.4GHZ channels, 1, 6, & 11. My nearest neighbor is on channel 7 so I usually only use 2.4 on one AP & lock it to channel 1 since I know 6 & 11 will have some adjacent channel interference.
Yes, I work in Wi-Fi for my employer.
Perhaps, but their Wi-Fi stinks. That is what I plan on moving away from for Wi-Fi. I will likely keep one of them as my router though if I go UniFi. Both Asus APs insist on using the same 5GHz channel unless you set them up manually. Their “mesh” software is non-functional too,
That’s the beauty of Ubiquiti products they are very modular.
Just buy one device and see how you get on. I thought I would need two AP’s to cover my house and rear garden / garage. The single NanoHD covers the lot!
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Everything I see about setting up the Unifi controller software locally ties in to the Unifi cloud service.
Does that mean there is a yearly subscription fee too? I think the first tier of cloud service is $299 per year!
There is no subscription fee if your controller is hosted locally. If you have Ubiquiti host it, there is a subscription fee that includes a warranty extension, I think. You don’t have to turn on the cloud service if you don’t want, but if you do (and host locally) you can access your controller from anywhere without having to VPN into your network.
All the instructions I saw about setting it up on a Raspberry Pi mentioned having a cloud login even with the software installed locally.
That is what has got me concerned.
It isn’t required, but makes thing easier to access remotely.
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