Summoning Ubiquiti Gurus for recommendations

[GhostRoadieBL]

Looking to do a major rebuild of my network, basically ground up overhaul (keeping the in wall wiring though)

 

Budget - less than $1500 CAD prefer under $1000 CAD

 

Current Setup -

2 1000sq ft 'living' floors with 500sq ft basement workshop - network cabinet in the workshop

Fiber 300/300 (more like 400/300 most days)

8 port Gigabit un-managed switch 

single cat5e to each of the rooms (won't be changing to cat6 or 7 as it would be way outside the budget to rerun all the lines)

rj45 to coax for the top floor office with coax to rj45 into our current Nighthawk AC router set as access point/switch for 2.4 and 5ghz as well as hardline to a media server and office computer

 

48Drive capable Media Server in the office - normally running file transfers to it between 2GB and 10GB

Entertainment PC on the middle floor on one of the hardlines 

Later addons - workshop PC, Spare bedroom PC, Kitchen raspberry pi smartscreen, possible second computer in the office etc 

 

onto the request: 

I am looking at upgrading all my network gear to a full Ubiquiti system, Router, Switch, PoE and access points on all 3 floors

 

obviously I'll be getting these:

https://www.amazon.ca/Ubiquiti-Security-Enterprise-Gateway-Ethernet/dp/B00LV8YZLK/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=unifi&qid=1605826712&sr=8-10

Gateway Router - $150

https://www.amazon.ca/Ubiquiti-UniFi-Switch-60W-US-8-60W/dp/B01MU3WUX1/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=unifi&qid=1605826712&sr=8-8

8-port Switch w/4 PoE for the access points - $145

 

now I need advice to decide between the Unifi 6 Lite, Unifi 6 LR, Unifi AC PROs, or some combination of the lot, how many should I be looking at getting, 1 per floor seems reasonable but for maximum bandwidth it seems as though I should be using more. 

Do I also need a Cloud Key or is there software I can run instead? 

 

I'd like to keep my unmanaged switch for the office just so everything stays on the hardline and I don't need to worry about any possible network drops. 

[The_russian]

Not exactly sure what to recommend for your specific situation, but about the CloudKey, you can use software instead. The CloudKey is just if you want a dedicated device to host the Unifi Controller, but you can host the controller on Windows, Linux, or MacOS instead.

[GhostRoadieBL]

Just putting an update /close to the thread, 

 

Ended up with a pair of ubiquiti UAP-pro, one for the office one for the living room (separate floors) 

Everything runs great, by far the most powerful signal any of my wireless devices have seen. Loving the interface, it's the little things like easily setting icons and names for devices on the network, breakdowns of which ap has what on it. The handoff is completely seamless, would never know there were two sources sharing a common network name. 

 

Overall extremely impressed.