Access Points for Apartment Use

[Anibai]

After my last post and a lot of thinking, I decided to get a standalone router like a Qotom, Protecti or other mini pc, etc. 

 

Only issue I’ve run into is Access Points. I have an ASUS RT-AX82U that I could use as an access point but I wanted to entertain the thought of a standalone AP. I can’t really use a wall mounted AP in an apartment without getting some bracket for it or something.

 

Netgear has APs that can be ceiling or wall mounted but I don’t really want to pay for insight. TP-Link and Ubiquiti have nice user interfaces but are locked to mobile for standalone use, which is fine with me but are only ceiling mounted. 
 

Should I use my router as an access point and just take the slight performance hit, get a bracket for a TP-Link or Ubiquiti and use the app or just get one of the Netgears and wall mount and deal with insight later?

[LIGISTX]

I use a UniFi 6 lite in my apartment. I have it double stick tapped to the back of my office drawers facing a wall… it works fine. 
 

21 minutes ago, Anibai said:

Ubiquiti have nice user interfaces but are locked to mobile for standalone use

What do you mean by this? I run the UniFi controller in a VM in my homelab, you can fully manage it even if it’s the only UniFi product you have. There are some features that will only work with a UniFi router, but those are pretty meaningless. Im works great with pfsense, vlans and subnets all work as intended. 

[Anibai]

1 minute ago, LIGISTX said:

I use a UniFi 6 lite in my apartment. I have it double stick tapped to the back of my office drawers facing a wall… it works fine. 
 

What do you mean by this? I run the UniFi controller in a VM in my homelab, you can fully manage it even if it’s the only UniFi product you have. There are some features that will only work with a UniFi router, but those are pretty meaningless. Im works great with pfsense, vlans and subnets all work as intended. 

I just mean without have to install stuff like VMs and all that, I don’t have a place to install a VM on, so atleast at the moment, only thing I’ll be able to use with a unifi is the app. At some point in the future I’ll probably end up doing it but just not right now.

 

But if you have a unifi that is working fine set vertically, that definitely reassures me that it might be fine to put up on a wall.

[OddOod]

Ubiquiti has some great APs for fair prices. and you can definitely just command strip the AP to the wall 

[Anibai]

7 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Ubiquiti has some great APs for fair prices. and you can definitely just command strip the AP to the wall 

That’s reassuring. Thank you!

[Dedayog]

40 minutes ago, Anibai said:

After my last post and a lot of thinking, I decided to get a standalone router like a Qotom, Protecti or other mini pc, etc. 

 

Only issue I’ve run into is Access Points. I have an ASUS RT-AX82U that I could use as an access point but I wanted to entertain the thought of a standalone AP. I can’t really use a wall mounted AP in an apartment without getting some bracket for it or something.

 

Netgear has APs that can be ceiling or wall mounted but I don’t really want to pay for insight. TP-Link and Ubiquiti have nice user interfaces but are locked to mobile for standalone use, which is fine with me but are only ceiling mounted. 
 

Should I use my router as an access point and just take the slight performance hit, get a bracket for a TP-Link or Ubiquiti and use the app or just get one of the Netgears and wall mount and deal with insight later?

I am confused, maybe I don't understand what you're trying to do.  Are you not getting decent access thru a normal wifi router?  

[LIGISTX]

45 minutes ago, Anibai said:

I just mean without have to install stuff like VMs and all that, I don’t have a place to install a VM on, so atleast at the moment, only thing I’ll be able to use with a unifi is the app. At some point in the future I’ll probably end up doing it but just not right now.

 

But if you have a unifi that is working fine set vertically, that definitely reassures me that it might be fine to put up on a wall.

Their softwwre runs on windows as well… no need for VM’s if you don’t have the ability to do that. And once it’s all set up, you don’t need the software anymore. It’s just there to change settings when required. 

[Anibai]

1 minute ago, LIGISTX said:

Their softwwre runs on windows as well… no need for VM’s if you don’t have the ability to do that. And once it’s all set up, you don’t need the software anymore. It’s just there to change settings when required. 

Ah okay, if it runs on windows then I’m definitely gonna use it that way, kinda hate using my phone for stuff like that

[Anibai]

18 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

I am confused, maybe I don't understand what you're trying to do.  Are you not getting decent access thru a normal wifi router?  

Just want to get into something new honestly, and it sometimes annoys me when my router does dumb things I don’t want it to do.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Anibai said:

Netgear has APs that can be ceiling or wall mounted but I don’t really want to pay for insight.

There's plenty such as Zyxel where the cloud management is optional.  The only catch is if you want seamless roaming/mesh, then you probably need consumer equipment as that is the sort of thing [I think] would be part of cloud management on enterprise equipment.