Access point for 4,000 sq ft house?

[BrinkGG]

Hey all, moving into a new house soon and I'm looking to upgrade from our old Netgear N600. Our new house is about 4,000 sq ft. over two stories (2,000 per floor) and I would like to have the whole house covered. My mild guess tells me that a Ubiquiti AP AC LR would cover it... But I don't know. suggestions?

[Enderman]

 

[BrinkGG]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

 

Doesn't really help me much... Not looking to buy a $1,000 access point, which is why I mentioned the AP AC LR...

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Brink2Three said:

Doesn't really help me much... Not looking to buy a $1,000 access point, which is why I mentioned the AP AC LR...

well these are the ones linus uses since his office is about that big, and they performs great....

you also didnt give a budget, so that's kinda your fault

[Zyndo]

Something you need to remember about any wireless communication, you can buy the largest craziest antenna you want. That will be great, and your device will pick it up better! but you're going to be limited to whatever your device can broadcast back to the antenna. If distance, walls, and obstructions are a serious concern, don't forget to take into account how well your device can talk to your router, not just how well your router can talk to your device.

[vorticalbox]

15 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Something you need to remember about any wireless communication, you can buy the largest craziest antenna you want. That will be great, and your device will pick it up better! but you're going to be limited to whatever your device can broadcast back to the antenna. If distance, walls, and obstructions are a serious concern, don't forget to take into account how well your device can talk to your router, not just how well your router can talk to your device.

home plugs are probably the way to go in this situation, you can get ones with wireless enabled so you can have a few of them around to cover the place in wifi

[BrinkGG]

7 hours ago, Enderman said:

well these are the ones linus uses since his office is about that big, and they performs great....

you also didnt give a budget, so that's kinda your fault

Yeah sorry about that. budget is around $160. 

7 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

home plugs are probably the way to go in this situation, you can get ones with wireless enabled so you can have a few of them around to cover the place in wifi

 

7 hours ago, Zyndo said:

Something you need to remember about any wireless communication, you can buy the largest craziest antenna you want. That will be great, and your device will pick it up better! but you're going to be limited to whatever your device can broadcast back to the antenna. If distance, walls, and obstructions are a serious concern, don't forget to take into account how well your device can talk to your router, not just how well your router can talk to your device.

So is it looking like I'll need more then one access point to cover the house? 

[Lurick]

I would pick up two APs and put one near each end of the house, not at the very end but towards each end-ish, if that makes any sense. Then you can setup the two APs to have the same SSID but be on different bands so they don't interfere with each other but still allow you to seamlessly transition from one to the other.

[vorticalbox]

36 minutes ago, Brink2Three said:

Yeah sorry about that. budget is around $160. 

 

So is it looking like I'll need more then one access point to cover the house? 

to get a good strong signal you're gonna need mote than one.

[dzonidev]

On 7/9/2016 at 7:28 AM, Brink2Three said:

Hey all, moving into a new house soon and I'm looking to upgrade from our old Netgear N600. Our new house is about 4,000 sq ft. over two stories (2,000 per floor) and I would like to have the whole house covered. My mild guess tells me that a Ubiquiti AP AC LR would cover it... But I don't know. suggestions?

One won't cut it, I guarantee it. To put this into perspective I have 2 Cisco APs that are in furthest corners opposite of each other. Performance wise if I did not have 2, in the opposite corner I get ~2Mbps on a 70m2 apartment. Now I admit my APs are not the newest but if we scale this 2 times we get your performance.

 

So what you will want to do, find the furthest point in the house where you can install one AP preferably on a wall or ceiling, also that furthest point needs to make sense, don't just install it anywhere (like for example a boiler room). Plan for another AP even though if you don't end up buying it. You want the second potential AP to be on the opposite corner and opposite floor of the first AP.

 

This way you should get even coverage everywhere, now these are very optimistic predictions. Don't go for the fastest AP, because it doesn't mean anything. When it says for example 850Mbps, you will in the best case scenario get around 400Mbps because a wireless connection is not duplex, meaning that those 850Mbps will be shared for download and upload. On top of all that those 850Mbps is the total bandwidth the AP can manage, meaning all your devices share that same bandwidth.

[BrinkGG]

On 7/11/2016 at 5:34 PM, dzonidev said:

One won't cut it, I guarantee it. To put this into perspective I have 2 Cisco APs that are in furthest corners opposite of each other. Performance wise if I did not have 2, in the opposite corner I get ~2Mbps on a 70m2 apartment. Now I admit my APs are not the newest but if we scale this 2 times we get your performance.

 

So what you will want to do, find the furthest point in the house where you can install one AP preferably on a wall or ceiling, also that furthest point needs to make sense, don't just install it anywhere (like for example a boiler room). Plan for another AP even though if you don't end up buying it. You want the second potential AP to be on the opposite corner and opposite floor of the first AP.

 

This way you should get even coverage everywhere, now these are very optimistic predictions. Don't go for the fastest AP, because it doesn't mean anything. When it says for example 850Mbps, you will in the best case scenario get around 400Mbps because a wireless connection is not duplex, meaning that those 850Mbps will be shared for download and upload. On top of all that those 850Mbps is the total bandwidth the AP can manage, meaning all your devices share that same bandwidth.

Got it. So kinda split the house and put one on each side? 

Also, I tested with a Netgear AC1750 and it seemed to cover almost the whole house... Not full speed but I can easily get 70Mbps almost everywhere. 

[dzonidev]

On 7/15/2016 at 4:26 AM, Brink2Three said:

Got it. So kinda split the house and put one on each side? 

Also, I tested with a Netgear AC1750 and it seemed to cover almost the whole house... Not full speed but I can easily get 70Mbps almost everywhere. 

All my walls are concrete/brick and I have 20+ other WiFi networks around me, so having 2 APs is a must for me. However if you are satisfied with the performance of the AC1720 then don't bother getting anything else. This really depends on what you are after, for example I was after consistency and throughput.