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Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

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Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#51
For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#52
post #46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I agree that criticism is fair. I just don't think his approach was optimal or even the fastest way to fix those issues (and he said in the beginning, that he wants to save time). Those who recommended him DD-WRT were right, but he didn't listen. That "no, no" answer sounded more like a rant.

I've tried DD-WRT and OpenWRT on this particular Linksys router and it was no better, but this is besides the point. It made me step back and realize that I shouldn't ever have to install a third party OS just to have a router that doesn't drop out multiple times per day.

I think the opposite. I prefer to have an open OS installed. It's a question of trust.

And did you try the recent version of DD-WRT there by the way?

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#53

what is a good way to connect router or access points OVER WIFI. i dont have wired backhaul in my office and it would be fairly cumbersome to build one. are there APs with two radios each - one for backhaul and one for service?

With packet-switched network, one radio may suffice for both purposes.

Likely you're looking for a wifi repeater.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#54
For the rest of us with budgets of less than a month's rent, I'd recommend Mikrotik. Just as reliable as an Ubiquiti (as in, never needs a reboot), yet is still a single box you can set in the corner and forget about if you wish. Or set up a mesh of their $20 units to blanket your three-story house if you're so lucky.

(Nothing against Ubiquiti which I'm sure is great, but I've been a very happy Mikrotik user for years. Recently updated my main AP to their gigabit (wired and wireless) hAP AC and loving it. I use a second Mikrotik as a fully-bridged repeater, and have an IoT wired+wirless virtual network firewalled off from the rest.)

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#55
post #22

Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz). Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI

> Somewhat alarmist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health Microwaves can't hurt you unless you focus the hell out of them, right at yourself. Even then, they can't make you experience the health effects that this handsome fellow was talking about (insomnia, really?). You might get buzzing in your ears if you're right next to a radar dish... and that's about it. FCC guidelines on radio emissions ar…

The linked talk is also TEDx -- even less vetting than normal TED.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#56

For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.

Maybe their mesh product line would be of help?

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#57
post #35

> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no... Silly. If the author doesn't want to follow good advice, too bad for him. I'm using WRT1900ACS with DD-WRT. It works like a charm. > if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive. It's not a "hack". It's installing a better quality…

In my experience, the DD-WRT firmwares are on the same level as XDA android images. Yes, the overall feature set is richer, and performance might be better. But all that is offset by some completely ridiculous bugs, like having to modify 5ghz wifi settings only via cli, because touching a single switch on web-based admin panel causes it to die (my current tp-link). And there have been bugs like that on every router I…

Sure, development builds can vary in quality, especially on different hardware. It also depends on WiFi driver quite a lot. In case of WRT1900ACS at least, my experience was quite good. It's using mwlwifi: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#58
post #22

Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz). Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI

The periodic beacon has all that info. In this[0] example you'll see the "Transmit Beamforming" field has a hex value of all zeros. Which either means unsupported or it is completely implicit.

[0] https://mrncciew.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/cwap-ht-ie-17.p...

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#59

For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.

Maybe their mesh product line would be of help?

I've had bad experiences with other mesh products (Eero, namely) but perhaps.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#60
post #39

I've thought about Ubiquiti in the past, but they are not "stand alone" units right? Meaning I am forced into allowing the units to phone home so I can manage them through Ubiquiti's cloud service? (something I don't want or need for a small home set up) Last year I bought my wife and I our first set of "smart" phones. Yes I'm serious, I've been in IT all my life but never felt I had a need for anything other than a…

The UniFi stuff isn't stand alone, but it doesn't need to 'phone home' to Ubiquiti. There's a little management server with a web config interface you need to set up to run everything. It runs on your local network and doesn't call Ubiquiti or open up anything without you setting that up. They do have what they call the 'cloud key' that runs an instance of the Unifi management server. That thing does phone home, IIRC…

And it's only really needed for configuration or logging. The network still operates without connectivity to the server software.
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