The story so far.
As i described in my previous post, I recently converted my home router to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. Now the time has come to converting my Time Capsules (a 3rd generation and a 5th generation), both of which have been running my home WiFi.
While the devices initially worked really well individually, increasing noise from the neighbors, more and more connected devices, and higher bandwidth requirements (streaming especially), eventually made in necessary to add a 2nd access point. And that’s when my network trouble began. Devices would get disconnected from the network, network requests would take forever.
It all started out with my neighbors setting up WiFi - and not only WiFi, but the “40 MHz channels, and we’re not moving” kind of WiFi. To make things worse, the other neighbor has an access point that takes the last available channel. Sadly they both had the strongest signal in our living room, which is also where we spend the most time surfing, and neither neighbor was very keen on me using their networks for streaming :)
So, to even things out a bit, i escalated the war, and plugged in a second access point in the living room to give myself a stronger signal. This worked, the 40 MHz router is still making noises, but it moved to channel 1, the other neighbor decided he didn’t want to fight my access point, and also moved to channel 1. It didn’t take care of the noise problem though.
Moving to new hardware.
I searched the market for alternatives, and most people seemed to recommend various Asus or DLink access points. Previous encounters with consumer grade network equipment has left me less than impressed, so i kept searching.
I then came across a review of the UniFi system, an enterprise class access point and companion software. Basically every review i found, praised the UniFi system to the skies, and with prices ranging around $70 i decided to give it a go.
I purchased two regular UniFi AP units, although i was a bit worried that they didn’t include 5 GHz radios, and only do 300 Mbit on 2.4 GHz, but since my signal on the Time Capsules was often less than 200 Mbit, i figured i would be alright.
After installing the two UniFI AP’s it because clear that i could’ve settled for only one - they both powered up, and went to full transmit power, and i had full coverage in my entire house from just one of them.
Another advantage of the UniFi AP’s is that they use POE (Power over Ethernet), which means i no longer have to look at power lines going into my AP’s, and i can place them without having to be near a wall outlet. It may not be a big thing, but i don’t like wires :)
Setting up the UniFi controller
As i wrote about in my Using Raspberry Pi as a UniFi Controller post, i use a Raspberry Pi as my UniFi controller. The controller doesn’t need to run 24/7, but on the other hand it doesn’t hurt.
All that remained to do was to setup my new UniFi AP’s. Here are a few screenshots of the setup process for a new WiFi network.
The software is really easy to use, and once your AP’s connect to the network they’ll show up in the controller (provided you didn’t block port 8080 in your firewall), after which you just click “Adopt” and the Wireless settings you have setup in your controller is automatically applied to the new AP.
UniFi vs Airport Extreme signal
I think i’ll just let the following images explain things.
“The Batcave” is my WiFi network (Guest network named “Alfred” of course), and the two 40 MHz signals are my UniFi AP’s with transmit power set to low. The Time Capsule is set to it’s default transmit power. The channel 11 signal is my 5th generation Time Capsule. The capture above was taken in the same room as one of the UniFi AP’s and the Time Capsule.
This is from the living room.
Strangely it appears now that the Time Capsule has plenty of power, which was certainly not the case before i installed the UniFi AP’s. As you can see the Time Capsule signal decays faster than the UniFI AP signal.
This is from the kitchen.
Here the Time Capsule signal really starts to decay, while the UniFi AP’s still hold strong.
Final one from the “entertainment” end of our living room.
The 2nd UniFi signal is a bit weak in this screenshot, 30 seconds later it popped up to 85% again.
Wrapping it up
The AirPort Extreme / Time Capsules did a great job for many years, and if you just need one, i’m convinced that it’s still a great router/access point, although a bit expensive. When you need more than one AP, due to range or interference, they leave a lot to be desired. If it works, great, but when it doesn’t you’re really out of options. Apple has dumbed down the Airport Utility software, and things like Transmit Rate, Multicast Rate etc. are no longer configurable. In fact, you can’t even turn off a radio.
I’ve been running with this setup for a couple of weeks now, and performance is really rock solid. The network easily handles 5 HD streams (4 * Netflix, 1 HBO Nordic, streaming to Apple TV), and some random surfing.
I do miss my 1300 MHz AC connection from my iMac, copying large files to/from my NAS is rather slow on 802.11n, and i tried running the Time Capsule as a 802.11ac AP, but since you’re unable to disable the 2.4 GHz radio, and it defaults to a very low multicast rate, the Time Capsule ended up serving the whole house - or at least the parts it could reach, and with low throughput (Apple gear, when selecting the best/fastest AP, seems to prefer the 5.4 GHz band over the 2.4 GHz band, regardless of signal strength). so i ordered a UniFi AC to cover my office. I’ll do a follow-up on the coverage/bandwidth once it arrives.