I’m looking at the current wifi 6e mesh router offer and it seems not so easy to choose the best for smart homes. Some router does’nt allow band/channel choice ( Motorola Q14 ), or does’nt allow to connect directly to 6Mhz (eero) or even does’nt have a 2.5 ethernet connector (why I have to buy a router that is uncapable to use my whoòe band width?) or can only work on ethernet backhaul (unifi). I need to contemperate smart home neeeds (channel selection, supported device number,…) with general home usage (new devices with 6e). Dimensions are even important, as one of the unit should/would be wall attacched.
Any suggestion?
I would hold off for wifi 7, 6E is very limited still. A good 6 AP is fine. I’d recommend unifi 6E stuff if you must get something but seriously consider how many devices actually make use of 6E be cost.
What Is appealing in 6e imo Is the use of 60mhz band for the backbone connection between mesh points. It avoid the cannibalization of the 5mhz band to serve both clients and internode comms. In my (limited) experience that behaviour slow Down the overall troughput. Acceptably priced 7 devices should’nt be available before a couple of years.
Ok yea that’s a very valid point. That’s a great use case. I would still tell people to hardwire is at all possible since wireless mesh is less than ideal unless it’s the only way…unifi doesn’t have 2 radios for wireless backhaul so you will need an AP with 2 radios, 1 you can use for backhaul. Nothing I can recommend though, they all have issues where I would not recommend to people I wanted to have a good experience.
I cabled all rooms in my house. Unfortunately I did not do It in the bathrooms and in aisles. As I would’nt like to expose myself or others components of my family to direct and continuous irradiation by APs, the only places where I can Place mesh units are… bathrooms or preferibly (becaause of the humidity) aisles. That Is the reason I Need a 3 band technology now. The only one I know of that type Is wifi 6e…
Food for thought. If you’re basing your decision on smart devices, keep in mind that most smart wifi stuff will run on 2.4 ghz and doesn’t like a sister 5ghz network on the same ssid. So, if that’s your motivation, stay with what you’ve got. If you’re looking to improve your network, then consider something that will support multiple vlans so that you can separate your traffic accordingly. Adding a wifi 6 ap down the road is always an option. I have a UDM Pro with wifi 6 ap’s, but it does nothing for my smart devices as they are all on 2.4 ghz. I only run 5ghz for media hubs like nvidia shield and our telephones. Unifi does have some wireless wifi 6 repeaters that will work for you as well that can be independently powered.
That Is true @april.brandt.
But I Need both goals: lotvof devices & Speed
I’m dismissing shellys ip devices for zigbee switches. Nevertheless at the moment there are 41 devices in my LAN, of which 25 are connected via wifi. Of these at least 4 pc equipped with wifi 6. I also need to extend my primary AP to cover the whole house, and I can’t use my ethernet points for the above reasons. I’m mulling over which solution to adopt, at a reasonable price.
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