Ubiquiti U6 mesh vs U6 extender: which to get with Dream Router

[ymc226]

For an approximately 3500 sq foot rectangular 1 story traditional wood constructed house (50'wide x 70' long), I would want wifi coverage from front to end to allow wifi Ring cameras to work on both front and back ends. I plan on adding additional Ring cameras soon as there are significant homeless walking the streets and one recently came into the gated yard. The cable input and modem along with an old Ubiquiti Dream Machine (which I believe is wifi 5) are located in the back. So far, the front and back Ring cameras seem to work OK. However, my sister who is in the front finds the wifi strength to be lacking. She also needs a switch in her room to allow multiple devices to connect to the network. In the past, I have used the Netgear type Orbit mesh system which had multiple RJ45 inputs but am used to the Ubiquiti system so I can manage the devices remotely as I don't live with her.

I want to switch to the newer Ubiquiti Dream Router which uses wifi 6 technology, still placing it in the back of the house. To increase her signal to her room, I was wanting to use either the Extender or U6 Mesh/Mesh Pro but do not understand the differences between the 2 types of devices. Can someone explain what type would be more appropriate? Also is there a Ubiquiti product that would allow a switch (placed in the front of the house) to be plugged into the network without actually having to run cable to the front of the house such as the above mentioned Netgear type Orbit mesh device?

 

[PandaBear]

For home use, I don't think wifi 5 vs 6 matters too much. Assuming you have a 3500 sqft house with connection issue, the interference between you and the neighbor would not be much. I am not familiar with Ubiquiti's product other than they are high quality, but assuming your sister are not a high bandwidth user, mesh repeater in the middle to repeat the signals between 2 bands (likely both on 2.4GHz) would be a decent way to boost the range through.

You can always run an access point at the end to get from wifi back to ethernet (some of them are called gaming adapter), and many routers can run in access point mode and have enough ports in the back to function the way you want it to (access point + switch).

The other alternative I would do is a router that has the highest power / most number of antenna for beam forming. I think some may do 4 antennas in beam forming while others are dedicated antennas to separate bands.

 

[Rand]

Their WAP's could also work that way.

Running a cable is best but they support wireless backhaul.

You might be better off with the more powerful unifi Cloud gateway and 2 WAPS. (wireless access point)

Or using the current UDM. The dream router is a step down as far as cpu performance.

 

[wwillson]

Running a cable is best but they support wireless backhaul.

An ethernet cable to two or three APs in the house will have much better throughput and lower latency than wireless mesh. If there is any way to run ethernet cables, do that.

 

[hemioiler]

An ethernet cable to two or three APs in the house will have much better throughput and lower latency than wireless mesh. If there is any way to run ethernet cables, do that.

This is my preference too, and also make sure that the AP's are using all different non-overlapping channels; for 2.4 ghz, that would be putting one at channel 1, the second at channel 6, and the third at channel 11.

Mesh type systems usually reduce wireless performance because half of the bandwidth is just AP to AP communication instead of device to AP communication. That said I'm not familiar with the Extender products so maybe that's a solved issue.

 

[wwillson]

Extender products

They are just radios that repeat what they hear and by definition they increase the channel use and contention.

 

[ymc226]

Thanks for all of your replies. I may well just run exterior type cat 5E cable on the roof as it is only a single story and terminate it with a POE switch at her end of the house. My sister does not care if it looks just a little unsightly. As previously mentioned, does wifi 5 vs 6 make a big difference? She streams shows and that is the extent of her high demand internet usage. I am just thinking of the future. Out of the blue, my own Unify Dream Machine (wifi 5) just died so I had to replace it with the Dream Router which is wifi 6 so I wouldn't be surprised if hers died as well. Can I use a U6 AP (wifi 6) with the wifi 5 UDM console?

 

[hemioiler]

Thanks for all of your replies. I may well just run exterior type cat 5E cable on the roof as it is only a single story and terminate it with a POE switch at her end of the house. My sister does not care if it looks just a little unsightly. As previously mentioned, does wifi 5 vs 6 make a big difference? She streams shows and that is the extent of her high demand internet usage. I am just thinking of the future. Out of the blue, my own Unify Dream Machine (wifi 5) just died so I had to replace it with the Dream Router which is wifi 6 so I wouldn't be surprised if hers died as well. Can I use a U6 AP (wifi 6) with the wifi 5 UDM console?

You won't notice a difference wifi 5 vs 6 in a home based setup, wifi 6 has some improvements for a congested network.

 

[wwillson]

does wifi 5 vs 6 make a big difference?

Yes it does, but not for her purposes. I move some 50GB files around and get > 1Gb/s throughput on WiFi 6, while WiFi 5 is lucky to get 500Mb/s throughput.

 

[Donald]

I would get all Unifi access points that support mesh. If you give them POE but no network access with act as a Unifi extender. Connect the network and they act as an access points.

I would get the Unifi rack mount UDM and separate access points.

If you can latter run CAT6 to the outlying Unifi access points acting as an extenders they become true access points.

The Unifi extenders have a plug attached so you just plug it into an outlet. That's both the power and the mounting.

 

[PandaBear]

Yes it does, but not for her purposes. I move some 50GB files around and get > 1Gb/s throughput on WiFi 6, while WiFi 5 is lucky to get 500Mb/s throughput.

Is your speed increase due to higher QAM of Wifi 6 vs 5? or your new router being "better" as in higher number of antennas doing beam forming?

For OP having problem reaching far, I would think his reach is already having problem and would likely not able to use the higher QAM that makes Wifi 6 faster than Wifi 5. If he is upgrading to a router with more antenna on the same band doing beam forming, then that would definitely improve.

 

[wwillson]

Is your speed increase due to higher QAM of Wifi 6 vs 5?

Yes, 100%

 

[hemioiler]

Is your speed increase due to higher QAM of Wifi 6 vs 5? or your new router being "better" as in higher number of antennas doing beam forming?

For OP having problem reaching far, I would think his reach is already having problem and would likely not able to use the higher QAM that makes Wifi 6 faster than Wifi 5. If he is upgrading to a router with more antenna on the same band doing beam forming, then that would definitely improve.

It's not going to help for 99% of home owners. They browse the internet and utubez and a basic 2.4 is all that's needed, with no real improvement being noticed if you were to upgrade the devices behind their back.

If you're constantly transfering lots of large files around like the post above, that's where you can notice some improvement in the home but for the vast majority of home use cases, it's not going to be noticable.

And most wifi setups will saturate most home internet connections unless there is a lot more fiber or 5g connections out there than I realize. Out in my area, no so much.

 

[Donald]

I just ordered some Unifi WIFI 7 access points.

 

[PandaBear]

It's not going to help for 99% of home owners. They browse the internet and utubez and a basic 2.4 is all that's needed, with no real improvement being noticed if you were to upgrade the devices behind their back.

If you're constantly transfering lots of large files around like the post above, that's where you can notice some improvement in the home but for the vast majority of home use cases, it's not going to be noticable.

And most wifi setups will saturate most home internet connections unless there is a lot more fiber or 5g connections out there than I realize. Out in my area, no so much.

Agree. During pandemic WFH is when I realized my router couldn't handle more than 6mbps upstream or it would crash (and it is not wifi but rather the processing power of the chipset). I value consistency and reliability more than peak performance. Currently at one corner of my house I am using a powerline ethernet that consistently deliver 20mbps and it works better than wifi that delivers 60mbps "most of the time". Video didn't get scaled down and calls didn't get dropped.

In urban area and office I would say 5GHz is valuable. The only exception is when I am streaming video from my PC to my Oculus and those 8K video would really works better at 5GHz vs 2.4GHz.