We’re at the stage where I can still get Ethernet run pretty much wherever I want, so I’m trying not to screw up the WiFi before the walls are finished.
Two-story house, roughly 3500 sq ft. Fairly open downstairs, bedrooms upstairs, open foyer/stair area between the floors.
I’m looking at ceiling-mounted APs and can’t decide whether I’m massively overthinking the number.
Part of me says:
Then the other part of me thinks four APs in a normal house sounds ridiculous.
I’d rather run extra cable now than regret it later, but I also don’t want to buy a pile of APs and create roaming/overlap problems for myself.
What would you guys do?
I’d start with two. One per floor, reasonably central. People massively underestimate what a properly placed ceiling AP can cover and then build residential networks like they’re deploying WiFi in an airport. Wire for more, sure. Buy more only if you actually need them.
Depends what you mean by “cover”.
Four isn’t automatically crazy either. More APs at lower transmit power can work really well. I’d rather have several appropriately powered cells than two APs screaming at maximum power through half the house.
@Young_Lefessy Sure, but this is also how beginners end up with every AP blasting 2.4/5 at full power and clients refusing to roam.
More APs gives you more control and more ways to make a mess.
Since you’re deciding how many before you’ve bought anything, I’d model 2 vs 3 vs 4 first. NetSpot 6 can do a multi-floor Planning project, so you can build both levels as one house and see how APs on one floor contribute to the other instead of designing each floor separately. That’s useful here because you’ve got an open stair/foyer area too.
Try:
and compare what actually changes.
Do you really need an AP in the garage? Before you dedicate one to it, ask what is actually going to use WiFi there. Most garage IoT junk is 2.4 GHz and needs approximately twelve bytes per geological era.
@Claude.Lecroix Mostly cameras, door opener, EV charger, random smart stuff. Nothing that needs huge bandwidth.
Then I definitely wouldn’t buy a dedicated garage AP on day one. See what reaches it first.
The cheap decision right now is the cable, not the AP.