I’m getting pretty close to giving up on Eero. Currently have three WiFi 7 units covering a roughly 5,000 sq ft house across three floors. Coverage has been decent for the most part, but the last couple of firmware updates have been a mess. Random devices dropping, weird roaming behavior, occasional reboots. I’m tired of troubleshooting something that used to just work.
Looking at moving to UniFi, probably a Dream Router 7 with a few WiFi 7 APs around the house. The fiber connection comes in on the main floor. I can wire the gateway and possibly one AP, but getting Ethernet to the basement and upstairs would be a pain. So at least two APs would need wireless backhaul.
A couple things I’m trying to figure out:
Would three APs be enough or should I go with four? Can I still plug a desktop and a small switch into a wireless mesh unit like I do with Eero? And is UniFi actually more stable long term or am I just trading one set of firmware headaches for another?
First thing I’d figure out is why you need four APs. 5000 sq ft sounds huge, but square footage alone doesn’t tell you much. Is it a wide house? Lots of concrete? Open stairwell? I’ve seen houses that size covered pretty well with three APs and smaller ones that needed four because the walls were basically bunkers.
@Fast_butler Mostly drywall upstairs, but the basement has concrete walls on two sides. Pretty open main floor. The current Eeros are basically one per floor, although the upstairs one is at the far end of the house.
I’d model it before ordering anything. NetSpot has Planning mode. You can put all three levels into the same building project, account for the floor construction, and see how the predicted WiFi coverage changes depending on where you place the APs. Try a layout with three APs, then add a fourth and see whether it’s actually improving the areas you care about. Won’t tell you how good the wireless backhaul will be or whether UniFi firmware is reliable, but it’s a decent way to avoid buying APs just because the house is big.
@Major_Peter Oh, that’s interesting. So I could compare having an AP on each floor versus putting two on the main level and one upstairs?
My bigger concern would be the wireless backhaul. You’re replacing a consumer mesh system with something that gives you a lot more control, which is great, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’ll work better with two APs meshing wirelessly. Also make sure the exact UniFi models you’re considering support the wireless uplink setup you want.
I think four APs is probably overkill unless the house has some seriously awkward construction. People install way too many APs and then wonder why clients won’t roam properly.
That’s a pretty confident statement without seeing the floor plan. Three floors, concrete basement, long upstairs layout, and possibly 6 GHz clients? Four might be completely reasonable. Placement and power levels matter more than just counting APs.