https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What...

(1) - https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-... (2) - https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-...

I have been for years using (and recommending to others) multiple access points (of any brand) wired together and just set them up with the same SSID and passwords. Usually works mostly OK, although VoIP tends to drop out moving around the house (and thus changing BSSID). Keen to fix the VoIP issues. Maybe I'm missing out on something such as using special routers or some 802.11 standard that might work better.

If the OP of this thread would take a few minutes and read through Ubiquiti forums they'd know that there have been 10's of conversations wherein someone from Ubiquiti or a power use has explained why you shouldn't be using the old ZHO hacks. I said this yesterday in another Ubiquiti focused comment, but 1) ZHO forces all AP into the same L2 network and 2) ZHO puts all AP on the same channel and SSID. The last one should be blatant enough for anyone to know that that's not going to scale or be performant. ZHO was implemented for old, low bandwidth devices that needed to be on the same network. Full stop. Don't use ZHO!

Beyond that do some due diligence when setting up your networks. Even with 802.11n/ac in the 5GHz range you should be aware of best spectrum usage, about things like DFS and consider how wide of a band you're allocating to the channel selection your making (hint: it impacts overlap). Do not do not do not use auto channel selection unless you're forced to. I get it, you may not have control over this in a dense environment (apartment) but if you can control your airspace (reasonably so) map out channel utilization especially if you have more than one AP. Then go to the next step and figure out the worse spots for reception in your house are and, as the person above me states, tune RSSI down to get clients to get kicked as they "roam". This will force them to reselect much faster. One comment stated 8 second reassociations. That's just bad tuning and clear ignorance to the problem - you'd have the same thing with any other vendor.

This wasn't hard to find and there are many others, use it: http://securityuncorked.com/2013/11/the-best-damn-802-11ac-c...

I think Ubiquiti makes some really great products for the price. Have they violated GPL? Quite possibly but as others have said I don't think that's been proven judicially as of yet. You will get one of the best products at this price point though and, when setup correctly, will be much more performance than things like Eero or Google Wifi that relies on wireless as the backhaul between APs. If you're saying you can't use cabled infrastructure there are options. 1) Powerline is now "decent" as in 400-700 Mbit are attainable depending on your situation, they're also much cheaper (look for HomePlug AV2 standardization) now 2) Dedicated, directional focused wireless backhaul is the better option than an omni backhaul between something that is already handling your clients. That is Ubiquiti's forte. They only recently released the UniFi product but you can use NanoBeam, Bullet or NanoStation in your home to move things around to dedicated AP.

Ultimately if you want good wifi you have to pay for it and plan and deploy it correctly. The second half of it is why we have Eero and Google Wifi - because people don't do that. They buy Ubiquiti or some other enterprise focused WLAN solution, plug it in and do the minimal work and say it doesn't work or sucks without RTFM.

Finally if you want "fast roaming" you should know what you want before buying a product since the device OS needs to support it. Apple has basically said they're supporting 802.11r: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628. And 802.11r is in the latest builds of UniFi firmware, but not really exposed to the GUI config because, well, people will probably shoot themselves in the foot with it.

Edit: added link to channel allocation graphics

We're still in the process of tuning one client with a significant investment in UniFi. ZHO is not enabled in that case and am going down the routes you've described re RSSI tuning and RF mapping, but still see blatant performance issues, and will readily admit that being forced to resort to forums for support and outdated setup articles isn't exactly confidence inspiring and helps fuel my distaste for the product. We're stuck with it though.

Anyway, just wanted to post back to say thanks.

This will likely be one of those things requiring experience but as I'm hoping to install a Ubiquiti focused system in my house over the next few weeks, do you have any suggested resources? Particularly on the subjects of spectrum usage, DFS, and channel selection? I'm not in an apartment but still of the opinion that neighboring network boxes are causing congestion on my local system. We're all on Google Fiber with the provided network boxes, which seem to automatically select the same channel. Simply selecting a different channel hasn't seem to improve the situation (and has potentially made things worse).

With minimum RSSI implementations the AP will kick (deauth) clients that no longer meet the minimum RSSI level. This will force them to reconnect to and will go with the stronger BSSID being advertised with the same SSID. Still rudimentary but works rather well. I don't even notice roaming in my home anymore after tuning. It's very evident when you're on a network that has defaulted to auto and all of the channel selection and power output is up for grabs.

If you're looking at doing this with Ubiquiti they have docu and even point out the warts with simple RSSI tuning. Trolling the forums before doing a deployment is something you should do as this equipment isn't really something that will autoconfigure itself very well. I mean, it works - but clearly you can see in this thread that people who just expect it to work have bad things to say about it's effectiveness. What they don't understand is that a lot of those problems are self-inflicted.

Here's a link to the Ubiquiti RSSI guide: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/221321728-UniFi-Unde...

A close second is Xirrus, their APs are a bit bigger is size and look like oversized smoke detectors though. Though, if you work in events they are perfect: Controller built into the unit, and they have weird configurations of radios so you can deploy 16 directional radios on one device. Great for conferences where you can setup 2 of those in the corners, turn off the radios not pointing at the guests and have total airspace supremacy.

I've ended up using pfSense combined with enterprise switches and ultra-dumb access points with 802.11Q support to simply - as transparently as possible - bring the wireless devices into the network administration fold.

I've taken to using the higher end TP-Link AC routers as my APs, but have played with Ubiquiti instead as well.

As for the OP, its a tough call. My complaints with Ubiquiti are in a heavy use congested RF environment. Not really much to say when comparing to a 5000 sqft house. We generally work around a budget but if I dont have to care about cost I'll deploy Meraki, then Aerohive, then get forced into Sonicpoint, and then there's a few other options I'd just feel bad and they don't deserve the HN referral traffic.

But the aren't in the same price category, are they?