Wireless access point recommendations?

Question: are the intervening floors concrete too?

If they are not then this solution works well for us, and only requires one single (but robust) WAP. Which means it's easy to install and cheap to run too..

• https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/2022/09/23/whole-house-wi-fi-using-a-single-access-point/

Finally a wee word of caution, if I may: if you are buying alleged Cat5e or Cat6 cable, please ensure its cores are copper and not the much cheaper and less conductive aluminium.  To comply with Cat5e or Cat6, the conductors must be copper. If they are not copper then the cable is not Cat5e or Cat6. This becomes particularly important if you are using any sort of PoE (Power over Ethernet). Aluminium conductor has significantly higher resistance per unit length, thus causing significant voltage drop. At higher current, it could even catch fire!

My new ISP (toob) supplied me with a Linksys router that's actually part of their Velop mesh system. I live in a two storey house and WiFi coverage was fine with the router in the loft, but my neighbour opposite had problems as his house is three storey.  I investigated and found some "opened but never used" Velop child nodes on eBay.  Simple to set up (slightly more so if like me you want to avoid their intrusive app) the mesh can be connected either wired or wireless as required.  It works really well, and as we had a spare child node left over I put one in my office on the ground floor.

There's some more advice here: https://purpleport.com/group/general-off-topic/193646/Wi-Fi-Mesh-Nets/

We use these mesh access points with hard wiring

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B8DXJ8XP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Farm, two foot thick stone walls, house and outbuildings. Two separate networks.

the best place for the router is close to your cable/fiber/dsl line for the WAN connection

your router will also (most probably) provide 4 LAN ethernet ports which you can use to run CAT 6 ethernet cables to the places you want network (either wifi or just by plugging)

I can recommend Ubiquiti's UNIFI lineup, especially the MESH access points (which you won't be able to use as a mesh wireless network anyway as your walls won't allow this).

It would be great if your router or ethernet switch provides POE (Power Over Ethernet) so that you can provide both network connectivity and power to your wireless access points with A SINGLE ethernet cable.

https://ui.com/wifi

The AP I'm talking about is this one (older but still very efficient and quite cheap)
https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/collections/unifi-wifi-outdoor-long-range/products/uap-ac-mesh

Hope this helps

PS I do provide IT consultancy services if you need more info

We found basic WIFI access points tended to compete and/or interfere - but I am running two seperate WIFI networks ("Office" and "Home") with separate routers.
Cable where possible is trouble free - mine is a hundred metres or so.

Internet via the mains not so great - but again, multiple fuse boxes and circuits.

Edited by Huw

Huw said

We found basic WIFI access points tended to compete and/or interfere - but I am running two seperate WIFI networks ("Office" and "Home") with separate routers.
Cable where possible is trouble free - mine is a hundred metres or so.

Internet via the mains not so great - but again, multiple fuse boxes and circuits.

Edited by Huw

ALL wireless devices compete and interfere with each others... The bandwidth frequencies they work on is narrow and not unlimited. All wireless technologies have a max potential that cannot be extended. That's the reason why mobile phones are often unusable in overcrowded contexts like stadiums or public venues...

The more wireless devices in a location the weaker performance. Wireless SHARES bandwidth...

Guillaume de Lafontaine - DWAMPIX said

Huw said

We found basic WIFI access points tended to compete and/or interfere - but I am running two seperate WIFI networks ("Office" and "Home") with separate routers.
Cable where possible is trouble free - mine is a hundred metres or so.

Internet via the mains not so great - but again, multiple fuse boxes and circuits.

Edited by Huw

ALL wireless devices compete and interfere with each others... The bandwidth frequencies they work on is narrow and not unlimited. All wireless technologies have a max potential that cannot be extended. That's the reason why mobile phones are often unusable in overcrowded contexts like stadiums or public venues...

The more wireless devices in a location the weaker performance. Wireless SHARES bandwidth...

Interesting comment and fair point, to which I would add, if I may. Many WAP's still don't seem particularly good at autodetecting which part of the waveband is unused, with many WAPs round here competing for just a few channels leaving other parts of the waveband relatively unused. 5GHz devices seem somewhat better in this respect. But regardless of 2.4GHz or the (currently) sparsely populated 5Ghz band, I have found it helpful to use a simple analyser ("WifiAnalyzer" from F-Droid) and manually set our whole-building WAP to favour unused parts of both bands.

Edited by waist.it

Use solid core copper CAT6

As for brand Ubiquity is good kit

Lots of info on their website about the different types and where to use them.

Another one for Ubiquity.

waist.it

Thanks - noted!

Unfortunately, the floors are also reinforced concrete :(

Admin

I had thought of posting in general off topic but as the question relates at least in part to providing a wifi connection to the photo studio it might be considered relevant in general chat ... and reach a wider audience who might also benefit from any advice offered.

Synergy Photoworks said

waist.it

Thanks - noted!

Unfortunately, the floors are also reinforced concrete :(

Damn!

In which case I fear you will probably need to run cables to key nodes, each node with a small Ethernet switch and/or a WAP for connections within that particular room. We had to do similar with my in-laws' place in Hungary back in the mid noughties. He actually built the house in the late 1950s. Made rather a good job of it too - all steel-reinforced concrete including all floors/ceilings. It even had a bomb-resistant basement - a legal planning requirement at the time he built it, apparently. :-)

This meant that Wi-Fi through the walls and ceilings, even from a WAP in an adjacent room was hopeless. Even FM radios had to be placed near a window! So it meant running Cat5e cables through incredibly hard, thick concrete walls. Destroyed several 8mm SDS drill bits and nearly burnt out his new Bosch SDS drill too. But we got there in the end, creating quite a fast and robust system that is still in use today. Though if I were doing it today I'd use Cat6 rather than Cat5e Ethernet cable.

Unfortunately, I really don't think that in your situation there are any practical shortcuts, except possibly one: study your building and plan your cable routes carefully! Perhaps even draw a sketch plan for yourself. I know from first-hand experience that can significantly reduce the amount of sweat required to complete the job.

For example it might be better to run some of the cables outside in armoured Cat6. You might also be able to use existing holes and/or ducts, such as those used for pipework. You might be able to serve Wi-Fi to an opposite room by positioning a WAP so it can transmit through two doorways that happen to line-up nicely - thus serving two rooms instead of jut one. You might even be able to serve the entire side of the building by placing a weather resistant WAP up a pole a few metres from the property, effectively squirting Wi-Fi signal through the windows. That kind of thing... :-)

I'd add that having Ethernet in key locations regardless of your Wi-Fi provision is probably a good idea anyway. I wired key nodes shortly after we moved into our place back in 2012. Whilst having the big single "whole house" WAP in the roof is excellent, I prefer to use it for devices that cannot connect any other way. Consequently, our media and backup servers, security cams, weather station transponder etc, as well as the laptop I'm using right now to communicate/maintain various remote servers, are still all connected over Ethernet rather than Wi-Fi.

In any event when you do finally bite the proverbial bullet, I would genuinely be interested to know what you finally decide to do, and how well it works out for you. :-)

Something that's not been mentioned yet, but may be a simpler solution for you, is Powerline Ethernet.

This uses your existing mains cables rather than having to run new Ethernet cables - it will be slower than genuine Cat 6 Ethernet and switches, but (and this depends on the quality and design of your main cabling) may be 'good enough' - and is a lot simpler - you just plug the devices in, and they then provide WiFi and/or Ethernet ports in the various rooms.

They work best on modern wiring on the same ring main (you may well have separate rings for each floor, and a third for the attached studio) - they will work between separate circuits in the same consumer unit, just note quite as well.

If, as waist.it mentioned, you have existing ductwork you can run cat 6 in then that will undoubtedly be a better option - but Powerline might save you the task of trying to drill through reinforced concrete.

Luckily it's a new build house in process of construction and we have a spare duct (half inch plastic pipe) we can use to run ethernet cable from ground to first floor. Better run the cables and install ethernet sockets before rendering and plastering all the walls though I guess. I'll start planning. Thanks everyone for all the advice and suggestions.