OT: Are there any distributed wifi extender systems that don't need to be constantly restarted?
Brendan O'Dowd
bodowd at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 20 18:02:02 EDT 2020
Another vote for UniFi. Get 3 NanoHD for your 3 locations and you should have seemless 2.4 and 5G coverage. I have used UniFi access points for about 5 years and never needed a reboot. Can be tricky for an amateur but you should have no issues.
Brendan.
> On Aug 20, 2020, at 5:23 PM, Philip Pedersen <ppederse at speakeasy.org> wrote:
>
> The UniFi sounds nice. We’re moving to a new house soon and I need to update the networking hardware. Fortunately (or unfortunately in some respects), we had to gut the new house and rebuild it. New electrical, new plumbing and heating, new windows, roof, siding, etc. lots of stuff that couldn’t be seen until you opened up walls and dug down by the foundation. I installed flexible conduit everywhere so I can blow cabling to multiple locations and have home runs everywhere.
>
> I intend, as much as possible, to use wired connections rather than wireless, especially for video. Still, I want a private WiFi network and a guest one, so the UniFi sounds like the way to go. Something that happened around here recently, according to posts on NextDoor, was that someone tried to grab a young girl out of her front yard and when everyone who had Ring doorbells or cameras looked at the feeds, they found that their devices had disconnected from their WiFi during the incident. Presumably, the perp had a WiFi jammer in his car and was able to disable the cameras. It turns out jammers are readily available and are pretty cheap to buy or make.
>
> Phil
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>>> On Aug 20, 2020, at 11:47 AM, Scot <xtension at gunsmoke.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 20 Aug 2020 08:35:25 -0400, James Sentman wrote:
>>> Hi Folks,
>>>
>>> A quick sort of off topic request for more info on wifi access
>>> points, or multi-wifi access point systems you guys use and like. nlist
>>
>> I'm in the process of replacing a hodge podge of WiFi routers and
>> extenders from Netgear with a single Ubiquiti UniFi system. It uses
>> WiFi access points connected to a network router via Ethernet, and
>> something called a Dream Machine Pro acting as a gateway to the
>> Internet. The Dream Machine also acts as a host for the UniFi network
>> controller software, and Protect security camera management software,
>> and houses an 8Tb HDD to buffer the video streams coming in from the
>> cameras. It's pretty much a closed system, so I'm replacing another
>> hodge podge of cameras with the UniFi ones, all of which are also
>> Ethernet based. That has meant running more Ethernet cables, something
>> not so fun in the attic this time of year. But my experience with video
>> quality and Wifi is not good, there's just not enough bandwidth
>> available to get useful quality video from the number of cameras I
>> want, useful being able to read a license plate clearly at a hundred
>> feet.
>>
>> One thing I ran into right at the start was having to update the Dream
>> Machine's firmware using SSH and the command line to even get it to
>> boot the first time, a problem that's supposedly been addressed. Once
>> that was done, the other issue was having to change SSID and password
>> on everything to use the new WiFi networks. I'm still finding devices
>> I've missed. I also made the mistake of merging the 2.4gHz and 5gHz
>> networks, which caused a problem with not being able to communicate to
>> IoT devices that were 2.4gHz only when the iPhone was using the 5gHz
>> band. I never figured out how to tell the iPhone to use 2.4gHz when
>> both radios had the same SSID and password. Ubiquiti has a ton of
>> how-tos posted, but they're best discovered with Google searches, and
>> near as I can see, there is no telephone support. And nothing they sell
>> is cheap, but then I expect this system to last a good long time, so
>> that cost can be amortized over at least ten years.
>>
>> With the bad out of the way, the Network management software has been
>> very easy to use. New devices are easily discovered, adopted into the
>> network, configured, and when needed, have firmware updates installed.
>> The camera software, called Protect, is similarly easy to use. The apps
>> for both work fine both when connected via WiFi to the network here,
>> and over cellular when I'm traveling. There's no middle man forcing me
>> to use their image storage or software service; it's all local. And
>> I've found a consultant, Chris at CrossTalk Solutions that has a ton of
>> YouTube videos that explain how to put it all together. For the first
>> time, I now have a real guest network running on its own VLAN with no
>> access to any of my private computers, and most importantly, video
>> cameras. And I may eventually go to a separate IoT network for even
>> more security.
>>
>> This is all too new for me to be able to comment on reliability, but
>> the UniFi hardware has a pretty good track record.
>>
>> Here's a link to the CrossTalk videos:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/c/CrosstalkSolutions/videos
>>
>> And here's one where he sets up a basic system; might be the best place
>> to start:
>>
>> Complete Unifi Setup with Guest VlAN with USG, Unifi Switch, &
>> UAP-NanoHD AP:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_-iuY_xxFY
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>>
>> Scot
>> Yankee Hill, California
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>
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