[bayindirh]

Simple question:

What if my space at home doesn't allow for a half rack of equipment and required cabling?

OpenWRT is no panacea. It generally doesn't support higher throughput modes in wireless radios in said routers and I need these features (thick walls, wifi first devices, etc.).

[Normal_gaussian]

17 shows the author considers higher end routers, like the ubiquiti unifi routers, are not in this class.

I bought unifi specifically because I wanted some professional features (proper in house roaming, wifi bridge, and VLANs) but live in a rented house where I cannot carve out some decent rack space or channel the walls.

[labawi]

You probably (or at least most people) don't need higher throughput modes in wireless radios. You need good connectivity, which can usually be achieved with a larger number of simpler APs, instead of 8x8 MU-MIMO 3-band 2666Mbit, that only works with manufacturer's firmware.

You can get 3x3MIMO 802.11ac routers with good openwrt compatibility for 60-80$, that should give you gigabit speeds and there are cheaper versions (get at least 2x2 @5GHz). Check for openwrt support before buying. You do not need a rack full of equipment, though you would need to reasonably distribute APs with cables.

APs that are properly distributed, running on minimum TX power, yet close so they use highest rates, will beat every single overpriced AP. May need some adjustment for corner cases.

802.11ac wave2 and especially ax have very useful features, but they are no match for fundamental properties of radio wave propagation.

¹ Close mostly means distance at line-of-reflection for 5GHz channels and line-of-penetration for 2.4GHz.

[glogla]

It also depends where you're living - ferroconcrete apartment building is something else than drywall house.

Also 3x3 only gives you close to gigabit speed (realistically 700 mbps) when both ends are 3x3, and only very expensive and special workstation class laptops (including 15" MacBook Pros which belong in that category at least by pricing) are that.

2x2 laptop won't have better than 866 PHY speed in ac and that's realistically about 500 mbps single duplex.

Smart 4x4 device can use the extra streams for range - but that only ever works with original firmware, there's a lot of magic and patents involved.

[michaelt]

You should consider something from MikroTik's home-and-office range - I use the hAP ac² which I've been happy with.

The software is worlds apart from any consumer router I've had before. The only downside is the number of settings is intimidatingly large, which might make it a poor choice for gifting to your less tech-savvy loved ones.

[iagovar]

Mikrotiks are not user friendly though. If you don't know at least a bit of networking it can be difficult to set up.

There's no better bang for the buck, that's true.

[glogla]

Also, Mikrotiks are behind even mid-range consumer devices in Wifi. You can get 4x4 ax wifi from Asus and it's going to work great.

Mikrotiks are very stable and reliable but not that fast.

Of course, it depends on speed of your internet connection. You don't need 4x4 wifi if you have 100 mbps internet, but it's kind of annoying to pay for 500 mbps cable (because they don't offer anything slower) and be bottlenecked by wifi.

[wtallis]

> OpenWRT is no panacea. It generally doesn't support higher throughput modes in wireless radios in said routers and I need these features

I doubt this generalization is true. With OpenWRT, you're generally screwed if your router uses Broadcom WiFi, or you get full speed from the other common radio vendors. My Qualcomm-based 802.11ac router running OpenWRT has no trouble maintaining link rates of 866Mbps or higher with several devices in my home (5GHz band, 80MHz channel).

[tremon]

My "rack" consists of three devices wall-mounted above the coatrack in the hallway: a Jetway industrial computer, a PoE switch and a UPS. Of those, only the computer would be essential for your use case. I'm one of those people that prefers to have wired ethernet all across the house, so the switch is mainly to power two additional switches in different locations.

The Jetway computers are similar to NUCs, but geared towards industrial installation rather than home consumer use, so they generally lack 4K HDMI support but include options for multiple serial ports, usb ports or network interfaces, similar to this: http://www.jetwayipc.com/product/hbjc390f841xx34b-series/ . Mine runs OpenBSD right now, but that doesn't support the Wifi card so I'm planning to migrate it back to Debian.

[moistbar]

A small ARM or Atom box with dual ethernet makes a great PFSense box. That would be my recommendation.

[bayindirh]

That would thoroughly defeat my purpose.

The solution will require a modem, a PFSense box and an access point, at least. This is again some cables, at least three adapters and more space requirements.

I can manage a much complex setup if I need to, but space and noise is at premium, so it won't help in my case.

[moistbar]

You can have PFSense act as an access point if you install a Wifi adapter in the box you use as a router. Depending on the square footage you need to cover, you might not need anything else.

Edit: Just saw the bit about thick walls. Sticking to 2.4 GHz might have a better result if your neighbors aren't too close.