[roboman]

I've worked as an engineer in the Wi-Fi industry. Here's my advice: stay at least one or, even better, two generations behind the current Wi-Fi standards.

Vendors care about only two things: (1) Cost (2) the Gbps they can print on the box.

So today that means 802.11ac and WPA2, unfortunately.

Stability of the software is not a consideration.

[gerdesj]

I run roughly 60 site's wifi across the UK according to my Unifi VM, which has been trundling along for over five years now.

One of those sites is my home, another my brother's home and another my dad's and another is at work. At least one of the others, you might have heard of.

I'm not quite so jaded as @roboman. I suggest you keep up with the Joneses. The latest is wifi 7 and if we get a bit conservative, we might consider 6 as current and hence the advice is stick to wifi 4!

That's not my advice. I suggest that we embrace the latest stuff and learn how it works. If necessary you can always spin up another SSID with special properties.

I've got devices from fridges to ESP80266 wired thingies and laptops and phones and whatever all working fine.

[zamadatix]

Agreed, I left healthcare networking at a place with ~36,000 APs just around the time 6E was getting its first early release hardware and we had already deployed multiple hospitals with Wi-Fi 6 APs and laptops at the time. As you say, the absolute latest (especially when it's the first round of hardware) can be iffy but 2 back seems extraordinary over-conservative.

I'd even go as far as to say we had as many client tickes from bugs about old hardware from 2 standards (~10 years) ago that weren't receiving patches anymore as we did from the new hardware but at least the new stuff was still getting patches.

That said once you go to consumer/prosumer hardware I'm convinced everything has a litany of bugs that have no hope of getting meaningfully fixed regardless which version you use. For 99% of use cases it'll work fine enough and that's all any vendor selling it will care about, new or old. Often Qualcomm/Broadcom/whoever-made-the-actual-wifi-chip-com will have patched things consumer APs and devices won't have actually updated to anyways.

[lostlogin]

36,000 is an impressive install.

I’d imagine that every single thing that could happen to an AP would happen.

What hardware did you use?

[zamadatix]

Mostly HPE Aruba whenever we could, the last model I was involved with testing was the AP 510 4x4 Wi-Fi 6. On the client side the Intel AX200 was the last I was involved in testing for devices we controlled but, being a hospital, tons of old devices came with what they had and we just had to make it work. We even had a WEP SSID (with a crapload of isolation and firewalling) because there were devices hardcoded to a certain WEP network with no WPA* support too expensive to replace. That said, it was also a world of mergers and divestitures so we supported just about every brand at some point since we couldn't justify going in and ripping the existing Wi-Fi out day 1 unless it was truly disastrously designed.

As far happenings to APs I'd say 90% of the time it was one of two classics on infinite repeat:

- (Particularly after a new install) "This AP near my work desk and I've been having headaches ever since" -> "We'll try turning it off, let us know if things stayed the same or got worse" -> we actually turn the LEDs off and leave the Wi-Fi on at first -> They mostly never follow up, if we do they say things are great. There were a few occasions they'd follow up and we'd really turn the AP off but it never resulted in anyone being able to tell when the AP was on or off without us telling them (or a few who knew enough to check the RSSI near the AP of course). The "happening to the AP part" was there were sometimes people would just take them down (you just need a ladder and then spin it unless you put every AP in offices in an enclosure) the AP as the first step and then we'd get outage alerts thinking it had just died.

- (Particularly by maintenance crew, presumably since they had the ladders and comfort level in taking things apart during work) we get an alert that an AP in a warehouse/break/hidden-office-cubby/etc area is down so send someone out -> arrive and maintenance person says the Wi-Fi has been bad today -> See the AP is not physically there, ask where they put it -> "Oh you mean this? I thought they were putting up a security camera to watch me work".

Neither of these things were particularly common at the individual level but when you have 36,000 you refresh every 5 years somehow it becomes something that happens somewhere every week. The other 10% is boring stuff, APs being ripped off by someone pushing a tall cart down the hall, someone decorating the APs with aluminum foil to make the hall look like it has disco balls, water/sewage leaks taking out a ceiling of APs because someone broke a toilet. For the most part these were extremely rare and I don't really blame people often ('cept the toilet one). E.g. you've got a bunch of old patients and try to make a disco hall, you're a good person - just know that'll kill your and the patient's Wi-Fi or you're just trying to get shit to where it's supposed to be and you stacked it on this thing too high - don't blame ya for being in a rush but keep safety #1 it could have easily been a different accident having stuff that high rushing down the hall.

[hackmiester]

If we count generations that way, then yeah, sure.

But we could also count like: 5, 5 Wave II, 6, 6E, 7.

In this case, 2 generations behind would be either Wi-Fi 5 Wave II or Wi-Fi 6. Those are both quite good! My workplace is just deploying Wi-Fi 6 now, and at home I still have Wi-Fi 5 Wave II.

[roboman]

Do you measure WiFi 7 for packet loss? UniFi might be better but I stand by my advice and still suggest 802.11AC or AX for consumer grade router.

[gerdesj]

I haven't seen any wifi 7 gear. I have a Unifi tri band wifi 6 AP in the next room at home which is a bit excessive. However, I live on the side of a hill and I get coverage across the entire valley.

Unifi tends to be a bit divisive in forums such as HN and r/networking and even their own forums! The wailing and gnashing of teeth at every version update is quite something to behold.

For me as an old school sysadmin, running a Linux VM as a Unifi gateway is fine and has been for years. I treat it with respect and read change logs and I have decent backups and so on.

The vast majority of my customers and my already installed gear is wifi5 and any new APs are 6 by default. I'll wait for 7 devices to actually be available but it doesn't bring much to the table. Wifi 6 with the addition of 6GHz was a major upgrade, 7 not so much.

My phone now has way more bandwidth to my home LAN via wifi than the LAN itself! It can use 2.4/5/6 GHz and each band has more than one MIMO. Its not quite that simple but I will be grabbing some 2.5 or 10Gb LAN switches soon. At work 10Gb with 40Gb uplinks is generally indicated ...

[itronitron]

I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router, and there is a typo on the admin login screen. Not a good look, but it's the best we've got.

[dudeinjapan]

The original Street Fighter II arcade game had the same problem, but Capcom managed to fix it: https://fabiensanglard.net/sf2_warrier/index.html

[frozenlettuce]

I was replaying Resident Evil 2 and this typo broke the climate for me: "Platform Eleveter" https://twitter.com/ResiFacts/status/1189139062197604357 (in moments like that you are reminded, "oh, this is a Japanese game")

[dudeinjapan]

Living in Japan I see so much bad English spelling I’ve gotten used it. Esp. at restaurants it can be very off-putting (e.g. “Flesh Juice” instead of “Fresh Juice”)

[furyofantares]

I'll note that you have typo'd the typo, it looks like it was "elevater".

[frozenlettuce]

I'm leaving that unedited for posterity, thanks for pointing that out

[doublepg23]

Keeping with the video game theme - the Wii version of Okami used a watermarked version of their own box art.

https://www.destructoid.com/oopsies-ign-watermark-on-the-cov...

[Lammy]

See also: KONMAI Quality https://namu.wiki/w/KONMAI (long list of typos and other errors in KONAMI arcade games, including infamously misspelling the name of the company itself)

[yxhuvud]

Psygnosis managed to do that as well, in the C64 version of Shadow of the Beast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GdJiEjSho

Spelling error is at 5-8 seconds in. As that is kinda the first thing you see, it is quite noticable.

[d1str0]

I love these little posts.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I would argue that OpenWrt is the best we've got. (I grant that the hardware side remains messy)

[p1mrx]

Yes, but you usually have to choose hardware that's a couple generations behind, in order to run OpenWrt.

[Borealid]

I don't think that's the case, exactly.

You can choose current-generation hardware from a company that chooses to implement less advanced wireless specifications. For example, the gl-inet Flint 2 (MT-6000) runs a fork of OpenWRT out of the box and can be flashed with stock OpenWRT snapshots. That's a very modern piece of hardware that will do wifi 6 (not wifi 6E/7).

So hardware-wise you get the current gen, software-spec-wise you get one generation behind. I don't think practically speaking you're going to feel much pain from using Wifi 6 for the next few years, as it can saturate a 1Gbps link pretty easily.

[treflop]

You could run a separate switch/gateway and a separate Wi-Fi access point. Worth it? Idk

But it’s nice when your Wi-Fi is just a dumb box with almost no settings that you can upgrade independently.

[hunter2_]

Pfsense (on a Proxmox VM, on a laptop with 2 NICs), tp-link managed switch with PoE on half the ports, all-in-one ASUS box configured as an AP only (and switch). It's only WiFi 5, but in a pinch that could go back to doing everything. Rock solid, with no reboots in years other than what ended up being unnecessary ones. Went 390+ days at one point on pfsense.

[ikiris]

No you don't. You just have to learn how to compile things.

[pseudosavant]

I run, and love, OpenWrt, but if you make your wifi with routers configured as 'dumb APs', you can keep most of the complexity on the router connected to your internet. I have had (gasp) non-OpenWrt APs on my network at times.

Currently I have 3 TP-Link AC routers running OpenWrt, RPi 4 running OpenWrt for the router.

[kjs3]

I grant that the hardware side remains messy

Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln.

[lostlogin]

> I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router

Why not name it?

[itronitron]

Asus

[boringuser2]

This topic has been fascinating me because I can't find reliable information.

It seems like most people don't necessarily care per se about wifi performance because you can stuff an AP every 30 ft and call it a day.

Most MSPs seem to become a shop of some kind based around a hardware that isn't necessarily the most performant, but good enough, cheap, easy to manage, etc. (lots of UniFi shops even though I don't consider it a good solution).

In terms of performance, though, I live in a very high density apartment so I have a niche use case: I've been trying to find the access point.

So far, ruckus has been outperforming every other access point I've tried (Aruba, Unifi, extreme, etc.)

I can't find any reliable data on whether or not Ruckus is just literally the best access point, and I still consider myself in the researching phase.

Is there industry knowledge to the contrary? Are there any actual engineering standards that companies aspire to, or is it just a "most people don't measure this, so whatever" industry?

[krelas]

Just went through this for a large site installation. We had to reach out to vendors and have them send us trial units because performance data was impossible to find, it was incredibly time consuming setting up a proof of concept for each vendor AP. Also, this is only really an option open to people who are doing big deployments because it isn’t worth the vendor’s time otherwise.

I’d recommend looking at Juniper Mist for high congestion areas because their auto mode actually works and adapts to changes in the environment.

I do have to ask though, do you really need enterprise Wi-Fi? It’s not very neighbourly but buying a high end consumer Wi-Fi router that lets you pick DFS channels, picking the least congested channel, and setting transmit power as high as it will go should do the job in an apartment.

[boringuser2]

I need enterprise wifi because I want a bullet-proof network.

Do I actually need it?

Eh, no, I suppose.

But I can't stop myself from not doing it.

Also, in terms of tangibility, my 2.4ghz is so abysmal due to congestion I'm willing to do anything to maximize it. Even Aruba falls flat with this band but Ruckus does an *okay* job. It's obvious that AP performance is a factor here.

My 4x4 Wifi 6 Aruba 535 gets completely shut out by a 2x2 beige colored clunker Ruckus 510 that I got for $40. It's obvious that price, features or "newness" aren't things I can rely on to give me a good picture.

Aruba outperforms my other models -- I've spent a lot of money just testing this out myself using the use case of 40 competing SSIDs.

(According to my research juniper doesn't perform particularly well. Check the Packet6 report that Ruckus cites. Probably biased, but what else is there? "Data sheets" that don't really say much about anything. I havent purchased a test AP, though.)

[boringuser2]

Also, I forgot to mention that you shouldn't be advising people to use a consumer router if you know anything about technology.

[epcoa]

> do the job in an apartment

You should visit Chicago some time.

[mimischi]

Care to elaborate?

[epcoa]

Chicago has an abundance of deep narrow lots. It isn't uncommon to have to have apartment units that are 14-15 (4.5m) feet wide and up to 80 feet (25m) long, a hallway runs on one side with bed/bathrooms adjacent. There is no way you can adequately cover this with one AP unless you don't care about speed much on one end of the unit. If you want uniform top 5GHz speeds you're going to need 2 or 3 APs.

[silisili]

I think ax is now 2 generations behind, if we count 6e and 7, and a pretty nice upgrade over ac.

The nice thing about the newer 2 is 6ghz, for people in highly congested areas. I live on an acre and pick up tons of 2.4ghz, some 5ghz. I can't imagine how bad it would be in a modern tract home development, or worse, a large apartment complex.

[jorvi]

Not that much worse for 5GHz because a decent wall will already heavily attenuated that signal.

When I was still at university, just walking out of my studio appartement and closing the door would already drop my 5GHz signal a good bit. Open the door, much better.

[GrygrFlzr]

It depends where you live and what the building codes in that area try to address. Here in Tokyo the biggest worries are earthquakes, so my apartment walls usually incorporate wood instead of concrete and the 5GHz signal through my closed door and six layers of rooms only just drops to 2/3 on my phone.

Unfortunately, this also means I'm competing with nearly a hundred different APs in the apartment alone - of which many broadcast in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz - to the point that my Macbook less than a meter away from the router still takes a hot minute to automatically find the AP unless I manually select it.

[silisili]

They are pretty close in frequency IIRC, but in a crowded place I assume every little bit would help. Not sure how much, though.

Of course the -real- benefit to upgrading early is that you'll likely have the 6ghz space to yourself for a couple years.

[TylerE]

It’s a trade off. The higher the frequency the worse it does with obstructions, generally.

[MobiusHorizons]

When concerned with congestion that is considered a benefit ( but you might have to run more than one access point)

[TylerE]

Yeah, it’s that second one is the biggie, especially if you’re dealing with something like an outbuilding that either only has intermittent power or even no power at all.

[sgtnoodle]

That's actually a hobby of mine, where I look for 5-10 year old forum posts recommending "new" hardware with good OpenWRT support. I order one on eBay for $30, then try it out myself. I now have 3 very stable 802.11ac access points across my home, and a WPS bridge capable of hitting 500Mbps of TCP throughput.

I do suggest using the latest generation client chipsets with driver support in your OS, though. Whether or not a newer client radio talks to a similarly capable AP, it is likely to have better receive sensitivity than older radios.

I also suggest specifically buying Intel client radios. I have first-hand benchmarking experience that shows that Intel radios are very good at receiving marginal radio frames in heavily congested environments. Qualcomm and Broadcom radios might be just as good, but I wasn't able to evaluate them for lack of driver support for my purpose. Realtek/Mediatek/Ralink radios have pretty good drivers, but the actual radios behave notably worse with congestion. I've had friends living in apartments take my advice and switch from Realtek to Intel, and they've reported back significant gains in wifi stability. I'll also note that the original Steam Deck has a Realtek radio, and many people complain about its mediocre Wifi performance. Some people have gone as far as hot air reworking their Decks to have 802.11ax Intel radios, which happen to be pin compatible.

[Avamander]

For $30 you can already get used enterprise access points. No OpenWRT, but they perform way better than 500Mbps. Even the ones that are now five or more years old.

[sgtnoodle]

I just want to make sure we're comparing the same thing, since data rates are such a nuanced topic. I have two 802.11ac APs communicating at 866Mbps link rate, via two spatial streams at 80Mhz of channel bandwidth. The APs bridge Ethernet traffic using WDS. I can measure 500Mbps of sustained TCP throughout over that wireless link. I believe that's pretty much the theoretical limit for the link rate.

Are you suggesting there are some good cheap APs that can readily do WDS with more than two spatial streams, or wider channel bandwidth? That could be fun to play with, although at this point my WDS link is just for the lols because I've since run cat6 between buildings...

[joshspankit]

Also curious on the details of your recommendation

[justinclift]

> Stability of the software is not a consideration.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I've seen a toggle-able option in some home user routers for them to automatically reboot themselves once every um... day (or some other time period).

Like "we can't be bothered tracking down the memory leaks in shipped software, so lets just implement an auto-reboot of the router".

It's both funny and tragic at the same time.

[Gabrys1]

I wish more hardware had this setting exposed.

My wifi router had a bug that was eventually fixed, but before that I would need to reboot it every hour. That's a simple workaround - if only there was a setting for that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35986375

[justinclift]

TP-Link Archer AX73's have it. Just logged into one to check.

It won't allow every hour though. The options are either daily, weekly, or monthly, and you can set the exact time.

It doesn't seem to allow for more than one reboot schedule either, so it wouldn't be possible to set (say) 24 different daily schedules 1 hour apart as a workaround.

[Gabrys1]

The same was the case in that Asus router. I just wish every AP had that setting

[krelas]

I have found Wi-Fi 6/ax is mature enough to deploy now. I wouldn’t be touching Wi-Fi 7, considering it hasn’t even been ratified yet.

One generation behind is usually where you want to be because your clients usually haven’t caught up anyway.

[LinuxBender]

In my personal experience just anecdotally one generation is usually fine provided it is on the latest firmware for that device. A notable bonus is the cost is usually much less than the latest generation. The WiFi 6 that I bought about mid-life of 6 was about $150 and is now $75 on Amazon where as WiFi 7 is significantly more. Some may have a need for the extra speed but my WiFi 6 is still plenty fast enough to keep up with my 500mb/s fiber.

[grow2grow]

This advice checks out: at home, I have the WiFi 5 Google-pods "mesh network" with five pods (this is a larger house).

Economy of scale does take a generation or two to get behind in general. Wifi, EV's, heck even apple refurbished macbooks are cheaper because there are more of them (as they are from an older generation).

So "being N generations behind latest tech" is solid advice in general is my point. Thanks.

[lxgr]

Multiple access points supporting the same SSID, i.e. ESSIDs, have been supported since the very beginning in 802.11, and definitely much earlier than in 802.11ac.

[flemhans]

I thought you could just have the same SSID on the same LAN in 802.11n (WiFi 4), too.

[vetinari]

You could, 802.11r/k/v just provides some nice hints for faster transitions, but ultimately it is up to the client, whether it is used or not.

Mesh, however, it is not about roaming (i.e. multiple APs with same ssid, clients connects to preferred one). Mesh is a topology thing (nodes come and go), wireless mesh also means wireless uplink (i.e. the AP you are connected to itself talks to its uplink wirelessly). These are things you use only if you cannot avoid them; metalic connection to each AP is way more reliable.

[ikiris]

Maybe for consumer and ubi gear. The enterprisish gear they have to actually support so it get's fixed enough at some point.

No way the big hospital systems / robot warehouses don't light people (VPs and up) up over flaky wireless.

[rldjbpin]

in my dorm, back when 802.11ac was the latest standard, having one of few devices which could support the standard gave me a great wireless experience because the new APs supported it and was enabled by the network admins.

besides the algorithmic stability, the new radio bands or their combinations still have merit fwiw.

[DANmode]

What "home" hardware are you using?

Best person to ask I've come across all year!

[Havoc]

Is it really that big of a risk? If you’ve got current gen gear and it works fine then why not