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Poll: Which access points do you use?
- Thread starter wautersw
- Start date
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!!!
macrumors 65816
I used to use AirPorts, my Express ended up breaking and refuses to work anymore, and my Extreme is fine, I actually still use it as a switch now. But my current AP are two Asus routers (mesh). The only problem with it is that every month or so they'll stop working, and I have to manually restart them. That and the fact that ASUS may not be such a great company.
I wish Apple made routers again, a proper mesh setup line.
I wish Apple made routers again, a proper mesh setup line.
Boppi
macrumors regular
I have two Nest Wi-Fi Pros connected via ethernet running in mesh to cover my home. It's the most hands-off no worries setup I've ever had.
They never go off-line, the firmware is updated automagically and when I read of another big router maker has another exploit their users need to be aware of and then download and update new firmware for, I'm in a good space.
They're not unhackable, but with patches and new firmware happening in the background I don't concern myself with the latest vulnerabilities as they rarely include a Nest router.
Oh, and did I mention they never go offline or need a reboot, ever. And I've had them several years now. The Google Home app runs on iPhone 15 and later.
They never go off-line, the firmware is updated automagically and when I read of another big router maker has another exploit their users need to be aware of and then download and update new firmware for, I'm in a good space.
They're not unhackable, but with patches and new firmware happening in the background I don't concern myself with the latest vulnerabilities as they rarely include a Nest router.
Oh, and did I mention they never go offline or need a reboot, ever. And I've had them several years now. The Google Home app runs on iPhone 15 and later.
Last edited:
it wasnt me
macrumors 6502a
edubfromktown
macrumors 65816
Ran the crap out of a crowd funded original Eero tri-pack (one of my kids still uses them) and upgraded to a 6+ two-pack in 2023. They've been stellar in terms of performance and great signal strength in a ~3500 sq ft 3-level abode.
Hit a wild deal (maybe price mistake) on some Eero Wifi 6 pro APs a while back. They were too cheap to pass up ($60-70 for three?). I dont use them for Routing or Mesh, just as access points since I have ethernet backhaul for them. They work great as just APs, have a built-in 1-port switch for connecting other ethernet stuff in the room, and allow you to turn off the LEDs on the device. No complaints, but mainly use ethernet devices anyway.
Unifi for over 10 years, 3 APs. Two inside, one outside.
All 3 replaced in the last two years due to age. Stayed with Unifi as they have been rock solid. My wife works from home, so I know if there is ever an outage.
All 3 replaced in the last two years due to age. Stayed with Unifi as they have been rock solid. My wife works from home, so I know if there is ever an outage.
dmr727
macrumors G4
I use an Eero 6+ two pack for our two story home, and they've been fast and rock solid. The upstairs AP in the study is connected to a gigabit switch that provides wired connections for the printer, Pi-hole, NAS, and a variety of desktop computers. One day I'll run ethernet directly to the study from the FiOS box in the basement, but that's on a list with a thousand other things that need to be done to the house. 😉
Genelec8341
macrumors regular
Voted other.
I have an AP Extreme and 2 AP Express, latest models but they're in a closet unused.
Unless I bring the AirPorts to the cable company and have them flashed with who knows what, I'm stuck with their generic POS router, which actually covers this 3-level cabin pretty well. Our ISP is maxed out at 30 down and 10 up in this rural location. It is what it is. 🤣
I have an AP Extreme and 2 AP Express, latest models but they're in a closet unused.
Unless I bring the AirPorts to the cable company and have them flashed with who knows what, I'm stuck with their generic POS router, which actually covers this 3-level cabin pretty well. Our ISP is maxed out at 30 down and 10 up in this rural location. It is what it is. 🤣
keksikuningas
macrumors regular
AirPort Time Capsule in AP mode behind an OPNSense firewall running on an old office PC I found near our neighborhood trash bins. Serving respectable speeds from my gigabit connection (400 Mbit/s on 5GHz iirc, been a while since I've checked). Used it for backups as recently as last year, but somewhere in autumn the drive died. We've been considering buying an HDD and replacing it, but I will probably keep using it as AP and get a NAS (oh I wish I did that earlier before the prices hiked up...)
I have a Synology, but it's overkill. It's nice to be able to VPN home, but probably not worth the price. The support's good though: I logged a bug and they remoted in and installed a fix.
keksikuningas
macrumors regular
Certificate of Excellence
macrumors 68020
At home I use two Airport Extremes - a 5th gen for my legacy macs down stairs and 6th gen for upstairs den. The 6th gen is connected to my fiber with gigabit TP-Link Powerline to route upstairs. My fiber gateway is a Nokia BGW320-505 802.11ax dual band gateway.
I set up a Asus Zenwifi BQ16 Pro mesh system at my folks home which is pretty awesome. Their home is really long and this mesh system provides fast connectivity end to end and was a breeze to set up and maintain for them with the companion app. Highly recommend it 🙂
I set up a Asus Zenwifi BQ16 Pro mesh system at my folks home which is pretty awesome. Their home is really long and this mesh system provides fast connectivity end to end and was a breeze to set up and maintain for them with the companion app. Highly recommend it 🙂
T'hain Esh Kelch
macrumors 604
Older Orbi tri mesh network here covering 2 floors, 217 m2 total. Quite happy with the performance.
how do you like that powerline setup from tp-link? done any testing over the LAN?
Certificate of Excellence
macrumors 68020
I like it a lot. If you live in an old house that was built before computers/networking were a consideration and you don't have an "easy" way to install cat cable like an attic or crawl space, Powerline is a great plug n play solution. I have a flat roof in the SW and it was built in the 1970s so no easy solution to install cat cable and I wasn't going to go spend hundreds (my folks zenwifi BQ16 mesh was $800! ouch) on a mesh system at this time.
This is over wifi from my 6th gen airport connected directly to the TPLink Powerline with my wife streaming in the bedroom and my middle kiddo streaming Luke from Outdoor Boys lol on his iMac in his bedroom so some local network congestion going on lol. Interestingly my upload is usually around 80-100 lol.
Is it 1000+mbps like at my router? No, but does it get usable speeds upstairs that support my wife's office and her zoom meetings all day? absolutely it does - stutter free, smooth video/audio. Highly recommend for the $80 bucks I paid for them.
This is over wifi from my 6th gen airport connected directly to the TPLink Powerline with my wife streaming in the bedroom and my middle kiddo streaming Luke from Outdoor Boys lol on his iMac in his bedroom so some local network congestion going on lol. Interestingly my upload is usually around 80-100 lol.
Is it 1000+mbps like at my router? No, but does it get usable speeds upstairs that support my wife's office and her zoom meetings all day? absolutely it does - stutter free, smooth video/audio. Highly recommend for the $80 bucks I paid for them.
yeah i was more curious about an iperf session started at the remote end to a pc locally, but on the other side of the powerline to see what kind of throughout these ones that claim gigabit can really do.
A.Goldberg
macrumors 68030
I am a big fan of the UniFi networking hardware.
I first came across it opening my business in 2015, I was an early adopter. We have a 4-story, 9,000sqft building built like a faraday cage (120yr old brownstone- brick walls, metal beams, wire mesh in the plaster ceilings, WiFi congested urban area). My biz partner said “well just get a second router from Comcast”. IT companies quoted us like $12,000. It cost me <$1500 + CAT5, few days, and some self-teaching. 8 UAP-AC lites, Switch-24-POE, USG router, and original CloudKey. All since upgraded to newer hardware (+outdoor APs). We have up to 30-35 people with multiple devices, a number of IoT devices, 15 security cameras (not UniFi), etc and it handles it smoothly.
I’ve since installed UniFi in my parents house (+ later Protect), my home, my family’s vacation home + neighboring rental properties (3 houses, 1 network), a few friends home. I also invest in UBNT stock in 2026 which was a solid life decision.
UniFi as a company can be a little frustrating though. Here are some examples:
If you’re just looking for a simple plug and play solution, UniFi really isn’t the ideal choice. For most people it’s overkill features wise. Having a little networking literacy is necessary and definitely helpful, especially to get the most out of UniFi. Back in the day you really need to know what you were doing (though I taught myself). No longer do you need to manually select the antenna 2ghz and 5ghz wifi channels to prevent interference. If you want to mess around with your network or have a large property or deployment, especially one you want hardwired, I’m not sure there’s a better value for money.
I first came across it opening my business in 2015, I was an early adopter. We have a 4-story, 9,000sqft building built like a faraday cage (120yr old brownstone- brick walls, metal beams, wire mesh in the plaster ceilings, WiFi congested urban area). My biz partner said “well just get a second router from Comcast”. IT companies quoted us like $12,000. It cost me <$1500 + CAT5, few days, and some self-teaching. 8 UAP-AC lites, Switch-24-POE, USG router, and original CloudKey. All since upgraded to newer hardware (+outdoor APs). We have up to 30-35 people with multiple devices, a number of IoT devices, 15 security cameras (not UniFi), etc and it handles it smoothly.
I’ve since installed UniFi in my parents house (+ later Protect), my home, my family’s vacation home + neighboring rental properties (3 houses, 1 network), a few friends home. I also invest in UBNT stock in 2026 which was a solid life decision.
UniFi as a company can be a little frustrating though. Here are some examples:
- Items chronically out of stock
- Their current lineup of PoE switches is inexcusable. They’re expensive yet many of them are only 1/2 PoE and are completely underpowered in terms of wattage.
- The Standard 16-PoE switch is $300, only has 8 PoE, and 42W of power (and a lot of UniFi stuff wants PoE+, the U7 Pro access point can use 10w. 5.25W per PoE port is likely going to be an issue.
- Everytime I login to the web dashboard they’ve totally rearranged the GUI (the constant innovation is nice though).
- Too many similar products and confusing product lines- there’s far too many AP options these days, including super old models. The nomenclature gets too confusing (“Cloud Gateway” express/ultra/max/ultra/fiber vs “Gateway Max”). Why do they sell like 7 cellular routers, many being variations of the same thing?
If you’re just looking for a simple plug and play solution, UniFi really isn’t the ideal choice. For most people it’s overkill features wise. Having a little networking literacy is necessary and definitely helpful, especially to get the most out of UniFi. Back in the day you really need to know what you were doing (though I taught myself). No longer do you need to manually select the antenna 2ghz and 5ghz wifi channels to prevent interference. If you want to mess around with your network or have a large property or deployment, especially one you want hardwired, I’m not sure there’s a better value for money.
Certificate of Excellence
macrumors 68020
I went from an Apple Gen 4(N) to a Ubiquiti6, had to have a "saucer" AP.
First time installation of the Ubiquiti was intimidating because I've been using Plug&Play of standard APs forever, but after everything is setup, am enjoying all the features the Ubiquiti can offer, I can display a map of my topology and click on a device and display its thruput, love that.
I also love the smart POE feature, single cable power+data and full ethernet bandwidth, I had erroneously thought that POE ethernets are limited to 4 wires 100 mbit, perhaps previous generations did.
My POE capable 8 port Uni switch died once in 18 months, a hard reset fixed the issue. The Uni6 sips so little power, 6 watts that I was able to use an ultra-thin ethernet cable, no problem, love that.
First time installation of the Ubiquiti was intimidating because I've been using Plug&Play of standard APs forever, but after everything is setup, am enjoying all the features the Ubiquiti can offer, I can display a map of my topology and click on a device and display its thruput, love that.
I also love the smart POE feature, single cable power+data and full ethernet bandwidth, I had erroneously thought that POE ethernets are limited to 4 wires 100 mbit, perhaps previous generations did.
My POE capable 8 port Uni switch died once in 18 months, a hard reset fixed the issue. The Uni6 sips so little power, 6 watts that I was able to use an ultra-thin ethernet cable, no problem, love that.