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Review: Ubiquiti Labs' AmpliFi Routers Have Fast Setups, Gorgeous Designs, and Rock Solid Mesh Wi-Fi Coverage
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I just got this system a week ago. Easy setup, works great, and easily expandable. Great system. I will be connecting my Time Capsule to one of the Ethernet ports so I can still use the HDD for Time Machine backups.
I've been running an Amplifi HD with one mesh point for about 6 months. It's been a flawless system and is a big step up from my old AirPorts. I fully recommend this product.
The AirPort devices are/were already "mesh," which just means you can have more than one access point. Same as Ubiquity. But Ubiquity gives you expert controls and hardware options capable of wider coverage.
I have one of the Ubiquity devices. It's great. I love their "bring enterprise hardware to consumers" approach. Only thing is it was harder to set up than an AirPort.
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The meshpoint is functioning as a repeater. Duplicating the traffic. Ap -> Mp -> Client. There is a price to pay in available time slots on the frequency/channel used. But there is so much overhead in this scenario and the link between the mp and the client does not need to use the same frequency/channel, unless you have a lot of guests or someone running bittorrent it would never be noticed. Bittorrent or a bunch of clients would produce noticeable lag over just having a weaker connection with lower wait times.
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Multiple wifi access points within a small area will actually hurt performance by increasing noise. You only want to have multiple if one doesn't cover the entire area, and they should be spaced apart.
Review: Ubiquiti Labs' AmpliFi Routers Have Fast Setups, Gorgeous Designs
New definition of "gorgeous". Stupid macrumors advertising propaganda.
New definition of "gorgeous". Stupid macrumors advertising propaganda.
Actually Airport devices where never mesh (the concept didn’t even exist when the last AirPort Extreme came out). Airport’s did (and do) support WDS - wireless distribution system - that allow you to daisy chain access points. However, this effectively cuts your overall bandwidth in half as their is no dedicated backhaul b/w airports.
The way a true mesh network works is multi-fold:
1.) The main router has a dedicated antenna to “talk” to the various mesh points.
2.) Each meshpoint has a dedicated antenna to “talk” with the main router (or if the system supports, talk to other meshpoints)
3.) The overall system supports the 802.11r standard - which allows for fast roaming of wireless devices. Essentially what this means is that as you walk around your house (or building, or what not), the meshpoints/access points can communicate with your device to tell it which access point is the closest/strongest signal. Without 802.11r, your device will hold onto whatever AP it was initially connected to, until the signal is weak enough for it to switch to another AP.
4.) Finally, with old school repeaters, if you used a WiFi sniffer, you’d actually see multiple SSIDs of the same name - one for the main router and each repeater. With a mesh network, there is a single SSID for the entire system.
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You can daisy chain mesh points - though latency will start adding up the further you get from the main router. I really like Ubiquiti, and their Amplifi system is pretty awesome (and rather cool looking). However, the big thing that Orbi has over Amplifi is that each Orbi device can act as either a meshpoint or a main router, and as such, each Orbi device has Ethernet ports - thus allowing you to essentially extend an Ethernet line over wireless. The Amplifi meshpoints are just meshpoint, no Ethernet ports. However, you can use an Amplifi router as a meshpoint itself, but it’s a more expensive option.
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The benefit is for those that don’t have Ethernet running to every room.
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It is a true mesh network. The main router and each meshpoint have a dedicated backhaul antenna to talk to each other, they support 802.11r (fast roaming), and, unlike a traditional repeater, the SSID and BSSID are replicated b/w meshpoints - thus a single SSID as opposed to the multiple SSIDs you’d see with a repeater.
This is one product I did not have a pleasurable experience with. I would come home and it would have just “lost” the network connection for no discernible reason. Both the router and modem were on a battery backup. After a month of patchy firmware with regards to Apple Watches losing their host due to issues with using certain 802.11 r/k/v features... this one went back to the retailer, plus no VPN support on the device itself.
This totally missed the high mark their enterprise gear has set for me in the past, super bummed it didn’t work out.
Have a Netgear Orbi RBK50 kit now and couldn’t be happier with it.
This totally missed the high mark their enterprise gear has set for me in the past, super bummed it didn’t work out.
Have a Netgear Orbi RBK50 kit now and couldn’t be happier with it.
Amplifi (and other mesh systems) can improve on a weak WiFi signal via two methods: 1.) The main router generates a stronger signal that travels farther than what you’d get with the router your ISP provides and, more importantly, 2.) You can put a meshpoint in between the router and the room with a weak signal - the meshpoint will get a strong signal from the main router and thus be able to rebroadcast that strong signal to the room.
The next major leap in WiFi tech is sorta right around the corner - 802.11ax (or WiFi 6 as it will be called moving forward). It’s currently in draft form - the standard is more or less complete, but tweak can still be made before the draft is finalized. The biggest thing 802.11ax will provide over the current 802.11ac wave 2 is better support for multiple devices accessing a single AP, and better support at handling multiple devices in general (even across a wireless mesh system or wired mesh system). Overall speeds won’t increase considerably b/w AC and AX, but effective speeds will increase as AX will handle interference better than AC.
As far as if it’s worth upgrading now or not - you can actually purchase an 802.11ax router now, but they’re very expensive. You will start to see a lot more AX routers in the coming year, but prices will still be high (compared to other options) for probably the next year. Finally, you won’t get any benefits from AX on device that don’t support the new standard (I.e. everything that is available now).
For a home environment, there really won’t be many huge benefits from AX - the benefits will mostly be seen in business environments (with multiple APs and a large number of people all on the network at once). If you’re in a condo or apartment building, AX will also the interface you get from other APs.
Great question!
Once you figure it out, maybe you can help me...
You see, I have a coffee maker that sits on my kitchen countertop, right next to the outlet. However, I know that there are 9ft extension cords available. Do I need something like this?
/s
Looked into a mesh for my parents house. Ended up going with Ethernet connected APs instead. The walls were too thick and distances too great. I suspect some people might benefit but you have to so specifically place these to get a fast mesh that they become a pain in the ass.
How big is your parent's house? They claim up to 20,000 sq ft, but using more realistic real world conditions it still covers a huge area.
I get a signal from the street outside the front of my house all the way to the end of the back garden. Can still get a reading when I'm at my neighbours house.
As an AirPort Extreme and Airport Express user I can confirm that they are not mesh.
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Its not about internet speed, its about wifi speed.
I’ve had the Amplifi HD for about a year and a half maybe longer. It’s been great and has worked extremely well for our old home with lath and plaster walls. Just because Amplifi can, I’m buying a second router and placing it on our main floor and using Ethernet backhaul and branching off the mesh points from the main floor router. Right now, the router is near an old coal room, where my fiber comes in and goes to a meshponts elsewhere. Sometimes I play my Steam Link 2 floors above on the opposite end of the house and it works like it had a direct Ethernet connection.
No complaints at all.
No complaints at all.
Dumb question, but I have the Hue plugged into my router along with other things. The article says they had to make everything wireless due to the lack of Ethernet plugs. Is there a reason you couldn’t add a switch for more ports, and would the Hue work plugged into it? That part of the article confused me.
Wi-Fi is not only for Internet access, is it?
Also, when investing in an infrastructure, one should plan for years ahead. Within a year, at least half of US households will get access to 5G LTE Internet access from Verizon, which will easily take the Internet speeds to above 300 Mbps. I'm not saying those who have UAP-AC-Pro units must immediately replace them with Generation 3. However, for those considering new APs, the UAP-AC-Pro is not a good choice unless you are trying to cover a huge warehouse for the purposes of using Wi-Fi scanners, where bandwidth doesn't matter but price per unit multiplied by hundreds of units makes a huge difference.
These systems are typically designed to provide WIFI coverage to larger square foot facilities ... you probably do not need it!
The concept of mesh networks has existed before wifi, and lots of "mesh" wifi systems don't exactly match that because the access points either only talk to the router or to one other access point (making it a chain). Wifi "mesh networking" is a vague term I haven't found defining much other than that you have multiple access points. I didn't know about 802.11r. Apparently it existed in 2008, but AirPort didn't have it, and it would've made handoff better. Still, I don't know if 802.11r is a defining factor; Ubiquiti devices don't even have it enabled by default, according to their docs.
AirPorts could all connect to the same wired ethernet and bridge traffic to it, which was the best if you could do that. Didn't know it had WDS (it wouldn't have worked for me anyway), but that doesn't necessarily decrease the bandwidth unless you have other people filling up the pipe on one of the access points up the chain. The Ubiquiti device I bought was the same thing, no special antenna to talk to a master router, and it was marketed as a "mesh wifi network" device: https://store.ubnt.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh-ap
I could double check the SSIDs. I might be wrong about that.
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