My brother has “free” wifi in his apartment building. But has been having trouble with wifi inside his apartment (E.g. Fire Cube shows 4 Mbps if it even works). Speed tests on other devices 20 Mbps or so.
I THINK they are Unifi UAP-AC-PRO in the public hallways, one just outside his door (possibly U6-Pro since they look the same to me, but I think they are older than that). I was able to connect at 5 Ghz, but just in the hallway or at the wall, otherwise it switches to 2.4Ghz (single SSID). I tried a media bridge with a ASUS RT-AX57 on a shelf, and was able to find/select the 5Ghz specifically, and in testing it worked well - like 90 Mbps and responsive. (but the ASUS is a pain to deal with as I couldn’t log back in once set to bridge). Even on 2.4 Ghz it worked better - like 50 Mbps.
I was thinking something like the hAP ax2 on the shelf and running a set of cables back to about 5 devices. But I see the cAP AC XL on special here for about the price of cAP AC. And then I would run a single cable to either a switch (cheaper) or a router with wireless (better and provide his own network).
Should the cAP AC XL work well doing this? I think bridging to 5 Ghz is the way to go, far less saturated/used being that little, if anyone, would be connecting at 5 Ghz.
With the Mikrotik, am I correct that I should be able to specifically connect the MT’s 5 Ghz radio to the 5Ghz wifi? Should I even be able to connect the MT’s 2.4 Ghz radio to the 2.4 wifi separately? (such that the 2.4 would backup if the 5 doesn’t work)
Does orientation matter? E.g. could it sit on a shelf, or maybe mount on wall (vs ceiling like intended).
Any other ideas? Maybe a directional antenna would be nice (but getting more involved)?
The Cap AC XL, before and besides any other consideration, is now an old device, with only 16 Mbyte of storage, which is already starting to be an issue with current Ros v7 (upgrading may be complex).
it is seemingly rather directional (like 90° or so) has a very high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), though it is intended as an AP it could be a good solution also as client (please read as station).
But if you use its radio as client, you will need another device to re-create the new local wi-fi, if you have that Asus router, you could use that one in a more “normal” configuration, as router+AP, this should give you no issues with accessing it, and even if you might need to double NAT, it is(IMHO) a minor issue.
The device that most probably could do what you want to do all-in-one (as it has three radios, one 2.4 GHz and two 5 GHz) could be the Audience: https://mikrotik.com/product/audience
but is roughly double the price.
Thanks for pointing out some details - I don’t see release dates so it’s a bit difficult to know how old they are. I was noticing low storage, but I guess had thought they had it figured out lol.
If I was using the cAP AC XL, it would be basically a straight bridge to another switch/router kind of device. It would mean two devices involved, which may not be a bad thing as it will probably be 20ft of wire between the two locations and would mean just one wire instead of a bundle. To clarify, the “uplink” unit would probably go up on a wall or shelf, while the main 4-5 end devices are grouped by a desk. That’s where it works out well to even just hardwire to those 4-5 devices. But yes, and local/private wifi would be nice as well, but not absolutely necessary.
Saying that, I like the thought of the wAP ax (I assume is significantly newer than the wAP ac?). The directional might help as then I could face it away from the neighbouring apartment - which I think has 5 Ghz network(s). It’s the price angle to sort out - right now I can get the cAP AC XL for $90 cad, but right now finding the wAP ax for like $150 w/ shipping. BUT if that’s what works it may be worth it. Maybe wait for a better price somehow.
I would say I have BAF (brother acceptance factor) in my case - but he’s blind so I don’t think that’s much issue lol. That, and it better be since it’s for him, and the acceptance factor will be that this works well!
I also did see the Audience, which looked quite interesting. Then we could use one 5ghz radio for “uplink” and the other for end devices, all-in-one. Although it only has 2 ethernet ports. But I think at that price I’m better with having two separate devices as above, with the second device having several ports.
Some of this may come down to what I can get here for good prices (preferably amazon.ca w/ free shipping it seems), although price isn’t the only factor. I want to do this once only!
The wAP AX appears it just came out a month ago so is pretty new. The cAP AC XL looks like over 3 years old. Which might help explain the pricing discount/discrepancy.
Ah, I see now, you were talking CAD, the price in US$ are correct ( in line with official list price).
The cost of shipping seems crazy to me, I understand that Canada is a large country, but the parcel would be small and weight less than half a kg.
The cAP ac XL on that same site Is 145 CAD/99 US$, I don’t think that nowadays they sell a lot of them, so I am not too much surprised that you can find good deals somewhere for one of those.
Still, It would (IMHO) a bad choice for your intended usage, any model of cAP (nomen est omen, the c in cAP stands for ceiling) remains a device designed to be installed on the ceiling in the center of a (large) room and be as omnidirectional as possible in the horizontal plane.
The wAP Ax has been released very recently, so there aren’t yet many reports on how good they are, maybe - since AC speed would be ok for your use - you could look for used units of the wAP AC or of hap AC3 (and with this latter you could experiments easily in case of need with directional antennas).