Inspired by a recent post, and my recent move, I'm looking to play with 6ghz.
I had been waiting for the "openwrt two", and I still kind of am, but I'm not holding my breath for that to arrive anytime soon.
My current network consists of two Google AC1304s flashed with openwrt, an 8 port managed switch for VLANs, and a 5 port dumb switch for the main LAN.
One ac1304 is the main router/firewall/DHCP/vlan etc, as well as Wi-Fi for the basement. The second one is just a dumb AP on the top floor. The main floor catches a bit of both and is probably good enough. And the switches handle all my actual routing, currently just gigabit. I hardwire everything I reasonably can. Internet is 500/500 fiber.
So basically my network is Wi-Fi 5, plenty fast for the devices that need it. I've had no plans to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 ever, I just don't need it. I definitely don't need 7 right now, but I figured eventually I should probably jump to it when it's stable. I don't think it's currently stable, or even common enough, to bother with. Not for the cost of upgrading everything, especially since Wi-Fi 7 openwrt routers barely exist.
But a comment on a post recently made a point that I had somehow never considered.
A dumb AP doesn't NEED to be openwrt, in order to function well on my network, or be secure.
So I started searching, but immediately hated everything I saw, and got overwhelmed.
TLDR
Basically what I'm looking for is a cheap WiFi 7 AP with 6ghz support that I can add to my network, on the main floor, to play with while I wait for Wi-Fi 7 to mature.
I don't want to have to create an account with some external company, just to change some settings though. As seems to be the issue with the inexpensive Netgear APs I've found.
So, does anyone know of any APs that fit that bill? I'd even go to Wi-Fi 6e if that's the only thing that exists with those requirements, really I just want to play with 6ghz to bide my time for better equipment.
Bonus question: would mixing Wi-Fi 5 and 6/7 APs into my same SSID/network be a bad idea, performance wise? I'm assuming not, because the channels would not be overlapping?
Ubiquiti is probably your best bet for 'cheap' wifi7. As far as mix and match, the short answer is it's bad.
The long answer is that for anywhere the cells overlap you're going to have degraded performance at or near wifi5 speeds, which really means wifi4 speeds on 2.4ghz. You're right that this is mitigated by careful channel planning but once you're past 4 APs within earshot of each other you'll run out of 40mhz channels unless you're in a place where the dfs bands aren't problematic.
If you are looking for performance improvements, ditching the wifi 5 in favor of wifi6 will be as big or bigger of a jump than 6 to 7 off the 6ghz band.
It is worth noting you can selfhost the UniFi controller and you don’t need to make an account either.
Thanks!
That's definitely unfortunate.
If it helps, I'm in a suburb with fairly close neighbors. 2.4 is packed, so I was pretty much planning on giving it up as far as any "performance" clients are concerned. I was thinking of having only one 2.4 radio for the whole house, for legacy and iot devices.
It's not a huge house, I was thinking I could get away with 2, maybe 3 APs on 5ghz, reducing power a smidge to reduce self interference, but I haven't tried that yet.
Real world performance, testing with speedtest.net to a max of 500Mbps, shows 400+ Mbps on 5ghz in the basement, bedrooms and living room. With the weak zone being the kitchen at 200-300. Still plenty fast for what I need, though I won't turn down free performance, and that's without any of my own congestion.
2.4 maxes out at 30Mbps in most locations, significantly less in others.
That said, I'm really trying NOT to spend money upgrading my entire setup right now. I was hoping to drop $50-100 on one device to play with 6ghz. I've only got one client that can take advantage of it anyway. On the ubiquiti, can I just set the 5ghz radio to Wi-Fi 5? And the 6ghz to 7? I feel like that should work for now? 🤔
For wifi7 on the 6ghz band, the ssid has to be wpa3 encrypted, so that's not going to play nicely on the same ssid as wifi5 wpa2 radios. I would have the wifi7 radio broadcast a unique 'performance' network, leave it's 5ghz on but let it have unii3 on its own and restrict the wifi5 network to unii 1/2 channels.
Oh I didn't know that. That makes sense.
Hmmm..
If Wi-Fi 7 isn't compatible with wpa2, then it's hard to have any kind of mixed network supporting legacy clients without a separate SSID. For anyone.
That's kind of unfortunate, but I guess it's the cost of progress.
You can mix Wi-Fi 6 and 7 though, correct? So theoretically I could catch most of my somewhat modern clients that way.
I should take stock of all my modern clients.