Advice for managed network and Mesh Wifi

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hi everyone, I’m in need of some advice.

I’m in the process of looking for/buying a new house.
When moving into the new house I would like to upgrade my current network setup.

In my current home which has 3 layers (ground, 1st and 2nd) and is all reinforced concrete, I’ve always had issues with getting good/strong wifi signal all around the house.
Last year I purchased Ubiquity Amplifi (wifi5) Mesh system which improved things a lot.

However in the new house I would like to take it to the next level.
So I plan on placing a PFSense box as firewall/router and purchase a new managed network / Mesh wifi system.

For the switch(es) I was thinking of stepping up the network to using VLANS.
I would like the Mesh wifi system to have the additional ability to use wired backbones opposed to the Amplify system that can only use wireless backbone.

so planned lay-out would look like this:

GroundFloor: CABLE MODEM ---- PFSense ---- switch (4port) ---- WiFi AccessPoint

1st Floor: WiFi AccessPoint (probably not cabled, but signal is strong enough for 2 bedrooms and bathroom) ---- maybe additional wired connection to the tv connecting to switch on ground floor

2nd: switch (8port) connecting to GroundFloor ---- WiFi AccessPoint (wired backbone) ---- 2 servers ---- 2 laptops ---- 1 workstation

What products would you advice, especially for the Wifi AccessPoints???

Unifi??? Mikrotik??? other

2

If you are able to have the APs on each floor wired then Unifi should work fine. They will support VLANs, etc.

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3

great thanks…

BUT what can you recommend if I would say I don’t want to use Ubiquiti Unifi products?
been looking in to them a bit and they seem a tad high priced with a recent breech in one of their 3rd parties systems

4

Personally I use Cisco 3602i APs. I see them on eBay for around $15 an AP. If you are comfortable diving into the Cisco CLI then these would be a really nice option. I could send you a sample config to save you some time too.

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