I have been fighting coverage issues at my house ever since I moved in. It is a 3,000 sqft two story house with a basement. I am having good results with the three point Google mesh devices, but it acts as its own router. I was thinking of trying the Unifi hardware. Any suggestions?
Right thats what the mesh networks are supposed to do. What problem are you facing with it ?
Unifi AP are great option too, they work well and generally these things are setup once and leave them be… just have a seperate decent router to handle what you need.
It’s hard to debug issues on the wireless side, since they hit the main network as a single IP from the Google main point. Does Unifi have a mesh network device that doesn’t act as a DHCP server, so I can use my main DHCP server?
Do you need to keep your router? Why not just Google WiFi only.
Not sure about their mesh networks
I have the network segmented to keep security stuff away from IOT and guest network, etc.
I don’t know much about the Google mesh devices but its strange you can’t turn off the router capabilities of the device. Unifi for home use is great, however I would consider how much money you want to put into your project. For unifi AP’s you’ll need a controller (either a key which costs money or running the controller software on either a physical machine or VM).
You could also just host the controller online if you have a vps already.
For unifi AP’s you’ll need a controller (either a key which costs money or running the controller software on either a physical machine or VM).
From what I read and briefly did see about unfi mesh, it seems really easy to setup and works really well. Personally I feel mesh networks are best for outdoors while indoors you should use a wired backbone to the access points.
I did roll out very few of their access points, but whatever I did rollout was relatively easy and quite interesting to do, and I’m starting to recommend unifi to pretty much everyone.
maybe a little late to the party. If I am understanding your issue correctly ? My knowledge is very limited. I have a very long ranch with a basement. router is in the middle of the basement and I have :
https://www.microcenter.com/product/466156/ubiquiti-networks-unifi-ac-lite-access-point
at each end of the house. works perfectly
Do you need a controller for them? If so, what do you use?
no controller nec. The following is all hard wired. this is how I have is set up. sort of convoluted but you will get the point.
att uverse modem to asus rt-ac68p router
to: netgear prosafe switch ( more devices to hard wire in this area)
to: (one side of the house) another netgear gs108 switch (using switches because hardwiring home theater componenets as well)
to: #1 ubiquiti unit.
other end of house: to switch (again hard wiring to more devices) to #2 ubiquiti unit.
you will have to set up the zones etc , if I remember correctly…it has been a long time.
the ubiquiti units are mounted on my rear wall and I get full house and full rear yard coverage with wifi
once you google and get the hang of it…pretty basic. good luck…happy new year
Try seeing if there are any openwrt releases for your existing Google boxes on /index/releases.
If so, you can use openwrt to make them act as repeaters and/or ap’s for pfsense.
I use a tplink tl-wr940nv6 and a tl-wr841ndv9 with the latest openwrt (which comes with the latest Linux kernel and wpa2 patches) using one as a dumb ap (firewall, odhcpd, dnsmasq, and ntpd all set to disabled with the gateway pointing to the pfsense firewall IP) and using the other as a repeater for my uncle upstairs who games on his Xbox. I’ve even set up a vlan with a second WiFi network on the ap and wireless repeater to effectively create a DMZ for his xbox. He gets 24 ping on wifi upstairs on Xbox live which is insane for how cheap these devices are 
While you can do a minimal initial configuration with just the app, it’s best to do it through the controller interface. After that, the controller isn’t necessary (unless you use the captive portal function).