If you want reliable Wifi at home, get yourself Ubiquity access points and throw away TP-Link. The issue is not the protocol. After many years of unplugging and plugging back in my TP-link router I know that they are cursed.
I think it's more a case of don't use cheap consumer grade hardware in any kind of remotely demanding scenario.
I have "enterprise" TP-Link equipment for my house which I bought 3 years ago now and am very happy with it, in particular I'm using:
- 4x EAP245 Access Points
- 1x SG3428 Switch (the APs came with PoE injectors and I wanted a fan-less switch, hence why the switch is not PoE enabled)
I rent out a room on my property and have my tenant on a separate VLAN to the main house. I also have my IoT devices on a separate VLAN.
I use a generic PC with pfSense as my "router".
My only complaint is that their Omada Controller software doesn't want to run as a Windows Service (I'm not interested in trying to manage a Linux box). Fortunately, it's not required at all, but is useful for centralized configuration management and facilitation of handover of WiFi clients between APs.
Before I moved into my current large-ish place, I used "cheap" ISP supplied TP-Link routers with WiFi, and aside from limited speed capabilities, were 100% reliable for me, in particular I used the following two models:
- TL-WR840N
- Archer C20.
I also use a few cheap (but again fully reliable) 5 port and 8 port TP-Link 1GB/s switches, for example under my desk in my office to allow both my laptop and desktop to share the single CAT6 cable to the room.
Before buying the "enterprise" TP-Link equipment I considered Ubiquiti, but the TP-Link stuff was less expensive, I liked the controller being optional and considering all my past TP-Link equipment's reliability was a non-issue, I was happy "to take a risk".
It's tough. On one hand side, TP-Link has some weird issues. On the other, I spent a while debugging an issue with their engineers and they seem to actually care to improve things. Maybe the lower price is worth it sometimes.
Or better yet, Aruba Instant On. Enterprise hardware for SOHO money, truly plug and play, rock solid, no tinkering involved (which can be both good and bad depending on one's goals).
Can relate. I went through various consumer ish access points until I got tired of it and splurged on an Ubiquiti.
Haven't had any wifi problems since. To the point I don't remember what wifi standard my home is on :)
Too bad they may or may not have given up on the cloud connectivity requirement. I've been told (even on here) they have, but I've also been told that you can disable it after setup instead of setting up without any stinking cloud.
Say, did Ubiquity stuff work during the AWS outage?
As far as I know devices like Access Points only need the Controller to be configured or monitored. Once they are configured they work completely without it.
What does that mean, that the controller won't work without a cloud account? :)
It doesn't really matter which part in the chain requires the stinking cloud as long as they sneak it in somewhere.
Speaking of which, I just bought a Razer mouse again because I've read they gave up on the login requirement for configuring your blinkenlights. But they didn't. They invented a 'guest login' instead.
You can run the controller locally or from the cloud. When it is running locally you have the option to tunnel to it through the cloud. It runs completely locally.
AFAICT, the controller is needed for fast roaming of clients.
I have the UAP-AC-LR and if you only need basic AP functionality you can even configure it from the phone (no cloud). 99% sure no cloud stuff is needed when self-hosting the controller. May have changed since then, though.
Yes you can just not enable it. It is disabled by default. Maybe if you register everything through the app on your phone you need to be a bit careful. I think that makes it easy to enable the cloud tunnelling.
Indeed. You need the controller running first before you can configure AP, Switches, and gateways.
Better yet, buy actual enterprise gear even if it's a generation behind. You can find decent Aruba, Ruckus and Cisco kit on eBay going for decent prices.
Anecdote time - I've had their BE550 Wifi 7 router for over a year now and it's been rock solid. Easily does 2Gbps over wifi, never had to reset it once despite having 40+ devices connected to it all the time, the 4x 2.5Gbps ports are super useful.....it is one of their more expensive devices so maybe that's why, but generally it's been very very solid.
I own two consumer-grade Deco XE75 access points which I purchased several years ago as the most cost-effective 6E compatible access points available. They have proven to be exceptionally reliable.
Although I have previously encountered significant issues with WiFi, I now do not see a need to replace these devices despite the availability of WiFi 7.
My deco seems to be really poor at picking a channel at boot up. When I have performance issues running the optimizer almost always moves it to a different channel and solves my issues.
I just ran the optimiser after reading your post and it changed the 2.4GHz channel - I think the main reason I've been so happy is that the laptops and smartphones I primarily use support 6GHz where there is no interference and channel selection doesn't matter.
