Hello dear selfhosters,
I’m planning to step up my WiFi game and after some research I feel a little lost. do have questions.
At the moment with an all in one router (a fritzbox ) and a WiFi range extender the coverage is not sufficient and the extended connection not reliable enough. So I plan to get two wireless access points. That would be all for now, in the future I am thinking about switching to opensense to get vlan support - I’d like to have one for iot devices, one for kids, one for guests.
The questions for now: If using access points with a software controler (I.e. T-Link EAP653 or UbiquitI U6+) can I just plug these into the router, turn WiFi in the router off and have the access points handle the WiFi? But IP addresses will still be assigned by the router, right? I don’t want to leave the router WiFi running with the same ssid because this will affect the smoth transition between access points managed by the software controler? If the software controller is down for whatever reason, will the WiFi still work?
Questions for later: Will opensense be able to handle vlans for WiFi connected decices or do they need to be configured in the controler software? Are the access points I mentioned suitable? I want WiFi6, not willing to spend more then double for WiFi6e, max 15-20 devices in the network, no cloud controller, generally I prefer open systems. Any better suggestions for devices?
Answers also to a single question are very much appreciated!
Say whaaaaat? Wow it’s sure evolved a lot since the last time I looked at it. I literally have a pair of WRT54G routers in my house running dd-wrt but my wife has been having trouble with one of them lately so I thought it might be a good time to start looking at upgrading. Wonder if I can get 20 years out of a banana pi? 😆 I do like the idea of just building my own box this time around and these boards look like some serious hardware so I’ll keep reading into it. Thanks for all the links and info!
Well If the hardware doesn’t fail - something that also happens to the WRT54G - you might. After all the hardware is way more open, there aren’t any MIPS shenanigans and other restrictions that the manufacturer may have added.
Another great hardware (not high end, mid range, older, but still solid) for you is the Netgear R7000 (dd-wrt only) or the R7800 (supports OpenWRT). I personally would avoid DD-WRT and stick with OpenWRT as supported devices are more open (no proprietary drivers thus more future support). Check OpenWrt’s supported hardware tables.
If you’re looking for new hardware to use as an AP (no USB) the Netgear WAX206 is also supported. https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/wax206