Worth changing my ubiquiti to Google home?

mistikempire

Hello all

I currently have a Ubiquiti set up using 2 AC Pros.

Its okay, however nothing amazing, the house is built up of a ground floor, 1st floor and loft bedroom.

I am considering swapping to the Google Home system, as it looks much easier and the triple set is available at argos for £199

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mushii

No no and no. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding you. You wish to swap two professional grade Wired Access points for a domestic grade wireless mesh network?

mistikempire

My freind tbh set up the ubiquiti in my home, which I'm pretty scared to touch as it looks so complicated, so i just thought maybe I go back if people were happy with the Google Home over the ubiquiti

mushii

What are you unhappy about with the Ubiquitis ?

mistikempire

Just seems hard to use, as in my freind set this up for me, however I wouldnt have a clue what to do unless his here.
As for speed wise.. It hasn't been that great as I thought it would be.
My previous set up was using 2x Netgear nighthawks (R7000) as access points.

Maybe I just need the ubiquitis to be configured, but again no clue of what to do.

mushii

Sorry to be obtuse but 'hard to use' ? You dont need to do anything to use them, they just have wifi presence. What speed are you getting? What speeds were you getting out of the Nighthawks? What speed is your internet connection.

I am sorry if this seems to be a lot of questions but I have installed a lot of Ubiquiti APs for clients and have never had this kind of feedback, so I am curious.

AC pro's for a single device connection will probably be slightly slower than the Nighthawk. Add multiple devices and the AC pro's will start to leave the nighthawk behind. The AC Pros are designed and optimised for handling multiple simultaneous connections, the nighthawk is designed to provide maximum speed to a single device (hence its the choice of many gamers).

I am not sure how old your AC Pros are, but if you are not running a Cloud Key or Unifi Controller software, your UAPs may just need their firmware upgrading.

I have 4 UAPs in my house and slow wifi definitely is not one of my problems.

ChuckMountain

Just to echo what mushii has said I also have AC pros set up and they work really well.  Maybe not the highest speed on a headline figure, but they should be able to saturate your internet link depending on the client and a reasonable connection.

The interface is relatively complicated but you don’t actually need to use it at all if you don’t want to.  The software can be set to auto update and you should be running it somewhere so you can change it.

Chester

@mistikempire can you describe how your friend has setup the access points? Is one connected to the router and does the other just have power for example?

If WiFi isn’t great, do you have any Ethernet devices directly connected to your router and are they any faster? Is there just a particular spot that isn’t working great or the whole house?

As others have said, Unifi stuff is great, but there could be some tweaks in the installation to do. I wouldn’t go swapping it out. How about getting your friend to show the the basics of the controller interface? It’s really informative if you know what you’re looking for.  It’s pretty bad to leave you without any guidance.

xxGBHxx

I'm another Unifi AC user (though I have the AP AC Lite) and after setting them up they just work and have done for 2 years flawlessly. I occasionally get the itch to log in and update them which if you're completely non-technical a 10 min google search will answer.

I tend to agree with the others not sure what it is you're worried about. They're an immensley stable bit of kit that just works.

G

mistikempire

@mushii @Chester @ChuckMountain

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to write, i appreciate it and want to put in equal amount of effort to try and help show how my system is, so i drew a small sketch of how my home layout/connections are, forgive me its done on microsoft paint, but hopefully still explains

The Ubiquitys i have sorry guys is the AC-LR not the pro's, my mistake.


So One ubiquity is downstairs and being used as the Access point, which is supplying downstairs devices:
-Living room TV
-Living room Laptop

The other ubiquity is upstairs in the office room, which is supplying wifi to
-Laptop in bedroom - First floor
-TV/Ipad and Laptopin Loft room (2nd floor)

Now what is weird that the internet upstairs seems to be fine, i am in the loft room and my TV, Laptop and Ipad picks up signal perfectly from the router on the first floor.

However going to, the Ground floor.
The TV only picks up around 3 bars...and the downstairs laptop around the same.
Now i am not sure if that is because of the wall (behind sofa) or not.
My dad did also tell me that they used some sort of foil/insulation in the walls/ceilings, so maybe that too?

I cant move the access point to the living room, as i would have to re-drill a hole in the ceiling, as i did the first time...to get the ethernet cable from upstairs to downstairs.