What I recommend for a wireless setup
Normally talking about wireless networks isn’t the most exciting thing that one can talk about. But over the years I have been asked what my thoughts are for a setup or if I would setup a wireless network for someone. With that in mind, this is what I would recommend for a wireless setup if you were doing one from scratch. My in-laws built a new house a little while back and we did some planning ahead of time to account for a future access point that would be mounted once the drywall, texture and paint were all up. The plan is essentially still the same of what I would put in today, though I might go with a few more access points based on the size of the house. I recently just added another to my setup of the same model I have down below.
Their needs are pretty simple and based on the ranch style of the house, we could get away with 1 access point on the main floor as its a very open concept home. Planning ahead of time essentially meant having the electricians run a cat6 cable from the utility room, where we had other cat6 cables run for for each coax cable that was installed, to a certain location in the ceiling. From there I would do the rest as long as the cable was in an access box of some sort.
Most people will recommend Netgear or Linksys for a decent access point and router solution. While those are just fine, I like to go with something a little higher grade. For an access point, I really like the equipment from Ubiquiti. They come with a new controller software that you can either run on your machine when you need it or if you have a home server, you can install it there and simply hit the web page when you need to make a change. The Access Point (AP) that I recommend for folks is the Ubiquiti UniFi AP Enterprise WiFi System Long Range. Why the long range version? This was going as a single AP in the home. If you are doing multiple APs that you are going to place in several floors, I would go with the 3 pack option of the standard range which is more than you will need in a home. These are not your cheap access points that you get with a $60 Linksys, these are commercial grade that are used in businesses, hospitals, you name it. The controller software makes setting up a mesh of these pretty seamless. And to top it all off, when you install it against a ceiling, it looks like an oversized smoke detector and just blends into the background.
Now, the missing piece in this puzzle is you still need something to serve up DHCP and route your packets to the internet. I personally like the DD-WRT software so I will typically find one of the cheaper wifi / router models that specifically points out DD-WRT support. One of my favorite brands for this is either Buffalo or ASUS. You may not have heard of these but they are good enough for what we need and they save on the pocket book. For this particular install I went with the ASUS (RT-N12/B) Wireless-N 300 Advance wide coverage Home Router: Fast Ethernet, Build-in 5DBi antenna, 3 in 1 switch(Router/Repeater/Access Point) and support upto 4 Guest SSID(Open source DDWRT Support). The name just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? The thing to remember is, once you get these units, you will need to follow the instructions on how to get DD-WRT on the device. This is not trivial by any means but its do-able if you are comfortable on a computer. My setup from here is pretty simple. I turn off wireless on the DD-WRT router as I have the APs to do that work for me. I then setup a DHCP range of 192.168.1.X with a few reservations for things such as the access point and away I go. The DD-WRT interface is straight forward but there are a few tabs where you can quickly get into the deep end. I recommend finding someone that knows what they are doing to set this part up for you. Overall, I keep my settings pretty basic. I customize the NTP and DNS servers that I want my clients to use and that’s about it. The DD-WRT software is free and its pretty powerful so if you really wanted to have some fun, you can setup guest networks that are separate from your home wifi so people coming to your house can’t see all the machines on your normal network. You know, those unsavory people you invite over like friends and family!
There you have it, my recommendations for a wireless setup in your home. A cheap router running DD-WRT and then your choice of 1 or more Ubiquiti Access Points. If you are curious the exact install configurations that I have, hit me up and I can provide them to you.
