Looking to make the jump from WIFI 5 to 6E and figured I'd use the opportunity to become more intentional with separation of concerns in my network and ditch my mesh system from Aplifi. I'm looking at a Mikrotik router & switches on a 1Gbps fiber connection.
Where I'm stuck is the APs. The consensus seems to be that Unifi is the go-to system but perhaps there's other comparable options out there that people have had good experience with. Status quo below:
- ca. 100 sq ft apartment, mixture of concrete walls and a bunch of thin non-load bearing walls
- can run wires into bedroom / office / living room so PoE is totally OK. Can't do ceiling mount, can maybe do a shelf-mount of some sort.
- the U6 mesh seems like the best form-factor for my requirements but it's not 6E. I'm fixated on 6E also because of wireless VR.
- the U6 Enterprise looks good on paper but realistically the only way to "mount" that thing is on a 3d printed vertical mount from Etsy which is pretty goofy and is probably not doing me favors radiation-pattern wise
- I can run management software through Docker on my NAS if need-be
- I have quite a bit of devices in my home network: NAS, Music Streamer, Sonos, KEF Wireless speakers, Thread IoT Devices, two PCs, Laptops, Scanning Devices etc. VLANs sound like a good idea at this point. My PiHole installation shows 35 clients right now.
- single pane of glass management-wise is not a hard requirement
I'm not fixated on Unifi equipment by any stretch so what I'm effectively looking for is some suggestions on Wifi 6E APs that I can mount on bookshelves and not kneecap their capabilities, regardless of manufacturer (as long as they don't phone home or I can block them phoning home).
Perhaps there's other options such as the newer Orbi mesh systems with wired backhaul but they seem to be stupidly priced for what they offer.
That's a good suggestion, looks like I can run them in AP mode. A bit overkill but the alternative is probably waiting for the prosumer space to bring out 6E or 7