Hi - I came across Alta Labs via some reading I was doing on Reddit. I’ve been considering Ubiquiti or Omada for my home network upgrade. I’ll be upgrading the access points and then also putting in a switch or two and some wired drops to various devices.
Did I see there is a Discord? If so can I get access in case I need help setting things up?
For my network, I was excited to get wifi 7 and 2.5gb gear, though I can’t say my use case absolutely requires it. I have a couple wifi 6e devices now. BUT I’m liking what I see so far from Alta and I’m curious to give your products a go.
My set up would include:
1x Fireawalla Gold Plus
I suspect I could run your controller on this because of it being dockerized. Or just use your cloud controller.
1x S24-POE
A couple ports will utilize the POE to the AP.
Perhaps the SFP+ port, with an adapter (got a recommendation) for 2.5GB to Firewalla.
There is a chance I may need another switch, though maybe it is a 2.5GB switch off the other SFP+ Port as the items on this switch will be on an isolated network.
2x or 3x AP6-PRO. I’ve debated two or three, perhaps start with 2 and see how things are.
1x AP6 PRO OUTDOOR for covering backyard living spaces.
What exactly is the location you want to cover?. If its 2 o 3x AP6-PRO it would depend on how much you want to cover in area and/or where the APs will be placed. This said, would be great to see sometime a design tool by Alta.
How many stations/clients are you planning to associate to each AP and what it would be the bandwidth consumption in peak times?
Fair questions. Let’s see what I am able to answer.
Our home is 2 stories plus a basement. Mostly a rectangle with living space on main floor and bedrooms on second floor. 3,800 sq ft (ish).
I’m thinking one AP about on each end of the main floor. There is an entry/laundry room that extends out from the rectangle on one side and connects the garage.
If I added a third AP, it would be in the hallway (center) of the rectangle on the second floor.
As for clients, we are a four person family. Younger children. We work and school from home. There are times when we have two or three Zoom or streaming going on. From time to time we entertain, having another 2, 4, 6 or 15 or 30 people in our home for events. And our IoT/smart home devices add likely another 15 to 30. I guess I’m not worried about client load and more so ‘good enough’ coverage.
Understood. So 3 APs should be the way to go, you would need to play with TX power of course. My next concern is how many walls would it be in-between the AP and the farthest station connected it to (for example) and what type of device would it be. The thing is that OEM waves get affected by obstacles so the more there are the more degradation of the signal occurs. It would also depend on what are the walls made of. The materials have a more or less impact on how the waves propagates.
As for the amount of stations connected, should not be an issue. If guests come to visit you then you just can enable the Guest wifi and send it to another VLAN
The guys at Alta Labs can also give you their input based on their experience.
