Home network upgrade

So, in mid-December, I was contemplating upgrading from our Asus router, and since we had a nice cashback coupon from Costco, I went out and bought the Deco BE11000 kit. I was very impressed with the performance over the older Asus router and considered it a success; I was done thinking about it. For about four or five days, anyway. Then, whispers of a TP-Link ban swept the internet, and I decided maybe I should look elsewhere. I considered rolling my own with OpenWrt or OpenSense, but you create it, you manage it, and I don’t want to manage equipment in my downtime. Ubiquiti was what I was leaning towards, but I heard mention of Alta Labs and decided to look it up. I watched a couple of product reviews online, watched the Route10 ALL, and decided this was the path I wanted to go. I got the Route10, an AP6 Pro, and got to work.

Well, this cascaded into grabbing a cheap 2.5 Gbe switch with an SFP+ port, grabbing a DAC, and upgrading my MoCA to 2.5 Gbe adapters. I grabbed a PCIe 2.5 Gbe card for my PC and some other odds and ends. I think I’m finished for now, but I went a bit over budget. I’m very happy with everything so far.

The best thing is the Route10 plus AP has an improved WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor for you single fellas) score over the Asus hardware. Performance is solid all around, and there have been no complaints from my family or guests (using AltaPass with a guest SSID QR code on my fridge).

The Route10 and AP6 Pro are sitting/mounted on a cheap monitor mount from Amazon. The VESA mount holes just barely line up with the holes on the mounting bracket for the AP.

I’m looking forward to the new features and products already mentioned in the ALL for the first half of the year. Hopefully, we see more hardware for us home-user plebs (a managed 8-port switch with two SFP+ cages, please) in the coming future. Already going to jump on the Wi-Fi 7 AP as soon as its released.

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@DN3092 Love to see it! Thanks for sharing! Love the positioning above the TV!

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Thanks it works, I wish I had a better location to centralize everything but this cutout works well enough. Got another AP6 Pro on the other side of the house in my sons room but thats just sitting on top of his desk.

Bonus points, the alta ap (using single ssid altapass) beat out the deco (dedicated 6ghz ssid) in iperf from my couch, if only just barely it still beat it which I wasn’t expecting.

Oh and the Alta ap had a bunch of clients connected to 5ghz. The deco only had 4 on the 6ghz band.


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:joy: :joy: :joy: I do believe that’s the best compliment we’ve ever received!

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Very nicely done! Also love to see the portable battery packs running as a UPS :eyes:

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Nice one, I am still thinking hard how to mount the AP6pro that I just acquire few days back, it is hot and I tot of sticking an aluminium block at the back but there is no way to hold the router besides the original plastic bracket, I probably have to open up and find some longer screw to drill through the block :sweat_smile:

Thanks, the river 3 plus makes for a nice little ups. Rated for <10ms switching and its super quiet compared to our older river 2. I honestly cant hear the fan turn on.

I just checked both of mine and they are barely warm to the touch, even the heatsink on the backside.

This one is sitting in “tabletop” with just the feet on its back flat on top of the desk.

I might not be loading them hard enough, theres about 15-20 wireless clients on each ap ranging from smart outlets to TVs.

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My AP6 Pro is placed similarly until being properly ceiling-mounted. It is actually not entirely flat due to the cable radius but on the other hand no rubber feet attached. Under 0-2% load (10 clients) and 50% memory usage it is 50 deg C (122 F), on the heat sink side, at 24 deg C ambient (75 F). Feels like a bit too warm for idle conditions, even though it is well within hardware limits. :hot_face:

Edit: I might have referred to the Route10 load and memory. I see those numbers for the Route10 now. AP is at 5-10% load and 70% memory.

After watching mine it looks like it hovers around 10% cpu and 70% memory

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A post was split to a new topic: Adding a heatsink