Hi there! New to the Alta ecosystem. Drawn by the promising AP performance (relative to Ubiquity) along with a simple modern UI.
What router (and switch, if not enough ports) are you using - or otherwise highly suggest to use - with Alta AP’s for residential use
Requirements:
Setup:
Thank you!
(Edit: for residential SOHO)
Welcome to Alta, @JP123!
Complexity/hassle is pretty subjective. Personally, I use MikroTik as the router for right now. It’s plenty powerful with QoS, firewall rules, while maintaining high throughput. While they have made strides in initial setup for SOHO users, there can still be a bit of a learning curve.
As for switches, Alta all the way. For your setup, a S16-PoE would work great as 8 of the ports are PoE, covering all 6 of your devices with a couple of spares in case you expand. VLANs are a breeze to setup. We actually have a Network Type built right into the configuration specifically for IoT devices that will optimize the Alta switches and/or Alta APs for IoT devices.
You can check out the IoT and all other network types’ details here. Of course, selecting the IoT network type is not required, just an added feature.
+1 thumbs up for a fellow MikroTik user!
Firewalla 
Works great for me with triple play
I use a UDM-SE for now but have use my AP6-Pro with the Grandstream GWN routers and MikroTik as well and all work pretty well.
I keep bouncing around trying to find the right fit for me. I was trying MikroTik for a while, but the lack of IPS/IDP is a bit of a bummer, and it is a bit of a mish-mash for configuration especially the various ways they have for advanced switching.
I’ve tried most of the home “pro-sumer” variations. Untangle, PfSense, Sophos and so on.
I went back to my UDM-SE and its been okay, but im not super thrilled with it.
Currently I use a Firewalla Purple as my travel router and it works well enough for that. When I get my Alta switches I will dust off a Firewalla Gold Plus to use with those to see how I like it all.
Depending on how the Alta Routers/Firewalls end up feature wise, I may try those as well.
Thanks Matt. You’re right. For clarity, im looking for something better than the likes of Eero but nothing with too steep of a learning curve. Probably exactly what’s on your roadmap - something that’s intuitive and just works!
I’m pretty biased towards the Alta switch. The price is what gets me - especially since I’m between the 8 port and the 16 port, given PoE requirements. And I don’t anticipate new PoE hardwiring.
Assuming price is the constraint, what are reasons not to do the 8 port with 2 PoE injectors (to get a max of 6)?
Appreciate your insight 
Been around, appreciate the perspective. I’m into the idea of the firewalla. But, it is a bit pricey.
I might settle, for now, with a TP link Omada router (ER-605) . And upgrade in the future when Alta ships a router.
Have you tried any Omada products by any chance?
I have not tried the Omada products. I’ve seen a lot of videos and reviews on them. To be honest, im not entirely sure how they aren’t being sued by Unifi because their UI is a direct rip off. The look of their AP’s are quite hideous too. The Omada line just didnt interest me the more I looked into it since it so heavily takes the Unifi approach.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a full 10GB MikroTik network rack that I took offline to go back to my Unifi rack of the same kind. I do like the single pane of glass, but they had a run of just bad updates and dodgey hardware. And their stuff just never seems to be available.
So I am trying the Alta stuff for now. Losing the 10GB networking ports hurts a bit, but I can make do. It still has some kinks to work out, but overall I am happy with it. A new contender in the mix helps us end users.
I am holding out hope that their routers are good, and fingers crossed that they come up with a travel router small form factor variant that I can use to remote back into home with some form of WireGuard/Magic VPN type offering. Even if they don’t, I can fall back on TwinGate until they implement something good.
I come from the WISP world and, generally speaking, if you want a decent router that is low cost due to the likelihood of water infiltration or lightning strike or whatever other weird thing can be thrown at it, MikroTik is the way to go. Yes, there is unquestionably a learning curve, but once you’re towards the end of that curve, it just runs. It’s a lot like Linux that way; yeah, some stuff will take a while to configure how you want it, but once it’s done, you just need to keep things updated and it’ll run for a long time.
Fun little side story. In another life, I ran a WISP and did everything from dynamic routing programming to tower climbing to tower contract negotiations. We were scouting this tower and had permission to make sure the electrical panel was up to snuff (protocol was we would install our own breaker). We popped open the door on this electrical panel and there were a bunch of the knockouts knocked out already. Crawling in and out of these was a roughly 6 foot long (a little under 2 meters) snake. Definitely one of the weirder finds at a tower site.
I follow a guy on Tik Tok named ( telecastky) he runs a WISP in rural county Kentucky areas. He encounters crazy stuff also. I like the thought of being able to provide a fixed wireless internet signal to users; however, I am not climbing a tower during the day. Especially, not after a storm at 2 am to restore people’s network.
My problem with MikroTik is that a lot of the basic things have multiple ways to implement. Take VLANs for instance… You can ask 5 guys how to setup a VLAN on a MikroTik box, and they’ll show you 5 different ways to segment a network, all with different pros/cons/performance. To me, thats not ideal.
Ah good call out. This is what I don’t want.
Welcome to the club, I’m relatively new as well. I’m using the Firewalla Gold in router mode, along with an unmanaged POE+ switch. I’m pretty happy with the setup. The Firewalla was easy as pie to set up. I too have 3 AP’s.
mc
Thanks and a welcome to you too 
I’ve bounced around between the idea of Mikrotik, pfSense, Firewalla and even a basic TP link router. The simplicity of Firewalla is speaking the most to me rn. The price makes me want to run the other way, however 
. But, consistent feedback is it just works - and maybe that alone is worth the price (relative to the cost of my time).
I’ve got two kids, 11 and 6. I appreciate the ability to group devices and apply rules to prohibit certain content/domains/apps. They are spendy, but so are subscriptions for said content filtering. It works for our household. Good luck!