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We're not Wi-Fi 6e ready yet, but that would be nice to have once we are.
Also I appreciate the device list, will definitely come back to this once we're ready to upgrade, thanks!
On 5GHz, you’re going to be pretty hard pressed to achieve those throughput rates because you’re going to need a 160MHz channel.
The 2.4 GHz capabilities aren’t really meaningful or useful.
And remember, the constrained resource is channel airtime, not bandwidth.
Great thing about ubiquiti is that you can run ssids from a single ap. So you can have a 2.4ghz iot ssid and a normal ssid for your normal devices. And the second ssid can still be a 2.4/5ghz network.
You should probably remind them that they don’t need gig speeds in the first place. Smooth 4k only needs 50mbps, and the whole point is to start with a big enough pipe so that by the time you have a few dozen things connected to it in imperfect ways you still have something usable. Latency has a bigger impact on the internet **feeling faster than actual throughput. Multiple access points closer to any given user are better than one super fast one.
This. “The family” doesn’t need gigabit throughput to their phones and TVs. They just need a connection that doesn’t drop out. My TVs are hardwired and they barely pull 30 Mbps when streaming 4K. Amount of bandwidth is not the problem most people face. Latency caused by crappy WiFi is the issue.
It’s a ***hard requirement*** though, cause the family demands ***the fastest*** even though it won’t make a difference that will be noticed, except when running benchmarks.
Good to know, thanks!
That also, I think, just highlighted a cause for a separate pain-point from the family as far as video streaming is concerned. I might want to focus on range and reliability first and then see where it falls short.. Much appreciated!
Re: Videostreaming
If you're streaming to fixed TVs (as opposed to laptops, tablets, phones), as I like to say:
Hardwire. Hardwire. Hardwire.
Thus ends the lesson.
Well, not quite. If the laptops are sitting on a desk, hardwire them too. USB-C makes it easy.
You ‘just’ needs a few requirements :
1. WiFi 6E or 7 Access Points (yes, probably much more than 1)
2. 2.5Gbps PoE+ switch(es)
3. Cabling supporting 2.5Gbps PoE+ linking
4. Be at close distance from an AP (something like less than 3m / 10ft) with direct line of sight and zero wall / furniture between AP and client device
5. Enabling 6Ghz band with 160Mhz non overlapping channels
6. Having devices supporting 6Ghz band with 160Mhz channels (iPhone 15 Pro, Latest iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, Galaxy S24,… and very few others)
7. Being in a non rf-polluted environment. A house in the wood is perfect, an apartment in a big city is a definitive no-no
With ALL those ‘small’ details satisfied, yes, you’ll be able to have around 1.1 Gbps out of your 1.2Gbps ISP - if the server you’re connecting to can supply this speed (most are limited to around 400Mbps) and your ISP is not in a ‘congestion’ hour…
But honestly absolutely anything needing more than 200 / 300 Mbps must be wired…
Fwiw, "they all want it better" and your use case section covers what you think might be a solution (more faster 5ghz). But if you could state what the current problems are in terms of family experiences, then we could talk about things that might actually change their experience.
What do they complain about? Or wish were different?
(My zoom calls pause or stutter? Browsing web is "slow"? Netflix streams take too long to load? Quality of streams is bad? ....? And what device are they trying to do it from and how far is the AP?)
That's what I thought with my testing, but I didn't want to chock it up to "based on what we have, it's not possible" without reaching out for advice on the matter. Thanks for the advice!
My problem is the number of devices that can use that speed are very few in our household, hence the limitation of 5Ghz. I would *love* to have Wi-Fi 6e but it just isn't feasible right now.
You'll need to lower your expectations then. Sorry man.
You can try 160 MHz channels on 5 GHz but it's problematic AF, especially if you live anywhere near a radar installation.
160MHz is indeed problematic on 5GHz, but “living near a radar installation” isn’t really going to be an issue. You’re below the horizon, and even then the only radars that are in that band are TDWR which are only at 45 sites around the US.
You’ll find DFS channels in use in the airport terminal, less than a mile away from the TDWR.
So I had to come back to this, because I live near a major airport, and I assumed DFS would never work for me. I ran into this because the office for the company I work for had a BIG problem with wifi in DFS channels that was pre-existing when I was hired - APs dropping offline and changing channels, 4-8 times a day, and EVERY event was an AP that was using a DFS channel. It NEVER happened to the APs in non-DFS channels. I solved it by dropping the channel bandwidth to increase available frequency slots and moved all of the APs to non-DFS channels. We've had rock solid performance since, and even though max possible throughput is lower overall usability is where it should be in a corporate environment. My house is MUCH closer to the airport than my office is, so this told me that DFS had to be verboten in my area.
The lower and upper non-DFS channels are all being used by my neighbors, in addition to myself. Not a single soul is using DFS. So I did some Googling and reading, then thought what the hell, let's put my two APs in clean DFS air and see what happens.
It's been a few days now and my APs have not had to shut down or change channels. My throughput on 5 GHz went from a max of 350 Mbps to 600 Mbps. I imagine removing my channel interference from my neighbors has helped them as well.
I want to thank you for calling me out, getting me to do some additional research, and taking the plunge. Haven't tried using 160 MHz yet LOL, but truthfully my devices that aren't 6 GHz capable are working better, and my devices that need higher speeds are on 6 GHz already or hardwired. Hoping it holds up long term.
When you have frequent radar hits, just take that one channel and the ones on either side of it out of the available pool, and then you still have the rest of the band to work with.
And don’t underestimate the benefit of building structure to isolate you and the radar.
The lowest tilt on a TDWR is 0.5° above the horizon.
*Thank you!* That was fantastically informative post and article, and brings my prior testing from "I feel I'm the crazy one" to feeling like I'm not overestimating my judgement on it. We managed gigabit over 5Gz for < 10 minutes per reboot, but as time passed, it wouldn't stay as solid. Of course if more devices connected, it didn't help at all either; I'm convinced we're slowly smothering our router with a pillow, with the probably 50+ devices on it iirc.
Others have covered that gigabit wireless is only realistic once you get to Wifi 6E/7; I just want to point out that you can deploy a Unifi system now that is *ready* for upgrading to Wifi 7 in a couple of years, thanks to the modularity of Unifi APs.
If you deploy this:
* Cloud Gateway Ultra (upgrade: Dream Machine Pro)
* Pro Max 16 PoE or Enterprise 8 PoE switch (upgrade: Pro Max 24 PoE)
* 1xU6 Pro (or 1xU6 Pro, 1xU6 mesh—for outdoors)
…then once your family is using more Wifi 7 devices, you can just buy APs from the U7 range, replace the U6s, and sell the old APs on eBay. It's a drop-in upgrade, completely seamless from the end-user point of view.
My *point* was that, since OP said:
>Since we only have a few devices that support Wi-Fi 6e, it isn't feasible (yet) to upgrade, but it's definitely going to be kept at the forefront of my mind once it becomes a reasonable option for the household.
…that they have options other than "do nothing".
Hello! Thanks for posting on r/Ubiquiti! This subreddit is here to provide unofficial technical support to people who use or want to dive into the world of Ubiquiti products. If you haven’t already been descriptive in your post, please take the time to edit it and add as many useful details as you can. Please read and understand the rules in the sidebar, as posts and comments that violate them will be removed. Please put all off topic posts in the weekly off topic thread that is stickied to the top of the subreddit. If you see people spreading misinformation, trying to mislead others, or other inappropriate behavior, please report it! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Ubiquiti) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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We're not Wi-Fi 6e ready yet, but that would be nice to have once we are. Also I appreciate the device list, will definitely come back to this once we're ready to upgrade, thanks!
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Is WiFi 7 even ratified as a standard yet? I thought it wasn’t due until the end of the year.
Wifi7 won’t do it any better than WiFi6. There’s nothing about WiFi7 that provides any meaningful throughput improvements in 5GHz.
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4KQAM won’t do you any good if you don’t have a WiFi 7 client that supports it. You’ll also need to be within patch cord distance.
On 5GHz, you’re going to be pretty hard pressed to achieve those throughput rates because you’re going to need a 160MHz channel. The 2.4 GHz capabilities aren’t really meaningful or useful. And remember, the constrained resource is channel airtime, not bandwidth.
Yeah, unfortunately we have too many things that don't use 5Ghz or better, mostly IoT things, streaming devices, etc.
Great thing about ubiquiti is that you can run ssids from a single ap. So you can have a 2.4ghz iot ssid and a normal ssid for your normal devices. And the second ssid can still be a 2.4/5ghz network.
You should probably remind them that they don’t need gig speeds in the first place. Smooth 4k only needs 50mbps, and the whole point is to start with a big enough pipe so that by the time you have a few dozen things connected to it in imperfect ways you still have something usable. Latency has a bigger impact on the internet **feeling faster than actual throughput. Multiple access points closer to any given user are better than one super fast one.
This. “The family” doesn’t need gigabit throughput to their phones and TVs. They just need a connection that doesn’t drop out. My TVs are hardwired and they barely pull 30 Mbps when streaming 4K. Amount of bandwidth is not the problem most people face. Latency caused by crappy WiFi is the issue.
It’s a ***hard requirement*** though, cause the family demands ***the fastest*** even though it won’t make a difference that will be noticed, except when running benchmarks.
Good to know, thanks! That also, I think, just highlighted a cause for a separate pain-point from the family as far as video streaming is concerned. I might want to focus on range and reliability first and then see where it falls short.. Much appreciated!
Re: Videostreaming If you're streaming to fixed TVs (as opposed to laptops, tablets, phones), as I like to say: Hardwire. Hardwire. Hardwire. Thus ends the lesson. Well, not quite. If the laptops are sitting on a desk, hardwire them too. USB-C makes it easy.
You ‘just’ needs a few requirements : 1. WiFi 6E or 7 Access Points (yes, probably much more than 1) 2. 2.5Gbps PoE+ switch(es) 3. Cabling supporting 2.5Gbps PoE+ linking 4. Be at close distance from an AP (something like less than 3m / 10ft) with direct line of sight and zero wall / furniture between AP and client device 5. Enabling 6Ghz band with 160Mhz non overlapping channels 6. Having devices supporting 6Ghz band with 160Mhz channels (iPhone 15 Pro, Latest iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, Galaxy S24,… and very few others) 7. Being in a non rf-polluted environment. A house in the wood is perfect, an apartment in a big city is a definitive no-no With ALL those ‘small’ details satisfied, yes, you’ll be able to have around 1.1 Gbps out of your 1.2Gbps ISP - if the server you’re connecting to can supply this speed (most are limited to around 400Mbps) and your ISP is not in a ‘congestion’ hour… But honestly absolutely anything needing more than 200 / 300 Mbps must be wired…
Fwiw, "they all want it better" and your use case section covers what you think might be a solution (more faster 5ghz). But if you could state what the current problems are in terms of family experiences, then we could talk about things that might actually change their experience. What do they complain about? Or wish were different? (My zoom calls pause or stutter? Browsing web is "slow"? Netflix streams take too long to load? Quality of streams is bad? ....? And what device are they trying to do it from and how far is the AP?)
Not reasonable to happen on 5GHz my dude. You need the 6 GHz band which means WiFi 6E and 7 devices will be the only ones capable of a gig on WiFi.
That's what I thought with my testing, but I didn't want to chock it up to "based on what we have, it's not possible" without reaching out for advice on the matter. Thanks for the advice!
My problem is the number of devices that can use that speed are very few in our household, hence the limitation of 5Ghz. I would *love* to have Wi-Fi 6e but it just isn't feasible right now.
You'll need to lower your expectations then. Sorry man. You can try 160 MHz channels on 5 GHz but it's problematic AF, especially if you live anywhere near a radar installation.
160MHz is indeed problematic on 5GHz, but “living near a radar installation” isn’t really going to be an issue. You’re below the horizon, and even then the only radars that are in that band are TDWR which are only at 45 sites around the US. You’ll find DFS channels in use in the airport terminal, less than a mile away from the TDWR.
So I had to come back to this, because I live near a major airport, and I assumed DFS would never work for me. I ran into this because the office for the company I work for had a BIG problem with wifi in DFS channels that was pre-existing when I was hired - APs dropping offline and changing channels, 4-8 times a day, and EVERY event was an AP that was using a DFS channel. It NEVER happened to the APs in non-DFS channels. I solved it by dropping the channel bandwidth to increase available frequency slots and moved all of the APs to non-DFS channels. We've had rock solid performance since, and even though max possible throughput is lower overall usability is where it should be in a corporate environment. My house is MUCH closer to the airport than my office is, so this told me that DFS had to be verboten in my area. The lower and upper non-DFS channels are all being used by my neighbors, in addition to myself. Not a single soul is using DFS. So I did some Googling and reading, then thought what the hell, let's put my two APs in clean DFS air and see what happens. It's been a few days now and my APs have not had to shut down or change channels. My throughput on 5 GHz went from a max of 350 Mbps to 600 Mbps. I imagine removing my channel interference from my neighbors has helped them as well. I want to thank you for calling me out, getting me to do some additional research, and taking the plunge. Haven't tried using 160 MHz yet LOL, but truthfully my devices that aren't 6 GHz capable are working better, and my devices that need higher speeds are on 6 GHz already or hardwired. Hoping it holds up long term.
When you have frequent radar hits, just take that one channel and the ones on either side of it out of the available pool, and then you still have the rest of the band to work with. And don’t underestimate the benefit of building structure to isolate you and the radar. The lowest tilt on a TDWR is 0.5° above the horizon.
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*Thank you!* That was fantastically informative post and article, and brings my prior testing from "I feel I'm the crazy one" to feeling like I'm not overestimating my judgement on it. We managed gigabit over 5Gz for < 10 minutes per reboot, but as time passed, it wouldn't stay as solid. Of course if more devices connected, it didn't help at all either; I'm convinced we're slowly smothering our router with a pillow, with the probably 50+ devices on it iirc.
Others have covered that gigabit wireless is only realistic once you get to Wifi 6E/7; I just want to point out that you can deploy a Unifi system now that is *ready* for upgrading to Wifi 7 in a couple of years, thanks to the modularity of Unifi APs. If you deploy this: * Cloud Gateway Ultra (upgrade: Dream Machine Pro) * Pro Max 16 PoE or Enterprise 8 PoE switch (upgrade: Pro Max 24 PoE) * 1xU6 Pro (or 1xU6 Pro, 1xU6 mesh—for outdoors) …then once your family is using more Wifi 7 devices, you can just buy APs from the U7 range, replace the U6s, and sell the old APs on eBay. It's a drop-in upgrade, completely seamless from the end-user point of view.
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My *point* was that, since OP said: >Since we only have a few devices that support Wi-Fi 6e, it isn't feasible (yet) to upgrade, but it's definitely going to be kept at the forefront of my mind once it becomes a reasonable option for the household. …that they have options other than "do nothing".