I live in a rural area where there isn’t even cell service. Quite a few years ago I started working on getting wifi across my property, which is 5 acres and my Grandparents old home that no one lives in, plus my Dad’s home across the road. Started with a one access point omni-directional antenna on the apex of our roof. That worked okay for the time but obviously didn’t reach all the property I wanted to.
Found Ubiquiti from some YouTube videos, and built a PtMP using three nano stations, with 6 or 7 APs spread over the property. Some indoor APs, and outdoor. Worked pretty good, but I could never get the chains as good as I wanted. We had DSL IS at the time and it worked pretty good speed wise for what I needed, which was security cameras and just internet in the yard. Ubiquiti came out with U6 APs and I bought three of them, and upgraded from a USG and Cloud Key to the UDR. Meshed one U6 to the UDR about 50 ft… And put the other two on the roof of my Grandparents old home, and one on my Dads across the street and those two mesh to the one on the backyard. I figured I would try it without the PtMP and see what happened. the U6 in the back yard is about 400 feet with good LOS and the other is about 250 with good LOS.
We now have fiber at 300 mbps and of course with each hop on the mesh I lose some speed. But when connected to either of the APs at the old home or my dad’s I get anywhere from 50 mbps to over 100 sometimes. The cameras work fine and I run an Apple TV inside my dad’s shed fine as well. I can stream music while mowing the property and fits my needs pretty good.
I posted all that to ask if that makes sense to do it that way or should I have used the PtMP? I mean I know the simple answer is if it works for me then it’s fine.
Just wanted to hear opinions/suggestions from folks. that know a whole lot more than I do about networking. I usually tell people I know just enough to tear things up.
Thanks for the forum and thanks for any comments.