The lack of multi-floor is a major limitation of the design centre at present IMHO. I can understand why they did it from an enterprise vs. home use case point of view, though it seems it would be a relatively easy feature to implement. I'd also love to see a more UK/European style house example - mine isn't this big but is full of brick walls which cause all kinds of problems, especially for 5GHz. In my case signal coverage going through a suspended timber floor is much easier than a brick wall so I've zoned into vertical 'cells' with the APs in the loft space serving 2/3 rooms vertically stacked above eachother.
@@TheSpiv I think the benefit of design center comes from the ability to quickly plot something that might give you the 80% solution. Probably too many variables to account for (I.e. other signal interference) to provide anything practically accurate
I just went through this process for a new 2 story house build and am a bit apprehensive of how things will play out in the real world. I optimized AP placements for each of the floors individually, but don't know how the 2nd floor signal will affect things on the 1st floor. While the APs are not directly over top of each other, they are a little closer vertically than I would ideally like. And since I'm having network drops placed in specific ceiling locations on each floor for the APs, it's not like I will be able to relocate them easily or cheaply if things don't work out like I planned. Just hoping that any interference issues I might run into can be mitigated through configuration changes in Unifi...
Well, folks should understand that predictive heatmaps like this are no substitution for proper pre-install and post-install surveys.. but you do what you can when you don't want to spend $12k on Ekahau
@@gaastonsr Thanks, I have a split level house that is quite open and have just put an LR on the second floor ceiling in a stairwell. Should I still try and map each floor independently
@@gaastonsr I know only one single building where the WiFi does not penetrate the extra thick reinforced concrete ceilings and I seriously doubt something crazy like this does even exist in the US. Usually WiFi can penetrate between the floors reasonably well and it is often a good idea to supply a room from above/below. And US houses are known to be built as flimsy as possible.
Start by buying 1 AP and a long patchcabel. Now move the AP around the house and check how each placement affects the coverage, after you have surveyed you simply buy more APs if 1 isn't giving you the coverage you need. I have surveyed similar sized houses where some needed several APs for good coverage and others 1 AP would cover the entire thing. It's a good idea to survey with the weakest device, I've seen instances where my phone had 300+ mbit throughput and other devices barely got 30. I never trust the planner cause I'm the one paying if the final product doesn't deliver
@@britboy70 My single U6-LR basically covers my whole house and garage and porches, but my split-level is very very open. Ceiling of the stairwell is where I put it, from the half-basement to the main floor, and the half-second floor is just above. Works great
I personally consider the planning as done here ok for a business environment where 2,4GHz is usually enough, or a lower budget home environment. As for homes where people want a lot of bang, as they paid someone to get them a lot of bang, I usually completely drop 2,4GHz from planning and plan for ideal 5GHz coverage everywhere and then when it is set up basically activate 2,4GHz on every second or third AP only to have that covered as well. I'm a very big fan of having the AP in the room where strong signal is needed directly, rather than having it centrally and have the best signal in some hallway and degraded signal where it is needed. If that means using 1 or two APs more and turn down the signal, so be it.
Great video - I have found the design centre really good as well. Another tip I would give is that it can be useful to just temporarily mount the APs where you think they should go, and then check real world coverage and overlap by using a wifi mapping strength app on both a low power and high power client device by walking around, to check what you think will work actually is working. I found some of my internal walls were acting like external walls and causing about a 15 dBm attenuation in signal.
Garage to main house has fire breaks, and atleast 5/8" drywall, so concider it an exterior wall as it is THICCCCC and your WeeFee's will have a hard time getting through at any proper distance. I always put atleast a LITE AP in the garage for decent coverage to cars for updates and when leaving the house having a decent wifi down the driveway before the door shuts.
I used a Uniquiti Beacon AP in my garage because there is no easy way to run Cat wire to it. I needed 'net access for updates for my two cars. Works perfectly.
How do we plan out a multi floor house? Should we treat each floor by itself or can we insert multiple floors and see the Wi-Fi coverage between floors.
As always, test thoroughly before getting out the drill. Air ducts and other metal objects (fridge) were much more of a problem for my setup than walls or distance.
In my experience the Unifi Access points radiate out their signal forwards and not out to the sides. You can get better coverage by mounting them on an outer wall facing inwards than you will from mounting it on a ceiling facing down. Even better if you have access to an attic or a roof cavity then mounting it there can completely negate any signal loss due to internal walls. It's not where you put the access point but how you direct it that makes the most impact. If you mount them right then you can reduce the number of AP's that you need to buy.
That's actually very close to the exact same locations I have for my APs in my 1500 sq ft house. What's funny is how many people don't believe that 1500 sq ft needs two APs. I'm not including the several that I have outside. :)
Great video. I'm learning towards my soon to be installed DMP and AP at my house. I'm guessing there's also impact on the signal if you install the AP on a wall instead of a ceiling.
Hey Chris. I appreciate your videos. I would like to see a collab video with you and a IoT consumer channel to talk about network segmentation/security considerations for IoT. There are a lot of recommendations out there for on how configure your network for IoT. However the whole thing can get really complex quickly if you use home assistant, or other local controls including the up-coming Matter devices. How do you keep your phone and laptop secure while still giving access to use Chromecast to your TV from your phone while keeping your questionable smart bulb from harvesting network traffic. Obviously even a single network can be complex but how do you control the flow of traffic through you network and still keep people as safe as possible? A guide on this using UDM/Unifi Vlan's etc would be great. I recommend a collab with "Smart Home Solver" or "Automate Your Life" channels.
I have a 2 storey home and found it next to impossible to use the design centre. Further, just for the bottom floor I have found that "lesser technology" than Ubiquity gives me great coverage, but when I try to use the Access Point in the design I figure Ubiquit have set the "algorhythmns" such that you would buy extra U6 Lite points.
Can you import design drawings as I was going to get someone to do my house into a floor plan design with accurate measurements. How do you deal with two stories and placing APs on 2nd floor ceiling etc and mapping coverage to the ground floor? I’ve got an AP25 to test and looking to move away from unifi
Curious how you would use a tool like the Ubiquiti Design Center with a split-level home. Does it even have considerations for multi/split level homes? Got a very similar setup going here in my place. 2x AC Lite's in a 1200-1500 sqft home, but split level. Right now coverage is good enough in most areas and I've adjusted placement a few times but I'm sure it can be optimized as anything I've done so far is just guessing and aiming for high experience numbers in Unifi.
You have to do each floor separately and then make best guesses for WiFi bleed between floors. The Design Center doesn't have that capability unfortunately. In my case - I have a single AP up in my attic that basically covers my entire 2nd story.
Does it matter if the AP is installed in horizontal or vertical mode? So on the ceiling or on the wall? How much of a difference does it make and does design studio display the signal quality for ceiling installation only?
Thanks for that video. It is always interesting for us in Europe (with typically very solid internal walls) to see how much easier it is in the North American world where internal walls are made of glorified cardboard - sorry, drywall - making Wi-Fi coverage much easier to plan, as you kindly demonstrated. As an aside: doesn't noise make its way from room to room with a construction method that allows Wi-Fi to spread so well?
i would place access point bedroom 2-3 in bath 2 and add access point 3 in garage near the wic then move diving rom access point a little bit more center
Thanks, Chris...very informative as always...:) I have 4 access points...nano HD, AC Pro, AC-Lite, and U6-Lite...it is a 2 storey, and basement home...btw the UDM (old) is in the basement where the fibre terminates in the computer rack...1300 sq. feet on all 3 floors, it is a "log" home..., plus a large garage (attached) outside the log...I try to wire in as much as possible, all access points are directly wired...I will need to check out Ubiquity's different floor plans...maybe I have too many access points???
Based on the description alone, it doesn't sound like you have too many at all, but if wanted to go through the exercise that Chris did in this video, you might find some improvements that could be made or signal strength adjustment. If you don't have any coverage issues though, you might already have it spot on though. I have a small 3 bedroom single level house with single skin timber walls & 1 AC-Lite. I get coverage all through the house & 70% of the yard, it's quite amazing how good the Unifi AP's are.
Limitations of 5 GHz broadcast range and ability to penetrate thicker walls tends to lead to suboptimal but necessary AP placement - wherever you spend the most time online, e.g. office. 2.4 GHz coverage at that point becomes a crapshoot
I think that is fantastic I know in the various Starlink groups we get similar questions about placement or why split 2.4Ghz from 5Ghz for coverage? and having a visual like the design center is helpful.
Garage walls typically have thicker drywall 5/8" and are usually insulated. In my experience they are not built like an exterior wall which has siding and sheer (plywood/OSB).
Interested in how floors figure in. I haven't read throuygh comments or searched your content. In my case, I have 3 floors and have populated APs on two floors expecting to bleed well into the unpopulated floor. I have some outside APs as well. I will check the design studio and hope that UI has handled for my use case. Thanks for all your valuable information. -John.
That looks like a pretty good design but I would probably throw down another $99 for the garage. The heat map tools are an excellent starting point for sites unseen, but a complex layout may require an onsite visit to finalize the design using at least 2 live radios and some 100’ patch cords. Building materials and neighbors with 40MHz channel widths can mess up a seemingly good paper design.
I had four access points spread evenly throughout the house mounted on the ceiling and it sucked, then I put two mounted high in the attic on each side of the house and it works like magic. When the access point is higher up, it looks down at the whole house and only has the ceiling to go through rather than multiple layers of walls.
How'd you install the scale of the house so you could accurately know the wall lengths etc? Also their modem/router would provide some wifi in the house so should that have been placed so you could factor in it's signal contribution?
Did they change the design center colors? any WAP model I choose does not show any red color for signal strength no matter where they are placed. It shows green, yellow, and gray.
Wait, Red is better? I got a little confused about that. I did my layout with the wifiman app this morning and with the exception of the dream router area, everything else was red / yellow and orange.
What about splitting the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz? Do you guys do that or keep it on 1 SSID. I think you loose seed with multiple SSID's but not sure how much, obviously depends on your uplink connection
What about a two story house with attic and basement - the design center doesn't seem to represent any coverage from a floor to the one above/below it. I'm looking to migrate from ASUS to Unifi APs and I currently have the ASUS in the attic - is it OK to place Unifi APs in the attic above the space you want to cover?
Yeah, nah, I personally run a single U6LR in the roof cavity to cover whole house and be free of 2 units making noise for each other as well as roaming issues as Wi-Fi is still break-before-make system. This caculator is great for people to spend time compensating for a lack of RF knowledge. What is fails with badly is dealling with simple fact that having strong signal to the end-user device is nice but you need said device that rarely has decent antenna setups and low drive to be able to get back to the WAP. I see it all the time, way too many WAP's put in by people who should leave things alone.
But as you have pointed out - mobile client devices typically have low transmit signal strength, which is precisely why a single U6 LR blasting at high signal strength may NOT be the right choice for many people. Multiple APs at lower signal strength play nicely with mobile device wifi.
Are those access points designed for wall mount or ceiling mount? I have a shop with 15-foot ceilings and the access point is on the wall, about 10' up. It works ok, but wondering if I should put it in the center of the shop on the ceiling for optimum performance?
I had the same concern with high ceiling in a garage. Initially I had a access point at 12 feet up on a 3/4" EMT conduit with the access point mounted millimeters away from a 4x4x2" metallic box. Coverage was not good below the access point and up to 5 plus feet away. As a second try I moved the access point to 10 feet above the floor, used 2 inch plastic spacer between the metal box and the access point adapter. Coverage was good below the access point, and great in all of the garage.
How does this software handle differences in interior wall materials? I would assume it expects them to be 2x4 construction with 1/2" drywall? What would you do for older homes with plaster walls? Or in my case 2x6 construction with 5/8" drywall and rockwool insulation? I also have several interior walls that are 2' thick stone construction. I guess just put them as exterior walls?
Yes, I disagree with your placement completely. You must see that as you move the first AP up towards the back of the house how the signal in the window area of Bedroom 1 breaks. That is exactly where the wife will be sitting on her phone. The thing is, it’s a question of how the family uses WiFi. Do they want it on the porch? Bedrooms? You got great coverage in the family are where exactly no one is going to be sitting. Couches tend to be in front of windows, get the coverage there. Pull AP 1 down just above where it says “Kitchen” on the plan and cover that entire end of the house. AP 2 is more tricky, and I feel they need a third if they want the garage covered. AP 2 just in front of the entry BATH 2. To cover both bedrooms.
these estimates seem awful pesimistic. I installed 3 APs in a roughly 1500 sq/ft bi level, 1- center hall 2nd fl, 2- garage, 3- outside backyard on the roof overhang. 90% of my devices stay connected to the 1st AP installed in the hallway, even on 5ghz. The other two APs were most likely not needed - but the cost is minimal and I ran the cable myself.
There's a lot of focus in the WiFi industry on speed. To get those gigabit speeds on 5Ghz, you do need to be pretty close, like in the UI simulation. A usable connection will be a much larger area. With the focus on speed, you don't want the consumer getting one AP, then complaining that they only get 100Mbps in their bedroom. Is it still usable internet? Yes. Is it the gigabit speed promised on the box? No. By having the customer get two APs, their devices will be relatively close to the AP more of the time, and get those faster speeds they are paying for.
I live here on a comparable size in Germany. Here there are several walls of concrete even inside the house. Here you need about 4 AP for a similar coverage. In my case one UDR and 3 U6-Pro. What I would still like to know is the comparison between a ceiling and wall mounting. Anyway, thank you for the video. Great content!
@@christianbrandt6710 I believe you. The problem is the UDR, which is relatively far down on a shelf. Directly against a concrete wall. Behind the concrete wall, the first U6-Pro is connected via wireless uplink. No 50cm between them, mounted directly at the same height, so that the connection cross-section is as small as possible and thus the connection must break through as little concrete wall as possible. If I were to mount the U6 behind the wall on the ceiling, the UDR would have to break through just under 2.5 meters of concrete wall, since the direct cross-section from the very bottom to the very top through the wall is the longest. Solution would be no wireless uplink, but direct cabling. Thanks anyway!!!
@@drosselbusch For you Americans, what this guy is saying is "yes" in Germany the inside walls are basically at the same spec as the outside walls. I, too, live in germany, and my inner walls are brick and morter (Bau/build date 1879) and thick wooden doors. This is no bullshit, my inner walls are 20 CM thick and made of brick. Yet I cover my 70 square meter space with a single UAP-AC-PRO. Mounted on the ceiling and right in the middle of my space.
When it comes to mounting any of the unifi "domes" like the U6-Pro, you need to look at its shape. Ubiquiti has said their dome-shaped APs are broadcasting outward in a 180 degree hemisphere from the mounting surface. If you mount one on a wall, anything behind that wall is not getting much of a signal. If you mount it on the first floor ceiling, the second floor will need its own APs. I strongly recommend the ceiling mount option for the best coverage. Keep in mind that load-bearing walls and beams will interfere with and reduce your range, so if you have visible beams supporting the roof or floor above, mount it on the bottom of the beam instead of the ceiling resting on the beam. Hope that helps.
I posted a similar Reddit post about my 3 story concrete home. I finally decided that I could squeak by with 2 on the first floor, 1 on the second floor (open floorpan) and 2 on the third floor. Plus extra PoE drops in the ceiling of weaker zones, just in case... One limitation of the Design Center is that you cannot orient an access point on a wall. It looks like they assume the APs will be ceiling hung. But for some layouts, it may be better to wall hang them.
The recommendations you made are reasonable. I would do a high density deployment and lower the power for 5Ghz coverage but that would be cost prohibitive for some people. The cost of running cables and switches could easily be 4-5 times the cost of the access points they support.
lol I remember that post was going to throw my 2 cents in but I am more of an extreme power user so I tend to overkill and didn't want to trigger the masses on reddit.
It depends also on the materials the house is made off. Here in Norway most houses are made of wood. Outer layer of planks, a layer for moist protection, insulation layer of Rockwool, and inner layer of planks. Inner wall of wooden planks, some isulation, and planks on the other side. These walls do not block wifi much. The 2 AP's would even give good coverage up to 15 meters outside in the yard. If there was a 2nd floor, I would not place AP's there, since the signal go right through the floor. I have installed these in many houses, and had not problems (or complaints from my customers) what so ever. However, a concrete house is a different matter, depending on the thickness of the walls. (/edit: typos)
Forgive me if this post is duplicated. I find that the driving factor for Access Point placement is the Home Chief Executive based on aesthetics 😅. Thanks for a clear explanation on the use of Design Centre.
"which are 99 bucks". That's where i laughed. In my country they are nearly 200€ right now. Man, i can remember just 2 years ago, when I bought a AC Nano for 77€
What if you have no sealing option to hang up the AP's in a house and can you only the walls where the wallsockets are 19 inches abvoe the floor every room ?
You'll get better coverage if you mount them on outer walls facing inwards than you will putting them on a ceiling. It's the way the antennas are designed in the unifi AP's
A lot also depends on how the house is built. I have a two story 2000 sqft house. I have one UAP Lite in the center of the house, downstairs. I get excellent signal strength throughout the entire house, even on the patio.
Coverage greatly depends on how close your neighbors are. When I lived in a rural neighborhood for a few years I had a long narrow house, 72 x 28. I had good coverage even with bad placement, and only two weak signals from neighbors. The AP was in the master bedroom at one end of the house, the two bedrooms at the opposite end still good coverage. Transfer speed (internal server) was in the 200Mbps range, much faster than our internet. Later we had to the city again. In our apartment, our devices can see over 75 different SSID broadcasts of various strengths. Our signal strength is high everywhere, but so is the signal for a bunch of other SSIDs. It's only a 900 square foot apartment, but the signal from the living room was not usable in either bedroom. I had to buy a second access point and a PowerLine adapter set to get good coverage. One is on the wall between the master bedroom and the living room, and the second is in the second bedroom. The walk-in closet there became my office, but it is bigger than my old cubical. In the living room we get about 25Mbps, but 75Mbps in the bedrooms with the AP. My other pet peeve is that everyone is using super wide WiFi channels so the whole non-overlapping-channels concept is thrown out the window.
@@javaman2883 Yes, we’re in a similar situation. The houses in our development are very close together and I usually see 10 to 12 other SSID’s along with mine. I especially like the ones who rename them with their address.
@@javaman2883 I have seen your problem hundreds of times because my company installs WiFi in condominiums, time shares, & resorts. Select the strongest channel from neighbors and use that for 2.4 GHz with 40M bandwidth. Do same for 5G with 80M bandwidth. WiFi is capable of minimizing interference on same channel, but weak on rejecting interference from adjacent channels. Hopefully your adjacent channel interference has low signal strength. As ISP for select MUDs, I have the luxury of controlling channels to minimize interference, but sadly you don’t.
In my area, the kitchens have plywood or OSB boards under the drywall on one or both sides of the wall. The plywood helps with giving better hanging strength for the kitchen cabinets, and on the opposite side of the wall is for helping with sound. Cabinet doors shutting will vibrate the wall causing noise through the wall. The extra layers of wood help to reduce that noise.
Thank you Chris for your video. Can I suggest to add a subtitle with metric unit (1575 sq ft = 145 m²) when you talk about house dimensions for UE fans?
I feel like the noise floor is the only actual issue, or at least more than anything else. I've had an old directional 11dBi Unifi AP (802.11g) point outside from a window in the corner of a 1500 ft² floor plan and being fine on the other side of the house, even outside through all the walls. In practice a single pro AP dead in the center would probably work more then fine, or if you have a basement and a 2nd floor, one in each, none in the middle, unless your house is all concrete and faraday cages. Or add a 2nd one to cover a big garden...
Can you optimize your setup for 5ghz and turn down the transmit power / disable the 2.4 radio independent of the 5ghz to fix the overlap issue on the 2.4 when deploying more AP’s for a high density and higher throughput deployment in the same area?
Lest we forget (or never knew) the whole purpose of the 5GHz band was to (a) increase bps throughout, and (b) reduce signal overlap in high-density applications like apartments, condos, multi-tenant office buildings, etc. So with 5GHz, expect at least two to three times the number of APs in a given area vs 2.4GHz. Higher cost? Yes. But the payback is a far better shared experience for everyone.
I have a 2,200 sq ft home and I only put 1 UAP AC LR in the middle of the home 12' high with the worst 5Ghz signal at -80dBm and the worst 2.4Ghz signal at -66dBm (floodlight outside the garage). Do I really need 2? Any benefits of going with 2 U6 Lites or shall I upgrade to 1 U6 LR? Thanks.
I was in a large hotel in central Rome recently and noticed a blue glow under the office desk in the room the first night in. As the second evening approached I took a look under the desk to determine the source of the glow and low and behold they was one of the Ubiquity access points mounted under the desk, source of the blue glow, case closed. Mounted on the wall, hmm vertical antenna polarity? Didn’t bother to check on signal power received by my devices.
Excellent work, teacher! I looked at their Design Center but shied away from the time required in recreating my floor plan - unless, is it possible tp copy/paste a plan into Design Center?
I really appreciate everything in your videos with the exception of your tinny distant and hollow sounding audio. Can you get a good lav mic if you don’t want to be right up on your main boom mic? The current sound quality really hurts the message you are trying to get across. Thanks again for all the content.
Awesome info, many thanks for the channel have set up my bridge to my new shed, but having an issue taking a meshed wifi device and getting it to work on the bridge, do you have a video with this application look forward to your reply
I placed my access point directly under the roof so walls are no longer a problem and my ceiling is wood based. In the end one access point now covers the whole house.
![[UA] Eternal Fire проти NAVI | EPL Season 20 Malta](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/chvlsDygrZM/mqdefault.jpg)
I'd love to see how you handle multiple floors with the design center.
The lack of multi-floor is a major limitation of the design centre at present IMHO.
I can understand why they did it from an enterprise vs. home use case point of view, though it seems it would be a relatively easy feature to implement.
I'd also love to see a more UK/European style house example - mine isn't this big but is full of brick walls which cause all kinds of problems, especially for 5GHz. In my case signal coverage going through a suspended timber floor is much easier than a brick wall so I've zoned into vertical 'cells' with the APs in the loft space serving 2/3 rooms vertically stacked above eachother.
@@TheSpiv I think the benefit of design center comes from the ability to quickly plot something that might give you the 80% solution. Probably too many variables to account for (I.e. other signal interference) to provide anything practically accurate
I just went through this process for a new 2 story house build and am a bit apprehensive of how things will play out in the real world.
I optimized AP placements for each of the floors individually, but don't know how the 2nd floor signal will affect things on the 1st floor. While the APs are not directly over top of each other, they are a little closer vertically than I would ideally like. And since I'm having network drops placed in specific ceiling locations on each floor for the APs, it's not like I will be able to relocate them easily or cheaply if things don't work out like I planned.
Just hoping that any interference issues I might run into can be mitigated through configuration changes in Unifi...
@@TheSpiv oh gotcha. Yeah, that definitely makes sense.
Well, folks should understand that predictive heatmaps like this are no substitution for proper pre-install and post-install surveys.. but you do what you can when you don't want to spend $12k on Ekahau
How would you deal with a two story house? The app doesn’t consider how the signal would move floor to floor
You should design each floor independently. Signal from one story shouldn’t affect the other.
@@gaastonsr Thanks, I have a split level house that is quite open and have just put an LR on the second floor ceiling in a stairwell. Should I still try and map each floor independently
@@gaastonsr I know only one single building where the WiFi does not penetrate the extra thick reinforced concrete ceilings and I seriously doubt something crazy like this does even exist in the US. Usually WiFi can penetrate between the floors reasonably well and it is often a good idea to supply a room from above/below. And US houses are known to be built as flimsy as possible.
Start by buying 1 AP and a long patchcabel. Now move the AP around the house and check how each placement affects the coverage, after you have surveyed you simply buy more APs if 1 isn't giving you the coverage you need. I have surveyed similar sized houses where some needed several APs for good coverage and others 1 AP would cover the entire thing. It's a good idea to survey with the weakest device, I've seen instances where my phone had 300+ mbit throughput and other devices barely got 30. I never trust the planner cause I'm the one paying if the final product doesn't deliver
@@britboy70 My single U6-LR basically covers my whole house and garage and porches, but my split-level is very very open. Ceiling of the stairwell is where I put it, from the half-basement to the main floor, and the half-second floor is just above. Works great
I personally consider the planning as done here ok for a business environment where 2,4GHz is usually enough, or a lower budget home environment. As for homes where people want a lot of bang, as they paid someone to get them a lot of bang, I usually completely drop 2,4GHz from planning and plan for ideal 5GHz coverage everywhere and then when it is set up basically activate 2,4GHz on every second or third AP only to have that covered as well.
I'm a very big fan of having the AP in the room where strong signal is needed directly, rather than having it centrally and have the best signal in some hallway and degraded signal where it is needed. If that means using 1 or two APs more and turn down the signal, so be it.
Great video - I have found the design centre really good as well. Another tip I would give is that it can be useful to just temporarily mount the APs where you think they should go, and then check real world coverage and overlap by using a wifi mapping strength app on both a low power and high power client device by walking around, to check what you think will work actually is working. I found some of my internal walls were acting like external walls and causing about a 15 dBm attenuation in signal.
Garage to main house has fire breaks, and atleast 5/8" drywall, so concider it an exterior wall as it is THICCCCC and your WeeFee's will have a hard time getting through at any proper distance. I always put atleast a LITE AP in the garage for decent coverage to cars for updates and when leaving the house having a decent wifi down the driveway before the door shuts.
I used a Uniquiti Beacon AP in my garage because there is no easy way to run Cat wire to it. I needed 'net access for updates for my two cars. Works perfectly.
I keep forgetting about the design center. Thank you for making this, served as a reminder for me!
How do we plan out a multi floor house? Should we treat each floor by itself or can we insert multiple floors and see the Wi-Fi coverage between floors.
That is so neat! I would start here, and slowly expand by adding 2x2's in sparse areas if posible. But the design suite looks great! Thanks!
As always, test thoroughly before getting out the drill. Air ducts and other metal objects (fridge) were much more of a problem for my setup than walls or distance.
In my experience the Unifi Access points radiate out their signal forwards and not out to the sides. You can get better coverage by mounting them on an outer wall facing inwards than you will from mounting it on a ceiling facing down.
Even better if you have access to an attic or a roof cavity then mounting it there can completely negate any signal loss due to internal walls.
It's not where you put the access point but how you direct it that makes the most impact.
If you mount them right then you can reduce the number of AP's that you need to buy.
Great video as usual! Do you plan on any videos on the wifiman "heat map" mapping functionality (this may only work with Unifi hardware)?
That's actually very close to the exact same locations I have for my APs in my 1500 sq ft house. What's funny is how many people don't believe that 1500 sq ft needs two APs. I'm not including the several that I have outside. :)
Chris - I love seeing your design segments! How does this tool work for multi-floor houses?
I was curious about the multi-floor as well as I have a 2 story home.
Great video. I'm learning towards my soon to be installed DMP and AP at my house. I'm guessing there's also impact on the signal if you install the AP on a wall instead of a ceiling.
Hey Chris. I appreciate your videos. I would like to see a collab video with you and a IoT consumer channel to talk about network segmentation/security considerations for IoT. There are a lot of recommendations out there for on how configure your network for IoT. However the whole thing can get really complex quickly if you use home assistant, or other local controls including the up-coming Matter devices. How do you keep your phone and laptop secure while still giving access to use Chromecast to your TV from your phone while keeping your questionable smart bulb from harvesting network traffic. Obviously even a single network can be complex but how do you control the flow of traffic through you network and still keep people as safe as possible? A guide on this using UDM/Unifi Vlan's etc would be great. I recommend a collab with "Smart Home Solver" or "Automate Your Life" channels.
I could certainly see this happening! UrAvgConsumer's Wi-Fi problems are infamous among his followers (me included) so this could work out!
In the US, that back garage wall is almost certainly a firewall comparable in density to the exterior walls.
I have a 2 storey home and found it next to impossible to use the design centre. Further, just for the bottom floor I have found that "lesser technology" than Ubiquity gives me great coverage, but when I try to use the Access Point in the design I figure Ubiquit have set the "algorhythmns" such that you would buy extra U6 Lite points.
Can you import design drawings as I was going to get someone to do my house into a floor plan design with accurate measurements.
How do you deal with two stories and placing APs on 2nd floor ceiling etc and mapping coverage to the ground floor?
I’ve got an AP25 to test and looking to move away from unifi
Curious how you would use a tool like the Ubiquiti Design Center with a split-level home. Does it even have considerations for multi/split level homes? Got a very similar setup going here in my place. 2x AC Lite's in a 1200-1500 sqft home, but split level. Right now coverage is good enough in most areas and I've adjusted placement a few times but I'm sure it can be optimized as anything I've done so far is just guessing and aiming for high experience numbers in Unifi.
You have to do each floor separately and then make best guesses for WiFi bleed between floors. The Design Center doesn't have that capability unfortunately.
In my case - I have a single AP up in my attic that basically covers my entire 2nd story.
Does it matter if the AP is installed in horizontal or vertical mode? So on the ceiling or on the wall?
How much of a difference does it make and does design studio display the signal quality for ceiling installation only?
Thanks for that video. It is always interesting for us in Europe (with typically very solid internal walls) to see how much easier it is in the North American world where internal walls are made of glorified cardboard - sorry, drywall - making Wi-Fi coverage much easier to plan, as you kindly demonstrated. As an aside: doesn't noise make its way from room to room with a construction method that allows Wi-Fi to spread so well?
i would place access point bedroom 2-3 in bath 2 and add access point 3 in garage near the wic then move diving rom access point a little bit more center
Thanks, Chris...very informative as always...:) I have 4 access points...nano HD, AC Pro, AC-Lite, and U6-Lite...it is a 2 storey, and basement home...btw the UDM (old) is in the basement where the fibre terminates in the computer rack...1300 sq. feet on all 3 floors, it is a "log" home..., plus a large garage (attached) outside the log...I try to wire in as much as possible, all access points are directly wired...I will need to check out Ubiquity's different floor plans...maybe I have too many access points???
Based on the description alone, it doesn't sound like you have too many at all, but if wanted to go through the exercise that Chris did in this video, you might find some improvements that could be made or signal strength adjustment.
If you don't have any coverage issues though, you might already have it spot on though.
I have a small 3 bedroom single level house with single skin timber walls & 1 AC-Lite. I get coverage all through the house & 70% of the yard, it's quite amazing how good the Unifi AP's are.
Limitations of 5 GHz broadcast range and ability to penetrate thicker walls tends to lead to suboptimal but necessary AP placement - wherever you spend the most time online, e.g. office. 2.4 GHz coverage at that point becomes a crapshoot
I think that is fantastic I know in the various Starlink groups we get similar questions about placement or why split 2.4Ghz from 5Ghz for coverage? and having a visual like the design center is helpful.
Garage walls typically have thicker drywall 5/8" and are usually insulated.
In my experience they are not built like an exterior wall which has siding and sheer (plywood/OSB).
True. UBC code requires a timed fire protection where flammables are present.
Interested in how floors figure in. I haven't read throuygh comments or searched your content. In my case, I have 3 floors and have populated APs on two floors expecting to bleed well into the unpopulated floor. I have some outside APs as well. I will check the design studio and hope that UI has handled for my use case. Thanks for all your valuable information. -John.
What about creating guest and internet of thing devices separate networks?
That looks like a pretty good design but I would probably throw down another $99 for the garage. The heat map tools are an excellent starting point for sites unseen, but a complex layout may require an onsite visit to finalize the design using at least 2 live radios and some 100’ patch cords. Building materials and neighbors with 40MHz channel widths can mess up a seemingly good paper design.
Or more and turn off the 2.4 ghz
I had four access points spread evenly throughout the house mounted on the ceiling and it sucked, then I put two mounted high in the attic on each side of the house and it works like magic. When the access point is higher up, it looks down at the whole house and only has the ceiling to go through rather than multiple layers of walls.
Recreating this in Ekahau would be interesting
Would vaulted ceilings change your placement?
Is there anything similar for OMADA!
I am very confused where to put my AP. My house is 3storey
The toilet in Bath 1 has not enough coverage
Definitely not for the amount of time you spend in there.
That slightly unparallel wall between the foyer and garage kept distracting me. 😁
Thank for the video. How to make Unifi AP connect to the nearest device (phone or pc..etc)?
How'd you install the scale of the house so you could accurately know the wall lengths etc? Also their modem/router would provide some wifi in the house so should that have been placed so you could factor in it's signal contribution?
Did they change the design center colors? any WAP model I choose does not show any red color for signal strength no matter where they are placed. It shows green, yellow, and gray.
Wait, Red is better? I got a little confused about that. I did my layout with the wifiman app this morning and with the exception of the dream router area, everything else was red / yellow and orange.
Hey your video and audio are pretty out of sync on this video, just letting you know for next video. Love your content :)
I just looked at it...it's not out of sync.
Right on!
What about splitting the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz? Do you guys do that or keep it on 1 SSID.
I think you loose seed with multiple SSID's but not sure how much, obviously depends on your uplink connection
Cheers Chris 👍
What about a two story house with attic and basement - the design center doesn't seem to represent any coverage from a floor to the one above/below it. I'm looking to migrate from ASUS to Unifi APs and I currently have the ASUS in the attic - is it OK to place Unifi APs in the attic above the space you want to cover?
Yeah, nah, I personally run a single U6LR in the roof cavity to cover whole house and be free of 2 units making noise for each other as well as roaming issues as Wi-Fi is still break-before-make system. This caculator is great for people to spend time compensating for a lack of RF knowledge. What is fails with badly is dealling with simple fact that having strong signal to the end-user device is nice but you need said device that rarely has decent antenna setups and low drive to be able to get back to the WAP. I see it all the time, way too many WAP's put in by people who should leave things alone.
Wonderful knowledge Mr Guru..
But as you have pointed out - mobile client devices typically have low transmit signal strength, which is precisely why a single U6 LR blasting at high signal strength may NOT be the right choice for many people. Multiple APs at lower signal strength play nicely with mobile device wifi.
Can I use this same for checking the placement of by Omada gear?😅
I have EAP610
Are those access points designed for wall mount or ceiling mount? I have a shop with 15-foot ceilings and the access point is on the wall, about 10' up. It works ok, but wondering if I should put it in the center of the shop on the ceiling for optimum performance?
I had the same concern with high ceiling in a garage. Initially I had a access point at 12 feet up on a 3/4" EMT conduit with the access point mounted millimeters away from a 4x4x2" metallic box. Coverage was not good below the access point and up to 5 plus feet away. As a second try I moved the access point to 10 feet above the floor, used 2 inch plastic spacer between the metal box and the access point adapter. Coverage was good below the access point, and great in all of the garage.
more imporantly, how do you get devices to switch between access points when they should?
It's up to the individual device...UI steers devices as best it can, but ultimately, the device makes the decision.
floor plan settings doesn't exist in the UI
Don’t forget the appliances, stainless steel backsplash and mirrors!
All walls between the living area garage will always be exterior walls.
What about two story houses should you have one access point per floor or both on top floor
Did you install one AP for each floor ?
How do I get you to do this with my home?
Wait for 6E Lite?
Good stuff, not your fault but multiple floors is required I believe
I'm here for the Foi Ya
How does this software handle differences in interior wall materials? I would assume it expects them to be 2x4 construction with 1/2" drywall? What would you do for older homes with plaster walls? Or in my case 2x6 construction with 5/8" drywall and rockwool insulation? I also have several interior walls that are 2' thick stone construction. I guess just put them as exterior walls?
I would have guessed the wall between the house and garage is an exterior wall. My guess is that it's because of fire code.
+1 for "FOY-er", and no, I'm not in the US as per the generalisation @01:40 ....or "foyer" rhymes with "Sawyer", as in Tom ;)
Most homes need one good access point, and one for the garage. That's it.
I place some Omada eap670’s and not think about this.
Yes, I disagree with your placement completely. You must see that as you move the first AP up towards the back of the house how the signal in the window area of Bedroom 1 breaks. That is exactly where the wife will be sitting on her phone. The thing is, it’s a question of how the family uses WiFi. Do they want it on the porch? Bedrooms? You got great coverage in the family are where exactly no one is going to be sitting. Couches tend to be in front of windows, get the coverage there. Pull AP 1 down just above where it says “Kitchen” on the plan and cover that entire end of the house. AP 2 is more tricky, and I feel they need a third if they want the garage covered. AP 2 just in front of the entry BATH 2. To cover both bedrooms.
these estimates seem awful pesimistic. I installed 3 APs in a roughly 1500 sq/ft bi level, 1- center hall 2nd fl, 2- garage, 3- outside backyard on the roof overhang. 90% of my devices stay connected to the 1st AP installed in the hallway, even on 5ghz. The other two APs were most likely not needed - but the cost is minimal and I ran the cable myself.
There's a lot of focus in the WiFi industry on speed. To get those gigabit speeds on 5Ghz, you do need to be pretty close, like in the UI simulation. A usable connection will be a much larger area. With the focus on speed, you don't want the consumer getting one AP, then complaining that they only get 100Mbps in their bedroom. Is it still usable internet? Yes. Is it the gigabit speed promised on the box? No. By having the customer get two APs, their devices will be relatively close to the AP more of the time, and get those faster speeds they are paying for.
Never apologize for pronouncing something properly, lol
I live here on a comparable size in Germany. Here there are several walls of concrete even inside the house. Here you need about 4 AP for a similar coverage. In my case one UDR and 3 U6-Pro.
What I would still like to know is the comparison between a ceiling and wall mounting.
Anyway, thank you for the video. Great content!
I live in a German house go for ceiling mout its much better
@@christianbrandt6710 I believe you. The problem is the UDR, which is relatively far down on a shelf. Directly against a concrete wall. Behind the concrete wall, the first U6-Pro is connected via wireless uplink. No 50cm between them, mounted directly at the same height, so that the connection cross-section is as small as possible and thus the connection must break through as little concrete wall as possible. If I were to mount the U6 behind the wall on the ceiling, the UDR would have to break through just under 2.5 meters of concrete wall, since the direct cross-section from the very bottom to the very top through the wall is the longest. Solution would be no wireless uplink, but direct cabling. Thanks anyway!!!
@@drosselbusch For you Americans, what this guy is saying is "yes" in Germany the inside walls are basically at the same spec as the outside walls. I, too, live in germany, and my inner walls are brick and morter (Bau/build date 1879) and thick wooden doors. This is no bullshit, my inner walls are 20 CM thick and made of brick. Yet I cover my 70 square meter space with a single UAP-AC-PRO. Mounted on the ceiling and right in the middle of my space.
When it comes to mounting any of the unifi "domes" like the U6-Pro, you need to look at its shape. Ubiquiti has said their dome-shaped APs are broadcasting outward in a 180 degree hemisphere from the mounting surface. If you mount one on a wall, anything behind that wall is not getting much of a signal. If you mount it on the first floor ceiling, the second floor will need its own APs. I strongly recommend the ceiling mount option for the best coverage. Keep in mind that load-bearing walls and beams will interfere with and reduce your range, so if you have visible beams supporting the roof or floor above, mount it on the bottom of the beam instead of the ceiling resting on the beam. Hope that helps.
always assume all garage walls are exterior. Most locations require them to be for firewall purposes ( fire breaks from the rest of the house)
Both of my houses (in NY and FL) have standard wood framing + sheetrock separating the garage from the rest of the house.
I posted a similar Reddit post about my 3 story concrete home. I finally decided that I could squeak by with 2 on the first floor, 1 on the second floor (open floorpan) and 2 on the third floor. Plus extra PoE drops in the ceiling of weaker zones, just in case...
One limitation of the Design Center is that you cannot orient an access point on a wall. It looks like they assume the APs will be ceiling hung. But for some layouts, it may be better to wall hang them.
The recommendations you made are reasonable. I would do a high density deployment and lower the power for 5Ghz coverage but that would be cost prohibitive for some people. The cost of running cables and switches could easily be 4-5 times the cost of the access points they support.
Use nOversight
Awesome! But woulda love some commentary on two or three story coverage
lol I remember that post was going to throw my 2 cents in but I am more of an extreme power user so I tend to overkill and didn't want to trigger the masses on reddit.
It depends also on the materials the house is made off.
Here in Norway most houses are made of wood. Outer layer of planks, a layer for moist protection, insulation layer of Rockwool, and inner layer of planks. Inner wall of wooden planks, some isulation, and planks on the other side.
These walls do not block wifi much.
The 2 AP's would even give good coverage up to 15 meters outside in the yard.
If there was a 2nd floor, I would not place AP's there, since the signal go right through the floor.
I have installed these in many houses, and had not problems (or complaints from my customers) what so ever.
However, a concrete house is a different matter, depending on the thickness of the walls.
(/edit: typos)
The Unifi design tool gives you several options for building materials. I'm curious to see if it works well for you
Forgive me if this post is duplicated.
I find that the driving factor for Access Point placement is the Home Chief Executive based on aesthetics 😅.
Thanks for a clear explanation on the use of Design Centre.
Terrible audio de-sync in this video
"which are 99 bucks". That's where i laughed. In my country they are nearly 200€ right now. Man, i can remember just 2 years ago, when I bought a AC Nano for 77€
What's the point without the ability to specify for each AP the transmission power?
Thank you Chris. Great info as always.
How about a video on Ubiquiti AP orientation and radiation patterns? EG: Ceiling mount vs wall mount, etc?
I need to borrow the Ekahau Sidekick from work and build heatmaps for this.
I would just install an access point in the garage and bedroom
Does the app take into account horizontal or vertical or does it make a difference, on the wall or ceiling?
What if you have no sealing option to hang up the AP's in a house and can you only the walls where the wallsockets are 19 inches abvoe the floor every room ?
You'll get better coverage if you mount them on outer walls facing inwards than you will putting them on a ceiling. It's the way the antennas are designed in the unifi AP's
A lot also depends on how the house is built. I have a two story 2000 sqft house. I have one UAP Lite in the center of the house, downstairs. I get excellent signal strength throughout the entire house, even on the patio.
Coverage greatly depends on how close your neighbors are.
When I lived in a rural neighborhood for a few years I had a long narrow house, 72 x 28. I had good coverage even with bad placement, and only two weak signals from neighbors. The AP was in the master bedroom at one end of the house, the two bedrooms at the opposite end still good coverage. Transfer speed (internal server) was in the 200Mbps range, much faster than our internet.
Later we had to the city again. In our apartment, our devices can see over 75 different SSID broadcasts of various strengths. Our signal strength is high everywhere, but so is the signal for a bunch of other SSIDs. It's only a 900 square foot apartment, but the signal from the living room was not usable in either bedroom. I had to buy a second access point and a PowerLine adapter set to get good coverage. One is on the wall between the master bedroom and the living room, and the second is in the second bedroom. The walk-in closet there became my office, but it is bigger than my old cubical. In the living room we get about 25Mbps, but 75Mbps in the bedrooms with the AP.
My other pet peeve is that everyone is using super wide WiFi channels so the whole non-overlapping-channels concept is thrown out the window.
@@javaman2883 Yes, we’re in a similar situation. The houses in our development are very close together and I usually see 10 to 12 other SSID’s along with mine. I especially like the ones who rename them with their address.
@@javaman2883 I have seen your problem hundreds of times because my company installs WiFi in condominiums, time shares, & resorts. Select the strongest channel from neighbors and use that for 2.4 GHz with 40M bandwidth. Do same for 5G with 80M bandwidth. WiFi is capable of minimizing interference on same channel, but weak on rejecting interference from adjacent channels. Hopefully your adjacent channel interference has low signal strength.
As ISP for select MUDs, I have the luxury of controlling channels to minimize interference, but sadly you don’t.
In my area, the kitchens have plywood or OSB boards under the drywall on one or both sides of the wall. The plywood helps with giving better hanging strength for the kitchen cabinets, and on the opposite side of the wall is for helping with sound. Cabinet doors shutting will vibrate the wall causing noise through the wall. The extra layers of wood help to reduce that noise.
Does that design get any outside surrounding coverage?
Thank you Chris for your video. Can I suggest to add a subtitle with metric unit (1575 sq ft = 145 m²) when you talk about house dimensions for UE fans?
I am usually pretty good about adding in metric units...forgot this time.
I feel like the noise floor is the only actual issue, or at least more than anything else.
I've had an old directional 11dBi Unifi AP (802.11g) point outside from a window in the corner of a 1500 ft² floor plan and being fine on the other side of the house, even outside through all the walls.
In practice a single pro AP dead in the center would probably work more then fine, or if you have a basement and a 2nd floor, one in each, none in the middle, unless your house is all concrete and faraday cages.
Or add a 2nd one to cover a big garden...
Can you optimize your setup for 5ghz and turn down the transmit power / disable the 2.4 radio independent of the 5ghz to fix the overlap issue on the 2.4 when deploying more AP’s for a high density and higher throughput deployment in the same area?
Lest we forget (or never knew) the whole purpose of the 5GHz band was to (a) increase bps throughout, and (b) reduce signal overlap in high-density applications like apartments, condos, multi-tenant office buildings, etc. So with 5GHz, expect at least two to three times the number of APs in a given area vs 2.4GHz. Higher cost? Yes. But the payback is a far better shared experience for everyone.
I have a 2,200 sq ft home and I only put 1 UAP AC LR in the middle of the home 12' high with the worst 5Ghz signal at -80dBm and the worst 2.4Ghz signal at -66dBm (floodlight outside the garage). Do I really need 2? Any benefits of going with 2 U6 Lites or shall I upgrade to 1 U6 LR? Thanks.
I was in a large hotel in central Rome recently and noticed a blue glow under the office desk in the room the first night in. As the second evening approached I took a look under the desk to determine the source of the glow and low and behold they was one of the Ubiquity access points mounted under the desk, source of the blue glow, case closed. Mounted on the wall, hmm vertical antenna polarity? Didn’t bother to check on signal power received by my devices.
Excellent work, teacher! I looked at their Design Center but shied away from the time required in recreating my floor plan - unless, is it possible tp copy/paste a plan into Design Center?
I really appreciate everything in your videos with the exception of your tinny distant and hollow sounding audio. Can you get a good lav mic if you don’t want to be right up on your main boom mic? The current sound quality really hurts the message you are trying to get across.
Thanks again for all the content.
Awesome info, many thanks for the channel
have set up my bridge to my new shed, but having an issue taking a meshed wifi device and getting it to work on the bridge, do you have a video with this application
look forward to your reply
Exactly where I was thinking for positioning, when you posted the image originally. I must be smarter than I thought lol
Warning. This is not "The Best Access Point Placement Tips". This is a commercial for UniFi
Don't forget coverage for wifi doorbells/cameras and MyQ type garage door openers.
I placed my access point directly under the roof so walls are no longer a problem and my ceiling is wood based. In the end one access point now covers the whole house.
would the design center overlay a 200 home village set on 2 acres, with say a dozen U6 access points
Good info. I agree and would certainly place a cheaper WAP in the garage. Thanks!
Hmm...is the audio and video ever so slightly out of sync...?
In a perfect world, one would conduct an ap-on-a-stick survey :)