Discussion
5GHz band coverage almost throughout home
All testing spots except in the basement bathroom, all clients connected to 5 GHz band. With 3 APs, I have almost 5 GHz connection throughout my home with current setup.
As for reference, I previously had a 4 AP point setup for both Asus AiMesh AX system and Orbi AC3000 based system and 3 Eero Pro setup. All of which were necessary to get whole home WiFi coverage for our home. Even with such setup, there were still some areas in our home lacking stable high speed connection. So this is a great result.
Decent speed coverage based on demands
The peak speed achieved here was 769 Mbps with MacBook Pro next to the AP HD. All the high demand area of our home network usage occurs in kitchen, family room and entertainment zone. At each of these locations, I got over 500 Mbps speed even on 2×2 MIMO clients so this is great.
Besides the basement bathroom, the lowest numbers were in the living room. I am not quite sure why this is happening as HD is located below and in the kitchen, I am getting almost full speed from it. In fact, I’ve tried to reposition the HD AP more toward West in the basement entertainment zone, right underneath the living room. This had improved speed in the living room, but despite still high speed test result, kitchen Apple TV started to show intermittent stutter. So I’ve repositioned the AP back to where currently is. One of the main thing I’ve noticed during today’s test is that Unifi APs have relatively good vertical signal penetration.
Unifi APs have relatively good vertical signal penetration.
Slow 2.4 GHz band ~ nanoHD 2.4 GHz band issue? ~
On this test, the only spot 2.4 GHz connection selected was the basement bathroom. The speed here is abysmal. I had better speed in the past with AiMesh and Eero Pro setup for sure, usually 20-50 Mbps.
5GHz signal looked reachable in this area with iPad 11 Pro. So I’ve activated a SSID just for 5 GHz band on all APs and tried to connect MBP and iPhone Pro. MBP was able to successfully connect and gave me much higher numbers like that of iPad 11 Pro; however, the connection looked unstable with wide swing of speed sometimes dipping to almost single digit. As for iPhone 11 Pro, it could not sustain a stable WiFi connection when 5 GHz only band was selected. So clearly, basement bathroom is a dead spot for 5 GHz.
However, as for 2.4 GHz connection, the speed seemed way too slow. This seemed to be related to nanoHD 2.4 GHz band as I can get faster, ~50 Mbps, speed with 2.4 GHz band of HD i.e. proving not UniFi’s system wide issue.
I have recently read a post on reddit claiming nanoHD has indeed of a known 2.4 GHz band issue. So I googled about this and indeed there are a few results indicating 2.4 GHz and nanoHD issues. In fact, if I turn off nanoHD’s 2.4 GHz band, the bathroom actually uses 2.4 GHz band from HD and with it I get ~50 Mbps speed. Although I would still need to do more direct comparison between nanoHD and HD AP, I may consider keep turning off nanoHD’s 2.4 GHz band.
Client Dependent Roaming
Wi-Fi roaming refers to handover process of a WiFI connection as the wireless client device move from one wireless AP to another AP. Ideally, the roaming occurs in a seamlessly and instantaneously while maximizing the throughput.
However, this turns out to be fairly difficult process and often client may hang on to original AP even another one is closer and have stronger signal. Switching process may interrupt internet connection for short instant but long enough user will notice client disconnect. Client/AP cannot decide which AP to connect to so switching back and force may occur and result in unstable connection.
In attempt to address these issues, there have been technology standard: 802.11k, 802.11r, and 802.11v. Similar to Wi-Fi 5 vs. 6, these standard also require both client device and AP supporting it.
During today’s test, I’ve noticed iPhone 11 Pro and iPad Pro 11” 2018 had fairly seamless roaming experience for me. As soon as I got to different testing spot, two devices almost instantly gave me the 5GHz band connection with ramping up its speed to the max quickly with essentially ready for immediate speed testing.
In contrast, MBP 15” 2016 acted differently. Although I did not lose any internet connection from one testing spot to another, I have noticed 2.4 GHz band connection at multiple spots during first few minutes even in location such as in basement bedroom where I know there is an AP in the room, which should absolutely be giving excellent 5 GHz signal. After several minutes of waiting, MBP indeed switched to the 5 GHz band but this was far from instantaneous.
So this difference made me curious. My hypothesis here was “MBP 15” does not support roaming standard while iPhone and iPad does.”
macOS doesn’t support 802.11k. macOS does interoperate with SSIDs that have 802.11k enabled.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206207
The lists below show which iOS devices support 802.11k, 802.11r, and 802.11v. To use 802.11k and 802.11r, you need iOS 6 or later. To use 802.11v, you need iOS 7 or later. To use adaptive 802.11r, you need iOS 10 or later.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202628
So I have indeed experienced the client dependence of smooth roaming.
I have indeed experienced the client dependence of smooth roaming.
Overall, I am fairly satisfied with the result. With my past experience, fine tuning/tweaking so called optimization of network setting has never given me “wow” level of performance gain except AiMesh system was essentially unusable due to instability without some tweaking. But I am also novice when comes to networking so I usually just follow what I read on internet without deep understanding. But perhaps, next time I may try doing the same speed tests with some of the standard optimization applied e.g. manual channel selection, custom power level etc.