Is Ubiquiti Unify their range of consumer APs?
Please say a little more about how you hardwired them, and where you bought them, etc?
I will soon have computers and consoles hardwired via switches and cat 6 Ethernet cables to my BT Smart Hub 2, with EE 500mbps fibre.
So I expect those will not need WiFi.
But other devices could still benefit from better WiFi speeds around the house.
I changed to Gigaclear. It was a very easy thing to do and has been great since.
DG…
Unify is their range of products including switches, APs and Gateways.
I would say they say they are more SME rather than consumer, and some basic knowledge is required to set up… they are not as plug and play or fool proof as consumer products, but there are many guides out there to setup, and it is not difficult.
I do think they worth pursuing as their performance is generally outstanding. I use then and disable my BT SH2 wifi.
The hard wiring means they simply have an ethernet backhaul to your home network LAN which can be any switchport. Their APs can be wireless or ethernet linked. For best performance use Ethernet to connect to one of your switches, or a switchport on your ISP hub.
You also have the option of Power over Ethernet (PoE) powering the APs. This means the APs themselves are powered by the Ethernet lead, rather than mains adapters. For this you can use a PoE enabled switch, or little power injectors into the ethernet leads leading to the APs.
It all makes for a simple and less cluttered setup.
I swapped out everything my ISP gave me. Sadly I am in an area that has no fibre. Still I swapped out the router for a Vigor ADSL Modem, this feeds into Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro in my loft. The output from this goes to a 24 port Power Over Ethernet Switch in the rack below. Cat6 cables from here run all over the house to where I needed ethernet. I have a couple more switches in the house where I have a lot of devices. My approach was to try to wire everything I could do, so that WiFi was only used by devices that didn’t have a wired connection on them. For WiFi I have 3 access points 2 indoors and one in the garden - all are hard wired to the switches and powered over ethernet.
As the Dream Machine Pro also has facility to run CCTV cameras, I also have a few of these around the outside - again POE.
All gear was from Amazon or auction sites. Not cheap, but it is rock steady and hasn’t let me down. I never have to turn it on and off etc.
Long time user of Ubiquiti WAPs, never had an issue, not quite plug and play, but considered set up and then good to go. Once you adopt one WAP, you can copy the profile to additional units.
Bear in mind if using PoE which is the easiest (saves a power injector at each WAP), the PoE switch can almost be located anywhere, provided each WAP is back hauled to that location/switch. Then a final single back haul ethernet cable to your router, which doesn’t have to be a PoE feed.
Kit purchased from Broadband buyer who have been found to be helpful.
IIRC Ubiquiti has introduced a 2 year warranty recently. Might be worth skipping big river, which might be euro stock, with different mains cable. Whilst you are likely uk using BT, not sure which region you are. Would be willing to show you installation here, if you are not too far.
Agree, also long time user of Ubiquiti for some small edge switches in rooms, wireless access point, currently three, and the management ‘server’, also PoE powered. It just works.
It offers WMM as standard, and easy to setup WPA2 using my UPnP RaspberryPi as the AAA server… to control differentiated access performance… this is completely not necessary, but it’s easy to do 
We have enjoyed stable wifi since setting our Virgin media router to broadband mode and using Ubiquiti UDM Pro as our network hub and Ubiquiti Unifi access points (with ethernet connection to the UDM Pro) for our mesh wifi.
The instruction manuals and set up are not straight forward for a consumer (i.e. me) but once set up, performance has been excellent.
Best regards, BF
I have got the 7 in-wall Cat 6a ethernet cables in my house connected to the internet.
EE Fibre 500 mbps internet comes into a BT Smart Hub 2 and an ethernet cable connects that to a faceplate in the sitting room wall that leads to a faceplate under the stairs - and then to a Cisco 2960.
In-wall cables from the Cisco connect to faceplates in rooms around the house and garage.
A mystery is that my new work laptop in my bedroom is giving 400 mbps on WiFi - but wired it slows down to around 90mbps.
What could explain that?
Good news is that my son says the wired connection is much more stable for live interactive gaming (though his ping measurements are longer).
Most Cisco Catalyst switches have 100Mb ports, apart from the one or two separate ports on the R side which are usually Gigabit. So if you are using one of the 8 regular Gb ports that sounds about right.
My sons are shortly to move into a house one has bought, and they wanted Cat 8 to be as future proof as possible. Although I am unsure what difference it will make, it wasn’t difficult to do wire up the house for them, so I have done so. However the outlets are Cat 7, as whilst Cat 8 cable was readily available I couldn’t find any Cat 8 outlets. But the wiring is the part that would be challenging to change, so that is what is important,
I had something similar many years ago.
Turned out to be a faulty Ethernet cable.
Changed it out and all was fine.
DG…
Can you recall in what way it was faulty?
Did changing one ethernet cable make the system speed up by, say, 10x?
You mean 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps?
Only very old models which are well beyond end of life are limited to fast Ethernet. It’s these very old models that some audiophiles buy used as they are usually very cheap as they are so old.
However most if not all 1 Gbps switches will negotiate the link to fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) if that is what the other end of the segment supports.
Well you’ve only got yourself to blame for that, Simon
I’m pretty sure that’s what Jim is using, thus my assumption that he probably has the computer in question on a 100Mb port.
LOL… well just because they are pre historic models, they still work and of course are dirt cheap used (I suspect only audiophiles and those training buy them ) . I was just pointing out more recent and even more so current Catalyst products are very different
Yes, all the cables were plugged into the main left hand bank of ports.
I’m now experimenting with using the 2 gigabit ports on the right hand side with the yellow bands on them to see if that speeds things up.
If you use one of those two ports to connect to your router and the other to your son’s computer he should get Gb speed. Save the 100 ports for the stuff that doesn’t need that, like the HiFi.
If I wanted a SH Cisco or similar switch with 8 gigabit ports to use as a central connection point under the stairs, do you happen to know of a model that might fit that bill?
Also, a cheap, second hand WiFi extender that would increase data speeds and range upstairs and that would easily work with a BT Smart Hub 2?
Or I may do it properly with new Ubiquity gear - although currently pressed for time to research exactly what Ubiquity gear to get.
Thanks Chris - yes, I’m trying to sort that out now.
Just got 580 mbps speed result on my phone in front of the router in the sitting room - quite good for a 500 mbps service.