
Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi - jimmcslim
https://www.troyhunt.com/ubiquiti-all-the-things-how-i-finally-fixed-my-dodgy-wifi/
======
uean
I've taken over deployments of UniFi gear and do not have nice things to say
about them. We typically deal in the Aerohive and Meraki world and I find the
Ubiquiti zero-handoff to be terrible (I see real-world handoff times of up to
8 seconds in some cases) auto channel selection inneffective, band-steering
implementation completely broken, and then just some basic lack of features of
things that, to be fair, I wouldn't expect at this price point (L7 firewall,
etc) but, given how aggressive some of the marketing has been that the
Ubiquiti gear can compete with enterprise grade stuff makes you start to miss
the enterprise features. It's too bad that my experience with them is not good
as I want to like the stuff, but anything over 3 access points in a typical
office environment with competing RF and need for seamless handoff, this stuff
just doesn't cut it.

I'm a network admin for a small managed service provider.

Happy to provide more detail if needed:)

~~~
mrb
Sounds like you have been dealing with older gear. Zero handoff is a
deprecated feature which is no longer supported in current products. Nowadays
Ubiquiti simply recommends roaming:

[https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-
What...](https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What-is-Zero-
Handoff-)

~~~
uean
Yes - probably, though our most recent takeover was in August and I didn't see
that link. Just knew it was broken and sounds like they're admitting their
implementation of an 802.11 standard is broken to me :) The particular link is
another gripe I have with Ubiquiti - most of their articles are left up with
referral links to new documentation. Here's an example - up until Dec 3rd
(from at least October) Ubiquiti marked their only documentation on setting up
the UniFi Controller to run as a Windows service (1) as 'Outdated' (2). Dec
3rd they updated it with new instructions

(1) - [https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--
Outdated-...](https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-
UniFi-Run-the-controller-as-a-Windows-service) (2) -
[https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-
as-a-...](https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-Windows-
service/td-p/1713105)

~~~
realityking
Just to be clear, Ubiquiti's implementation of Zero Handoff (and all similar
solutions) are not 802.11 standard. They are creative hacks that create one
big virtual APs out of many APs.

~~~
cdsx
Does anyone know a good way to implement wireless roaming around a large home?
I had Ubiquity's Zero-Handoff on my list of things to check out, but seems
they don't use it anymore, and as above it was a hack anyway.

I have been for years using (and recommending to others) multiple access
points (of any brand) wired together and just set them up with the same SSID
and passwords. Usually works mostly OK, although VoIP tends to drop out moving
around the house (and thus changing BSSID). Keen to fix the VoIP issues. Maybe
I'm missing out on something such as using special routers or some 802.11
standard that might work better.

~~~
crest
Have the APs limit the RSSI and let the client roam.

~~~
windexh8er
This.

If the OP of this thread would take a few minutes and read through Ubiquiti
forums they'd know that there have been 10's of conversations wherein someone
from Ubiquiti or a power use has explained why you shouldn't be using the old
ZHO hacks. I said this yesterday in another Ubiquiti focused comment, but 1)
ZHO forces all AP into the same L2 network and 2) ZHO puts all AP on the same
channel and SSID. The last one should be blatant enough for anyone to know
that that's not going to scale or be performant. ZHO was implemented for old,
low bandwidth devices that needed to be on the same network. Full stop. Don't
use ZHO!

Beyond that do some due diligence when setting up your networks. Even with
802.11n/ac in the 5GHz range you should be aware of best spectrum usage, about
things like DFS and consider how wide of a band you're allocating to the
channel selection your making (hint: it impacts overlap). Do not do not do not
use auto channel selection unless you're forced to. I get it, you may not have
control over this in a dense environment (apartment) but if you can control
your airspace (reasonably so) map out channel utilization especially if you
have more than one AP. Then go to the next step and figure out the worse spots
for reception in your house are and, as the person above me states, tune RSSI
down to get clients to get kicked as they "roam". This will force them to
reselect much faster. One comment stated 8 second reassociations. That's just
bad tuning and clear ignorance to the problem - you'd have the same thing with
any other vendor.

This wasn't hard to find and there are many others, use it:
[http://securityuncorked.com/2013/11/the-best-
damn-802-11ac-c...](http://securityuncorked.com/2013/11/the-best-
damn-802-11ac-channel-allocation-graphics/)

I think Ubiquiti makes some really great products for the price. Have they
violated GPL? Quite possibly but as others have said I don't think that's been
proven judicially as of yet. You will get one of the best products at this
price point though and, when setup correctly, will be much more performance
than things like Eero or Google Wifi that relies on wireless as the backhaul
between APs. If you're saying you can't use cabled infrastructure there are
options. 1) Powerline is now "decent" as in 400-700 Mbit are attainable
depending on your situation, they're also much cheaper (look for HomePlug AV2
standardization) now 2) Dedicated, directional focused wireless backhaul is
the better option than an omni backhaul between something that is already
handling your clients. That is Ubiquiti's forte. They only recently released
the UniFi product but you can use NanoBeam, Bullet or NanoStation in your home
to move things around to dedicated AP.

Ultimately if you want good wifi you have to pay for it and plan and deploy it
correctly. The second half of it is why we have Eero and Google Wifi - because
people don't do that. They buy Ubiquiti or some other enterprise focused WLAN
solution, plug it in and do the minimal work and say it doesn't work or sucks
without RTFM.

Finally if you want "fast roaming" you should know what you want before buying
a product since the device OS needs to support it. Apple has basically said
they're supporting 802.11r: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT202628](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628). And 802.11r is in the
latest builds of UniFi firmware, but not really exposed to the GUI config
because, well, people will probably shoot themselves in the foot with it.

Edit: added link to channel allocation graphics

~~~
casey_lang
> ... and plan and deploy it correctly.

This will likely be one of those things requiring experience but as I'm hoping
to install a Ubiquiti focused system in my house over the next few weeks, do
you have any suggested resources? Particularly on the subjects of spectrum
usage, DFS, and channel selection? I'm not in an apartment but still of the
opinion that neighboring network boxes are causing congestion on my local
system. We're all on Google Fiber with the provided network boxes, which seem
to automatically select the same channel. Simply selecting a different channel
hasn't seem to improve the situation (and has potentially made things worse).

~~~
danudey
The /r/homenetworking subreddit will be happy to answer and walk you through
your deployment, plan, etc. in whatever level of detail. They basically spend
most of their time telling people which Ubiquiti gear to get, since that's the
#1 solution to most people's problems (buy good, purpose-built hardware), why
to get each peice, and how to arrange it, so basically exactly the sort of
thing you're asking.

------
thaumaturgy
I'm happy to see Ubiquiti getting some exposure here and on Reddit and other
places recently (and also a bit worried that this means they're about to start
releasing garbage and/or get bought by Cisco, since that seems to be a
phenomenon that happens).

We've been installing and using their gear in deployments all over the place
for over 5 years now and it always just works. I think we've had to replace
two faulty units in that time, out of, I dunno, several dozens.

Their software is getting better and better too, and their security camera
system is IMO way ahead of most of the competition in the same price range
(with the exception of a network disconnection issue that has had us and
Ubiquiti tech support tearing our hair out for weeks now).

I _hate_ that their management software requires Java though, it can be fiddly
and annoying to install and I think one of our techs finally set up a VM
specifically for their management software.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The Java stuff caused problems at our office because the installer (on OS X)
didn't even run. Not on any computer. It got stuck trying to discover the
device, when in fact it was the Java app that didn't work properly. We had
start that web server thing from the shell and then point a browser to it.
Even then we (one of whom is a former Cisco engineer) had to struggle several
hours just getting it to start a working wifi network.

The box is Apple-pretty, but it's probably the least smooth network device
I've had the misfortune to set up, and it's scared me off Ubiquity a bit. It's
not just us, either. Forums found plenty of people with similar issues, but no
solutions.

~~~
Ambroos
I think the OS X thing is just offered to be nice, but their controller is
effortless to install on Debian, even remotely.

I put our controller on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet with Debian 8. Took 10
minutes to set up back in January, has been working faultlessly ever since
(even through automated updates).

~~~
teilo
Even better, get their CloudKey. It's a fully embedded controller, POE, and is
only about $70. Painless.

------
finnn
Since we're all saying nice things about Ubiquiti, I feel obliged to point out
that they are actively violating the GPL:
[http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/](http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/)

~~~
sargun
So are the following:

-Tesla

-Eero

-Pluot

~~~
samcrawford
Can you provide a reference to how eero is violating the GPL? A quick search
did not reveal anything, and they have a page on their website that suggests
they meet their obligations under it.

~~~
madeofpalk
Just for reference's sake, here's their page
[https://eero.com/legal/open](https://eero.com/legal/open) with the money
quote

    
    
        You may also request a copy of the source by e-mailing
        legal@eero.com with "Source for eero device" in the subject line.
    

Note, GPL doesn't mandate code be put up on GitHub. It only requires that its
reasonably available.

~~~
sargun
I contacted them, and they failed to provide source code in a timely manner --
or you know, respond.

------
shmerl
_> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open
source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no..._

Silly. If the author doesn't want to follow good advice, too bad for him.

I'm using WRT1900ACS with DD-WRT. It works like a charm.

 _> if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to
implement hacks to keep it alive. _

It's not a "hack". It's installing a better quality OS on the device. Again,
if the author doesn't want to do that, there is no reason to complain.

~~~
silversmith
In my experience, the DD-WRT firmwares are on the same level as XDA android
images.

Yes, the overall feature set is richer, and performance might be better. But
all that is offset by some completely ridiculous bugs, like having to modify
5ghz wifi settings only via cli, because touching a single switch on web-based
admin panel causes it to die (my current tp-link).

And there have been bugs like that on every router I've tried. Always some
catch. It might very well even boil down to issues on the hardware level, but
the point still stands - the combination has never been stable enough.

~~~
lbenes
That's a terrible analogy. I use both cyanogenmod/XDA images on my phone and
custom firmware on my routers. There is no comparison. The XDA images lack
drivers, feature, and have strange bugs. While the DD-WRT is rock solid, years
of uptime.

I flashed my parents classic WRT-54G with DD-WRT and 6 years later it was
still running without a single reboot(networking equip on UPS). I also have
another linksys that's sold as a router that I turned into a wireless bridge
for the corner of my house. This also has never had to be rebooted. Finally my
ASUS AC1900 has been running merlin for years now and also rock solid.

As long as you use stable branches, Merlin, DD-WRT, and OpenWrt are a huge
upgrade in stability over factory firmware. Of course, you need to run them on
decent quality hardware like classic Linksys or Asus.

TP-LINK is cheap chinese crap. It gets poor reviews for a reason. Even the
best OS/firmware can't make up for hardware bugs.

------
nikcub
The best side effect of buying proper WiFi gear is breaking up what is for
most people usually an all-in-one device into devices - modem, router, access
point - that are dedicated to each distinct task.

The high-end gear many get for running open firmware can get expensive. It
isn't hard to spend less money on dedicated devices and get better
performance.

What I spent on an EdgeRouter, AP AC Pro and a good managed switch is less
than what the top recommendation from this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766)

cost - $250 for the Linksys EA8500 vs $130 + $50 for the UniFi setup and add
$50 for a TP-Link switch.

I now want to get a bit fancier with the router - so i'm swapping it out for
an eBay sourced Cisco or similar (I want dual WAN and failover, along with
routing some traffic over VPN's) - still cost the same but much better (and a
setup that is applicable up to 100+ users)

~~~
jon-wood
Which Edgerouter did you get, because at the firmware level its quite capable
of WAN failover and routing over VPNs if you've got enough ethernet ports on
it.

~~~
nikcub
I got the X - added it to my shopping basket as an afterthought and ended up
using it as my primary WAN router (replacing pfSense on VMWare ESXi)

I had someone tell me on Twitter to try out the better models because there is
a lot you can do with them, and i've seen references to it before on other
forums (it seems it is common now to do VPN routing setups on EdgeRouters)

I might give it a go - I do like trying different things out to get some
experience across diff products

------
drewmol
Long time HN listener, first time caller. I've used Ubiquiti products in
multiple deployments over the last few years, in both business and residential
environments. I have nothing but praise for their hardware quality as well as
software features, stability and ease of use. This includes EdgeRouters, PoE
switches and UniFi AP's (AC-LR and PRO models). Very satisfied customer, and
with lots of experience and headaches involving various mgfs. configuration
interfaces or hardware quirks, my only regret is not trying out Ubiquiti
products sooner!

------
tbrock
Ubiquiti is the best. Their stuff rivals and even beats lots of the more
expensive stuff at a fraction of the price. It's all very high quality but so
cheap that you think they are joking when you see the price.

Edge router: amazing

Edge switch: amazing

AC access points: amazing

I've never tried any of the unifi stuff though.

~~~
trome
Their AC APs are pretty power intensive, last time I tried them they were
drawing well over 20 watts each, which would have required we replace our
switches due to the power requirements.

~~~
graton
[https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf](https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf)

UAP-AC-Lite & UAP-AC-LR: 6.5 watts maximum

UAP-AC-Pro: 9 watts maximum

UAP-AC-Edu: 20 watts maximum, but it does have a speaker for doing
announcements

~~~
pmlnr
Power drained from the network != power consumption if the device. There is a
power adapter in between, and depending on it's quality, that thing can make a
lot of watts disappear.

------
colanderman
For the rest of us with budgets of less than a month's rent, I'd recommend
Mikrotik. Just as reliable as an Ubiquiti (as in, never needs a reboot), yet
is still a single box you can set in the corner and forget about if you wish.
Or set up a mesh of their $20 units to blanket your three-story house if
you're so lucky.

(Nothing against Ubiquiti which I'm sure is great, but I've been a very happy
Mikrotik user for years. Recently updated my main AP to their gigabit (wired
and wireless) hAP AC and loving it. I use a second Mikrotik as a fully-bridged
repeater, and have an IoT wired+wirless virtual network firewalled off from
the rest.)

~~~
lobster_johnson
I have a Mikrotik HAP AClite. It's a great OS, I love the techy admin and
shell access; it's great as a router, and rock solid (haven't needed to reboot
it since I bought it last year).

But as much as I admire it, I can't recommend it as a wifi access point. It
doesn't have an external antenna, and its performance compared to consumer
routers is pretty mediocre. I have it running in my office, and in my living
room (5m away, only a single wall between them) my AppleTV and Xbox One would
continually drop out. Installed my old Asus RT-N56U as an access point
connected to the Mikrotik via Ethernet, and haven't had an issue since.

Admittedly, I never tried fiddling with it to see if different channels or
settings might work better.

~~~
pilsetnieks
If you haven't even tried different wifi channels, it's not a valid critique,
is it? Especially for such a complicated device that doesn't do any
handholding for you.

You wouldn't expect to buy a Cisco box, for example, plop it down and
automagically do everything without serious time invested in configuring it.

------
freen
I'll repeat what I have said on previous threads: if you have a low RF noise
environment, ubiquiti is ideal. Anything else, you need to buy a real system
with three radios per node and a smart controller that adjusts channel/power
on the fly.

~~~
rblatz
I live in an apartment with probably 15 wifi networks visible at any time.
Plus my xm radio has recently started cutting out in the parking lot of my
apartment, it's either the microwave radio tower or noise coming from the high
voltage lines/electrical substation behind my complex. I "upgraded" last
Christmas to a Linksys AC router, it was awful had to reboot it daily to get
wifi to work, got annoyed and picked up a router and put the Linksys in
wireless only mode. Still didn't fix it. So I bought a UniFi AC Pro and it has
been rock solid. I can also pick up my wifi network from an incredible
distance from my apartment now. So it may not be as good as some of the
enterprise stuff, but it's also reasonably priced. I'm extremely pleased with
it.

~~~
jon-wood
You could probably be a good neighbour and turn down the transmit power on
your router, your current setup is equivalent to dealing with not being able
to hear a conversation in a crowded room by shouting at the top of your voice
and forcing everyone else to get louder as well.

~~~
rblatz
Good point, didn't really think about that. I'll dig in to the settings
tonight and see what I have to do to lower th transmit power.

------
myrandomcomment
So I have posted this before as there has been a ton of Ubiquiti threads.

3 story house, 1 AP AC Pro per floor 1 AP AC Pro in the detached office 1
Switch 16 POE in the house 1 Switch 16 POE in the office - 2 x Cat6a between
switches in a LAG 1 Security Gateway 3P 1 Cloud Key

I upgraded all the firmware on the complete system as I was typing this
message using their app for the iPad.

Run a FreeNAS Mini in the office 2 x 1g in a LAG.

Run Insteon home automation for lights, plugs, HVAC, Camaras, leak & door
sensors.

3 TVs with Intel Compute Stick with Kodi plugged into the TV HDMI. Added USB
to 1g on the stick and wired to switch. Logitech Harmony remotes (same in
every room) for control.

Lots of laptops, phones, pads all wifi. TVs are Wifi for their apps (used
Ethernet for Compute Sticks).

Every product here is rock solid and just works (okay Kodi is buggy as is the
Windows 10 it runs on).

I love the Ubiquiti gear. We use the APs in the office at work as well. 2
older APs (2 year old models - plan to upgrade soon) with 35+ devices on it at
any time (most are developer laptops with lots of traffic to the DC). We use
TrueNAS to boot all the servers, etc (FreeNAS commercial version).

So for wifi Ubiquiti is pretty dang good and love FreeNAS (and the IXsystems
hardware) if you need a NAS.

For less technical I have recommended Eero to a few people and they all say it
is quite good so far.

~~~
jagermo
any specific reason you went for the Pro and not the LR?

~~~
kiallmacinnes
Don't buy the LRs (Long Range versions for those not familiar with the Ubnt
naming) unless plan on a low density+large+wide open space (e.g. an auditorium
where only staff have wifi access).

The trick to GREAT wifi coverage is to turn the power down on each access
point as low as you can, and have as many APs as you can. Wifi is a two way
street, e.g. even if your AP can blast a signal through 5x 10ft thick walls,
it won't matter in the slightest, since your phone or laptop etc won't be able
to do the same.

In fact - that's a lie :) It will matter, it will hurt the end user
experience. The phone etc will see a "strong" signal, select it, but outbound
packet loss will be terrible.

------
pbarnes_1
You can get basically this for multiples of $99 if you buy a bunch of Google
Asus OnHub's on eBay and backhaul them over Ethernet with the latest firmware.

It has no knobs what-so-ever, but it's as good as Ubiquiti for far less $.

~~~
untog
IIRC OnHub devices are also compatible with the new Google WiFi devices.

------
b3lvedere
Great story. Unfortunately i do not have the luxury to spend $2200 on the
network infrastructure in my humble home.

I do however have a lot of 2nd hand hardware and am able to invest some time
into optimizing them for my family's internet needs. It may not be perfect,
but it works 90% of the time and i learn a lot about connecting lots of
different devices and (virtual) machines.

~~~
jon-wood
Unless you've got a huge house you don't actually need to drop two thousand
dollars on networking gear. I'm covering a three bedroom house using one of
Ubiquiti's cheapest AC capable access points and the EdgeRouter-X, the whole
lot cost me about £120 which is in the ballpark of a consumer router with
wireless, yet massively more capable and reliable. Since installing it I've
been able to just stop thinking about my home network. It just takes whatever
we throw at it, and the wifi is plenty fast enough to stream HD video to the
TV.

------
technofiend
Based on Reddit threads and an immediate need due to hardware failure I tried
the edge router. I have to say I like UI and it was painless to set up. There
a plenty of sample configs to choose from and the community seems active and
helpful.

Unfortunately, the internet being the hostile place it is, my edgerouter
struggles to stay up for more than a couple of days before I have to power
cycle the device.

There may be a fix based on packet filtering beyond a simple NAT ruleset I'm
using but it wasn't really worth my time to fix a $60 device when another
refurbished PC from Microcenter is twice that and will stay up for months.
Move two NICs, a hard drive and done.

Still at some point I plan to set a bridge mode packet capture device between
the edge router and cable modem to see what's knocking it over. But at least
for a painless setup that my wife doesn't have to reboot the edge router
didn't work out, which is too bad. I would otherwise recommend them on price
alone.

------
mmastrac
I have Unifi AC APs in my house. Expensive, but 100% worth it. They've struck
a really great balance between configurability+power/ease-of-use.

I compare it to my Mikrotik switch that while being able to do pretty much
anything I could want to do, has such a steep learning curve that I ended up
just using it as a slightly fancy home firewall/switch.

I'm considering pulling the trigger on the Ubiquiti switches and another three
AC units for my house to cover the last few dead zones. It's been one of my
favorite purchases. I really want to play around with VLANs for guest
networks.

~~~
gh02t
Yeah I have a Mikrotik manages switch and Ubiquiti router. The Mikrotik UI
feels like I can do absolutely crazy stuff but I can't figure out how.
Ubiquiti can do the same stuff but is a little more reserved in how many knobs
and options it shows you. Both are great hardware, but different bends -
Mikrotik is "here is everything you could ever com figure out what you want"
while Ubiquiti is "with great power comes responsibility."

I like both a lot, but I think Ubiquiti has the edge if I had to choose.

------
rb2k_
The only thing I'm slightly sad about with my ubiquiti setup is that the Edge
Router PoE doesn't integrate with the controller. It's basically the same
hardware as the security gateway, but no way to manage it :(

~~~
feistypharit
Truth is once you set it up, I stopped running the Java controller. I got the
edge router because it's half the price. One thing I really dislike is it
doesn't do DNS name injection for statically configured hosts. You can use
Dnsmasq instead and make it work, but then you can't see the leases! I ended
up using a raspberry pi to run pihole and do DNS.

This video had a good overview:
[https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM](https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM)

The edge router is nice cuz it also has doing and great firewall. One annoying
thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin
interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults.

~~~
rb2k_
> One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself
> out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory
> defaults.

Been there, done that :)

------
ichilton
I really like the Unifi - i've run it for a while and not had a single
problem.

I do have a big gripe though - it has a hard wired limit of 4x SSIDs for each
access point.

I run a number of VLANs, each with their own SSID - and it means I can only
have the Unifi provide my main ones and have to run an old Netgear router on
different wifi channels to provide the rest :(

I've never quite understood why my cheap routers running OpenWRT can seemingly
have unlimited (or at least a lot of) SSIDs, where an expensive Unifi will
only provide 4.

------
peckrob
I run UAP-AC-Pros in my house (along with pfSense for a router) and have
nothing but good things to say about them. Eliminated the wifi problems I was
having and they just work. Rebooted the three I have the other day to install
newer firmware after 122 days of uptime. It's nice to have something I don't
have to think about much.

And they're just a bit more expensive than a good wifi/router combo. For the
features it feels like I'm getting the biggest bargain.

------
loop0
Ubiquiti Unifi APs saved our network here at the company. Because everyone
here uses macbook pros our network is about 95% wireless and lately we where
suffering with connection drops and poor bandwith. We changed all our APs to
ubiquiti unifi ap pro, now the coverage is awesome and we don't experience any
kind of problems. I like the fact that you can control everything from a
unified web app. We have an average of 100 connected devices distributed in 4
aps.

~~~
lostboys67
why not just move your mac users to wired which is what we did brought
Ethernet adaptors for all the macs which spend most of there time on a desk
and don't "need" wifi

------
mitchty
So I just got the ac pro access point last week. Its fine, about my only
complaint is my laptop will continually drop from ac to n constantly and I'm
not more that 15 feet from the AP.

My phone stays on ac all the time. Not sure how to fix it. That and the stupid
java application needed to configure were not my most favorite on boarding
experiences. Seems an ok system but not super great for getting set up. Its
definitely enterprise though.

~~~
noja
Did you try enabling band steering?

~~~
mitchty
I tried logging in but the java app is giving me the middle finger. I seem to
recall turning it on, but will have to set that all back up again tonight. I
couldn't logon to the AP via their web app but ssh worked.

So I just reset it to factory defaults and I'll try again tonight after
setting it back up.

~~~
noja
I've never had problems with the java app, so that surprises me.

~~~
mitchty
It was weird, but anyway I've data now. Band steering to 5g: same spiel.
Balanced: seems to still do the same. Off no big deal.

Without mapping the signal to find out if my laptop is in some dead zone while
being in direct line of sight of the AP, I can't find a great pattern to it.

~~~
noja
What network card do you have on your laptop? Did you try manually clicking
"check for driver update" on the network card itself in device manager?

~~~
mitchty
Whatever the 2014 vintage macbook pros have. I have a couple buddies with the
same AP and macbook pros so its likely I have some interference issues. I see
the same spiel on my work laptop which is the same vintage only smaller drive.

OSX for what its worth so don't think there is such a checkbox to check. :) I
just keep it up to date with security updates. Its about time to install 10.12
so I'll just reinstall and restore my home dir at that point.

------
legulere
As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's
enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Wifi won't be the only
problems that are caused by such a waste of resources. How are those problems
making your life better?

Here DSL router/modems by AVM (Fritz!box) are really common and they do their
job extraordinarily well for being consumer grade hardware. They also
regularly get regular updates and offer most things you need as a consumer in
one device. (No you don't need a special DHCP server device). There are also
other decent consumer grade wifi routers like the now discontinued ones by
Apple

~~~
sheraz
Seems like you are moralizing about a guy's house when the topic is simply
wifi-reliability.

Given who he is (the creator of
[https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)), I would just
assume that he have over-provisioned his physical housing capacity in
anticipation of a major event. :-)

Seriously, put down the proletariat pitchfork and lets talk about the content.
Maybe this is just his warm-up for putting wifi on his superyacht!!!

edit: grammar

~~~
legulere
There's certainly also a moral argument to be made (as you say that I'm
moralizing), but I was more alluding to the introductory sentence: "I'm
increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and
more as the years progress". For me reducing the house size seems like a more
effective way of restoring sanity and reducing time needed than installing
professional grade equipment, which is kind of insane and time-consuming if
you do it yourself for a home.

~~~
sheraz
I'm not sure how a big house makes anything a matter of morals.

~~~
legulere
A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources
(space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up
resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work
conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided.

I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real
question is what is sufficient or still allowable. For that I used European
norms of house sizes, where 500 square meters is considered ridiculous.

~~~
sheraz
...and here comes the environment argument. This is a very, very, slippery
slope.

By this rationale we should just shut down all datacenters, stop driving, stop
eating meat, tell gamers to power off, and go back to hang-drying our hand-
washed laundry (even in cold wet places like Sweden). At what point does it
stop?

It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy -- having
achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness." But you are not.
You are here on HN. You go to work. You take hot showers. You might even eat
meat. You take holidays to Thailand or Dominican Republic or other poor
countries as many "Europeans" are apt to do. Tell me, what is the social,
environmental, political, and blah blah blah cost of that?

Who cares? Enjoy yourself, and try not to kill anyone on your way into the
grocery store.

~~~
legulere
I wouldn't describe it as a slippery slope, but as a discussion point of what
is considered excess. Of course you could argue that the bare needs of humans
are relatively low, but you can also argue that the needs are pretty high to
be able to live a fulfilled life (which is generally what I am thinking).

It's good to shutdown datacenters when they're not needed, but if you need
them you need them. It's good not to drive if you don't need to. Luckily I can
rely almost totally on public transport but for most people that's not
possible so it's okay to use a car. It's good to eat less meat, but also I eat
meat because it makes my life better.

> It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy

I'm assuming that I'm not and that life is pretty comparable in the western
world, which is why I'm questioning why 500 square meters is excessive here in
Europe but not in the USA or Australia.

> having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness."

Not really, there are also issues where the US is doing better than Europe
(gay marriage, legalisation of drugs)

> Who cares? Enjoy yourself

I think everyone should care about the effects of what they're doing, but
everyone also has the right to enjoy themselves. I just don't see how a 500
square meter home helps enjoying yourself.

------
problems
I was considering going the Ubiquiti way, but I'm using the dirt cheap ASUS
stuff with customized firmware and getting over 500mbit on WiFi. The Ubiquiti
stuff is pricy and given their nasty history with GPL violations I've
abandoned it. I have to reboot my fibre terminal more than my wireless router
anyways, and even that's only about twice a year.

~~~
maratd
Yes, Ubiquiti is pricy. Yes, they have GPL issues ... but so does everyone in
the industry.

You can mod off-the-shelf hardware and get decent performance. I've done it.
The issue with going that route is stability. I've modded Linksys, Asus, etc.
over the years and while they might perform well for a day or two, I always
end up with stability issues and weird behavior.

Ubiquiti is rock solid and performs well. They provide advanced features out
of the box, no need for custom firmware or purchase of licenses. There's a
reason people like them.

------
ChuckMcM
I was in a similar conversation with another friend about networking gear. We
both have similar philosophies which are split networks, one guest and one
private. The guest network gets things that want to phone home, the private
network gets things which are supposed to be on the network, both networks
have their outbound accesses logged. Firewall in the router, deep packet
inspection with source/destination IPs to identify rogue (or hacked) devices,
QoS limits on things that should never get the whole network to themselves.

It is way more complex than one would think it should be, except that we've
seen time and time again how crappy network configurations screw up
everything. It is also helpful to have historical data when complaining to the
ISP. It is also amazing to see the guest network which has given out 60
leases, sure some of those are the phones of people who came over but a lot of
them are things that want to be "online".

~~~
jon-wood
I keep meaning to set something like that up but get stuck on the problem of
giving devices on the private network the ability to interact with the guest
network, for example I make pretty heavy use of Spotify Connect for streaming
music to speakers, and have Philips Hue lights, both of which need some way of
communicating with them from my phone.

------
ioquatix
For something just as awesome but a fraction of the price take a look at
MikroTik/RouterBoard Hex GR3 and wAP AC.

~~~
ianal_uanal
And then good luck configuring them.. UniFi is plug and play. Mikrotik, while
relatively easy, requires much more work.

------
sprite
I have Eero but not 100% happy with it. For some reason it sometimes drops the
connection to my Macbook Pro. Disconnecting and reconnecting wifi bring the
connection back up. I've been thinking of making the switch to Ubiquiti and
think that is probably the way I should have gone in the first place.

------
luckydude
I had 3 of the same Linksys boxes, had exactly the same problems, moved to
UniFi stuff and couldn't be happier. I've got two APs in the main house, one
in the barn (man cave, exercise room), and still have one Linksys in the guest
house. Which gets power cycled when I need it.

I really don't get how Linksys screwed the pooch, but they did. $300 AP that
doesn't work.

Edit: one config that made them work better for me was to change some setting
from maximum speed to maximum distance, without that the connection was pretty
short range. The lower speed is still faster than my internet connection so
I'm fine with it.

~~~
flyinghamster
I've had cold feet about Linksys ever since Belkin acquired them.* I'm still
running a couple of refurbished D-Link DIR825-C1 units (dual-band N300) with
DD-WRT on both, and they work beautifully. I don't see any great need at this
time to switch to 802.11ac.

Since I bought them specifically to run DD-WRT, reflashing them wasn't a big
deal for me, though it wasn't quite as easy to do as reflashing a classic
WRT54G.

* Belkin has been on my "don't buy anything of theirs except cables, and even then look for an alternative" list ever since their 2003 router spam fiasco. Sure, they backed off, but the fact that they even considered doing such a thing in the first place is asinine. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_route...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_router/) (sorry for the Reg link, they weren't that bad in that era)

------
sandGorgon
what is a good way to connect router or access points OVER WIFI. i dont have
wired backhaul in my office and it would be fairly cumbersome to build one.

are there APs with two radios each - one for backhaul and one for service?

~~~
gh02t
Lots of routers support this, even single-radio consumer stuff with DD-WRT but
it dedicates half your bandwidth to uplink and half to clients. Others you can
use e.g. the 5ghz radio for uplink and 2.4ghz for clients.

I presume there is some enterprise gear that does it too. I know there are
consumer products like Eero or Ubiquiti's AmpliFi line have mesh networked
repeaters. Especially the AmpliFi might be good enough for you, depending on
how demanding your usage is.

~~~
flyinghamster
I've done this exact thing with my second DIR825-C1, with a 5 GHz uplink. It
works well as long as there aren't too many obstacles between the two boxes.
Aside from acting as a repeater, I can plug wired devices into the second unit
as well.

------
no_wizard
I know I'm a little late to the party, but the Linksys routers he did buy
originally are completely openWRT compatible (and here i'm gonna plug it,
www.openwrt.org), so i have to ask, why not put openwrt on these guys? I have
the exact same routers, and they were terrible with the linksys stock
firmware, but once I install openwrt it was actually quite nice. Had to
upgrade the antennas on one though, beyond that, it was pretty good. Not that
I'm knocking ubiquiti, cause they're amazing, btw.

~~~
soylentcola
At least according to the article, he didn't like the option.

> After venting on Twitter, I got a variety of responses including that I
> should install the open source dd-wrt firmware or that I should buy a power
> adaptor that can automatically cycle the power every night. No, no, a
> hundred times no to both - if I buy a product then I expect it to work as
> advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive.

It's his prerogative of course but I'd definitely have tried a quick software
fix like this before going out and buying $2k worth of all new gear. Maybe it
would've solved the issues and maybe it wouldn't but in terms of time and
money sunk into it, I think trying out the improved firmware would've been the
logical step before moving on to new hardware.

But then again everyone has a different level of aversion to different things
so maybe his aversion to messing with open firmware was as strong as my
aversion to buying more stuff. In the end, the blog post was about _his_
solution and it's still good info to have.

~~~
no_wizard
This is a completely good point and exposes that I did not read the post close
enough so sorry about that. These are excellent points

------
csmajorfive
For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to
connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now
I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I
don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's
recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in
between.

~~~
Johnny555
Depends how much bandwidth you need and what the distance is. A pair of Unifi
Nanostations (available in 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, 900Mhz models), will give you
100Mbit, a pair of Nanobeams will give you up to 450Mbit.

I use a single Nanostation 5Ghz out on the front porch to bridge back to my
Unifi Wifi node

~~~
csmajorfive
I need as much bandwidth as I can get over a pretty short distance -- let's
say 30 feet. I'm bridging two closets at opposite ends of a hallway. One
closet has the WAN connection. The other closet has a bunch of hard wire gear
(NAS, home theater, etc).

~~~
Johnny555
You could use a pair of airfiber stations to get over 1 Gbit/sec. But they are
not cheap. You'd probably be better off finding a way to run fiber (or even
cat5) to get 10 gigabit.

~~~
csmajorfive
Well my current solution works fine. I have an AC87 in each closet. The one
with the gear runs in "wireless bridge" mode. I'm attracted to the prosumer
Unifi stuff but there doesn't seem to be a simple solution to bridging. The
airFiber units in our hallway is a little too much. And there's no easy way to
run cat5.

~~~
Johnny555
Its hard to get simpler or cheaper than a pair of $60 Nanobeams that will give
you 400+ mbit of performance and the integrated 16dBi antennas will help
reduce interference from other devices. Ubiquiti also has a Litebeam with a
23dBi antenna that's even cheaper - $49... I don't have any experience with
those, but I assume they would work just as well (but proper aiming would be a
little more critical with the higher gain antenna)

If your existing routers live in the closets, the Nanobeams can too, you just
need to aim them at each other.

------
Icedcool
> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source
> dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no...

Author didn't want to try a new OS on his device, and instead opted to spend
an additional 2.1k on enterprise level devices.

While this did 'fix' it, he wasn't really innovative or creative. Just was
willing to spend more money.

A similar example might be, "How I fixed my car" \- Bought a new one.

~~~
cc438
I fully agree with your take on this being an exercise in throwing money at a
problem until it goes away. He probably didn't even need to go as far as
diving headfirst into the world of fussy custom firmware to solve this issue
either, Asus hardware comparable to his Linksys equipment is recommended so
often that I can't imagine he researched the topic before making his buying
decision.

------
caycep
For a ~$1500 square feet house, how are their AmplifiHD consumer WiFi Mesh
network products? The reviews seem to say they are more consistent than
Eero/Google equivalents.

Also, my one paranoid worry about routers are the frequency of security
updates...my TP-link hasn't had a patch for 2 years, and I'm hoping Ubiquiti
has a better track record to avoid things like a Mirai infestation...

~~~
zwily
Ubiquiti Unifi updates are pretty consistent, and I've never had any problems
installing them.

------
dorfsmay
I like Ubiquiti and use them at home (switch and APs), they are the best at
their price point in my opinion. They can't compare with expensive
professional gear, and I'm OK with that, but what bothers me about them are
weird bugs that makes you wonder about how much testing they do outside a few
default cases.

They fixed the most problematic one, but I gave up and work around the other
one.

------
mahyarm
I don't understand why he needed the expensive PoE switches although. He could
of used cat 6, consumer non-PoE switches & standard $15 PoE injectors close to
the switches themselves. He wouldn't get the fancy interface for the switches,
but he would of had similar wireless and wifi performance.

Or does Ubiquity require you to use their switches for anything to work
properly?

~~~
pythonaut_16
I have a Unifi AC Lite and I just use the power injector that came with it. I
think for the non-pros they use a non-standard POE, but I'm pretty sure the
Pro's can use either Ubiquiti or standard PoE equipment

------
boot13
Interesting, but not really all that useful for people who don't have loads of
money. The rest of us have to make do with consumer grade crap, or do the
extra work of finding good hardware and installing useful firmware into it.
I'm running an Asus RT-N66U with Advanced Tomato and it works beautifully. Of
course, I don't live in a mansion.

------
alfredxing
I have a Ubiquiti setup for WiFi at home (though not as complex as in the blog
post - just an EdgeRouter X and UniFi AC Lite). It has never gone down once,
and performance is the same as on day 1:

    
    
      ubnt@ubnt:~$ uptime
       06:16:26 up 140 days, 13:15,  1 user,  load average: 1.08, 1.03, 1.05

------
Thaxll
Well unifi had huge issues in the past, and by huge I mean there is a 1000+
page thread on the forum with a super bugy firmware that makes the AP useless
for most devices. As of today I still have issue on my iPhone6 / nexus 10 with
the patern "full wifi bars slow internet"

------
vels
Just a note for anyone who wants to try this, without spending $2k, you can
just purchase the UAP AC PRO access points c. $100-150 each and connect them
to your existing switch / router (dosnt have to be Ubiquity kit, have even
done basic installs using an ISP provided router.

------
nodesocket
Great write up, love all the details. Surprised that nobody is mentioning
Cisco Meraki gear in the recent HN networking posts.

My ideal (budgeted) setup is:

    
    
      - (1x) MX65 -- 12 GbE with 2 PoE+. PoE+ powers the access points.
      - (2x) MR33 -- 802.11ac Wave 2 powered via MX65.

~~~
Johnny555
Doesn't the MR33 cost around $400 each? You can get 3 Unifi AP Pro's for the
cost of one MR33.

The MX65 costs around $600 -- a 24 port (all with PoE) Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch
costs about half that much.

I think the reason Ubiquiti gets a lot of write-ups for home use is that it's
priced reasonably for the quality. I've had an 8 node small office deployment
running flawlessly for 3 years now.

~~~
nodesocket
Yes Meraki is absolutely more expensive.

    
    
      MX65 - $1,072 with 3 year enterprise subscription 

[https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-
Appliance-250M...](https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-
Appliance-250Mbps/dp/B01BSZEW5O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481605491&sr=8-1&keywords=meraki+mx65)

    
    
      MR33 - $646 each with 3 year enterprise subscription

[https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-
mr33?gcl...](https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-
mr33?gclid=CIPemoSz8NACFU6BfgodkF4PLw)

------
ksec
Ubiquiti is nice. But, it is not a consumer brand, most consumer dont need all
the options and setup. Its consumer version AmpliFi, doesn't rhyme with me.

Hence why i am very sad when I heard the rumors of Airport Extreme being
shoved. Most consumer Router as of today, still requires a reset from time to
time. Please name me one which doesn't, Linksys, Belkin, Buffalo, Netgear,
Dlink, ASUS. Some of these brand may have some router that doesn't require
reset, but it is likely 90% of their Range do.

And if you think the top end router may be better, think again, sometimes it
may overheat just because it was trying to push the top speed, or too new with
buggy firmware.

Router should only be a one time setup cost. Most Enterprise Router brand,
Ubnt, Ruckus ( God they are good ), Aruba are all good.

And Apple is the only one i can recommend in a consumer brand, and you only
get 2 models to choose from ( Excluding Time Machine ). Cant go wrong, and it
is using NetBSD being a bonus.

~~~
amiga-workbench
Sadly those Apple AP's are now discontinued.

------
ErrantX
Beware; ubiquiti stuff is pretty good. But the unifi line is amongst the worst
they do; the wireless AP's are actually great. But the unifi switches have a
tendency to blow up and trip the power circuits. We went through about 3 in 6
months.

------
tehwalrus
Deep packet inspection accessible by a cloud portal?! Sounds like a bug, not a
feature...

------
im3w1l
Reads like an ad.

------
IshKebab
I wish he/they would use '2.4 GHz' and '5 GHz' instead of '2G' and '5G' which
are already things. That's definitely going to cause confusion.

------
remir
Would Open Mesh be a good alternative to his setup?

~~~
post_break
We are playing with open mesh for our new building. So far it seems amazing.

------
mrbill
Love my Edgerouters and UAP access points. Currently running an ERX and a UAP-
AC-LR.

------
calebm
How does the Enterprise Ubiquiti gear differ from their Amplifi system?

------
andrewfromx
silly question could
[https://eero.com/technology](https://eero.com/technology) work for this guy
much cheaper?

------
ehosca
+1 for Ubiquiti UAP-AC, uptime 248 days and counting

------
xupybd
Ubiquiti is getting some golden press on HN lately.

------
swayvil
I use Ubiquiti gear (security cams). Solid stuff.

------
gaspoweredcat
its great gear for an amazing price, its amazing how many inferior setups cost
more

------
esaym
I've thought about Ubiquiti in the past, but they are not "stand alone" units
right? Meaning I am forced into allowing the units to phone home so I can
manage them through Ubiquiti's cloud service? (something I don't want or need
for a small home set up)

Last year I bought my wife and I our first set of "smart" phones. Yes I'm
serious, I've been in IT all my life but never felt I had a need for anything
other than a flip phone. But I noticed Samsung selling a Galaxy Core Prime for
$90 and I bought my wife the LG Stylo for $180 since I wanted her to have a
better camera.

For my home network, my modem runs into a linux box with Shorewall where it is
natted/firewalled and split into two subnets.

I've been a fan of the netgear prosafe access points for the last 10 years, as
I could always find older models on ebay for cheap.

Currently I was using a WN203 (2x2 802n). For the most part it was just my
laptop and a Roku box connected. never had problems. But enter in these new
smart phones...

Within a few weeks (of buying the phones) I noticed random times of terrible
wifi lag. Looking at the AP's management webpage, I noticed during these
random times of lag, my wife's phone would be connected at just 1M. I'd tell
her to restart her phone and the problem would go away for a day or two. But
it kept happening. I wasn't sure what the problem was but I used it as an
excuse to get another access point, I was wanting one that had 5ghz anyway. I
sniped a netgear WNDAP660 (3x3 802n) off of ebay, new in box for $95. They are
normally $350 new. Figured that would solve my problems.

To my horror after a few days of having the new WNDAP660 set up, I started
getting the same terrible lag and my wife's phone would be connected at 1M
again. This time though the WNDAP660, through the web interface had an option
to save wifi traffic packets. During the next time of lag, I saved a few
minutes of packet captures and opened them in wireshark.

I was surprised to see that even though my wife's phone was connected at 1M,
it was not the issue. My phone (the Core Prime) was spamming pwr_mgt request
packets, 100's per second. It was basically using up all the bandwidth. In
disgust, I moved everything to the 5ghz band (gave it a different id), and
left only my phone on the 2.4ghz. So all was well....

But that was just a couple of months ago. I've since out grown my core prime
(which doesn't take much) and bought a Galaxy S6. I turned off the 2.4ghz band
on the AP, and now everything (including my new S6) are all connected to 5ghz.

And then you guessed it... I was sitting at the kitchen table and noticed lag
while trying to browse the net on my laptop. I looked up and noticed the Roku
box playing on TV was also stuck loading. I reached over and picked up my new
S6 and put it into airplane mode. Instantly all was well on the airwaves. I
haven't actually done a packet dump yet, so I don't know if the S6 is spamming
pwr mgt requests or not.

But this is really annoying. I don't know what is at fault either. It seems
smart phones don't play nice. But I've also caught my Roku box spewing RTS
requests, even after rebooting it. I thought it had been hacked or something
and was trying to dos me, but after restarting one of the cell phones all went
back to normal. Its as if certain devices don't play well with each other. I
mean, in my original lag case, the core prime was spamming packets, yet
restarting my wifes phone would solve the problem just as good as restarting
my phone. Makes no sense....

So I guess if you get random lag on wifi, try turning off a cell phone or two
until you find the culprit. And once you find it, then.... Well actually I
don't know what you do then. Any tips? lol

~~~
baobrien
The UniFi stuff isn't stand alone, but it doesn't need to 'phone home' to
Ubiquiti. There's a little management server with a web config interface you
need to set up to run everything. It runs on your local network and doesn't
call Ubiquiti or open up anything without you setting that up. They do have
what they call the 'cloud key' that runs an instance of the Unifi management
server. That thing does phone home, IIRC.

~~~
esaym
I see. And is this "management server" the "java" thing everyone keeps
referring to? (and complaining about)

~~~
Johnny555
It is a Java thing, but I have no complaints, I have one running on an AWS
instance that 8 Wifi nodes across 2 offices connect to, and it's been running
fine for a couple years with only a few code updates (every 6 months or so). I
have no complaints about it. It was easy to configure, and adding a new node
is as simple as plugging it in, ssh'ing to it and pointing it to my management
server, then adopting it on the management server. Done. The management server
will upgrade firmware (if needed) and automatically apply my wifi config to
it.

------
lightedman
One could just as easily get a few cheap laptops from a rummage sale and
install Linux on them and turn them into powerful APs within a few minutes
with a live environment.

~~~
kiallmacinnes
While I agree that you can, and I have done so before (at home). There's
frankly no way I would ever even consider something like this in a business
environment. Depending on your work situation, i.e. full or most time work
from home, this would include my home.

~~~
lightedman
I would especially do this in a work situation. At least with a Linux install
I don't have to worry about all these typical routers and switches with their
built-in hardcoded vulnerabilities threatening my work network security.

------
Cieplak
Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus
omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices
expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz).

Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI)

~~~
striking
> Somewhat alarmist

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health)

Microwaves can't hurt you unless you focus the hell out of them, right at
yourself. Even then, they can't make you experience the health effects that
this handsome fellow was talking about (insomnia, really?). You might get
buzzing in your ears if you're right next to a radar dish... and that's about
it.

FCC guidelines on radio emissions are pretty strict. If people were baking
themselves with their Wi-Fi routers, someone would've filed a lawsuit by now.

This is what's wrong with TED Talks, and with pop sci / pseudoscience in
general. It's all excitement, no truth. See also, "power poses":
[http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-
Bad/23854...](http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-
Bad/238544?key=yop9k7-B1QiWD6aZpWTJrwQaFFjhgu-cumdsNS97tdI-
aTlXSFvHWZIy2iA1Y0UfSDdsb1ZES1NjYnd5QTllSDNlSG9LVjAzRUl3NVNrVGZhUzRMSWJ5Q1BGdw)

~~~
Cieplak
I agree with your overall point that the talk's claims are overblown.

> unless you focus the hell out of them

By this you mean, increase the intensity of the radiation? Obviously, a person
would die inside a microwave oven that uses the same frequency as wifi
(2.4Ghz). But it seems myopic to dismiss the possibility that there are no
other dangerous effects besides heating. There is still much ongoing research
on the effect of pulsed/modulated microwave radiation (as opposed to
continuous radiation). As another example, certain RF harmonics are
particularly dangerous:

 _At frequencies near the body 's natural resonant frequency, RF energy is
absorbed more efficiently, and maximum heating occurs_

[http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-
field-s...](http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-field-safety)

~~~
striking
Look at it this way: regardless of how dangerous you believe WiFi to be,
there's a much, much greater chance that you'll die in a car accident on your
way to work. Or an unrelated heart attack.

But I'll take you at your word.

Here's how you can calculate flux density caused by your router:
[http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/48092](http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/48092).

Then compare that calculation to the graph shown here for safety information:
[http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/RFsafetyCommittee/...](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/RFsafetyCommittee/hbkrf.gif)

Furthermore, the FCC limits router wattage to 1W. The IEEE says that you
shouldn't worry about radiation below 7W. That's on the same page you linked
above.

There are specific limits on this sort of radiation. If anything you've said
were true, a lot of people would've gotten sued by now.

And myopic or not, true or false, I have more things to think about than WiFi
radiation. Link me a peer-reviewed study or else stop fear-mongering.

