Strange indeed.
But I am envious as all hell of your home set up. I'm an IT admin sitting here with just my single subnet. No switches or WAPs or anything beside the modem and router.
Out of personal and professional curiosity, how do you like the Unifi system? I just set up some Aerohives at work and love them so far.
@dty06
Getting a Unifi AC setup is pretty darn reasonable, or at least it *seems* reasonable to me, particularly when you look at the cost of a decent WiFi router (i.e. 300+).
An AC Pro unit is about 130, and an AC LR is about 115, or an AC Lite is about 85, so say if you got even the pro and LR, you'd be into it for about 245. That's retail online too, I'm sure via auction you could get in quite a bit cheaper.
I have a switch because I started having too many devices for my 8-port router, given a line to the downstairs (and un-managed switch, Unifi device, etc), a couple of hardwire PCs, printer, small QNAP server (to handle security, backup and some cloud duties), etc. I have a relatively simple managed switch, but it does mitigate network storm type of activity, which is handy.
Once you go to Unifi, you'll NEVER GO BACK, trust me, there's simply no equal, in the price range (yeah, I'm sure some pro Cisco or Meraki stuff is going give you a comparable (or perhaps slightly better, particularly if you're running hundreds of devices) experience, but even one of those APs is more than the aforementioned set.
The consistency alone is nuts, I have 100/100 FIOS, and I can pull the same, with two AC-PRO-M units (used to be an AC-PRO and AC-LR, just better outside range with the "M" upgrade), at sort of opposite sides and floors in our house, it's rare that I get less than about 95/95, more often I pull around 99/102 or so, with just slightly more latency than wired. And it works that way, all day long, across multiple devices, anyone who visits and uses our guest network is always asking me what I have installed (not to mention the guest network setup is truly isolated, and ultimately controllable).
You simply can't touch the consistency/reliability, for the cost, and it will leave pretty much any AC consumer router in the dust, from what I've seen.
No question, if you're 8' away from both, you'll get similar speeds, but if you're 50' and 3 corners, and maybe a door, than the Unifi is still going to pull more or less the same speeds, and the consumer router is going to really tank by comparison, IME.
Are they more difficult to configure, yeah, I suppose, but if you have decent networking knowledge of some sort, they're really not, they just take a bit more time.
Plus you end up tuning them a bit, so handoff works well (the one downside to Unifi is no ZH for AC, but if you survey and set them up, I find you simply don't need it), so there's that time, but it's time well-spent, if you want rock-solid and fast WiFi...
I installed a single LR unit in my parents home over the holidays, and it fixed ALL their WiFi issues, whereas before they had a really nice Netgear router, but the consistency was incomparable (everyone, including my brothers' family in a room near the back of the house was asking me about them). They went from a barely usable signal from the middle-back of their house, to 95-100%, in the farthest corner of the house...
I pretty much can't recommend them enough, for most installs, they're that good, IME (I've had mine for about 1.5 years now, and I'll never go back).