Looking for Fast/Cheap Wireless solution

[Enigma86]

Hey there guys, I am in the middle of changing around my network a little bit but its going to give me a problem to solve here that I was trying to think of a creative way to make it cheaper but I'm not all that knowledgeable and wanted more experienced input.

Right now I have Centurylink internet that goes through a router/modem combo that I then have wired into a Brocade 6610 that is attached to my HP DL380. On the way is a supermicro cse-815-5 that I'm going to run Pfsense on for router/firewall. I'm also likely going to switch to Xfinity to get gig internet and will buy my own modem since I found some DOCSIS 3.1 on ebay for about 70. This leaves me lacking on wireless though as I know that Pfsense compatibility with wireless cards is not good and I'm looking to hopefully upgrade the wireless, not downgrade. The most obvious option seems to be just getting a WAP and plug into the switch but it seems that if I want to go to 802.11ax and actually be able to utilize the bandwidth then it will cost 200+. Trying to get as fast as I can without spending much money.

At least one other option I considered would be to run ESXI on the server instead of pfsense on the metal and maybe try to find an OS to run beside it that would be compatible with a faster wireless card and act as an AP? But my question is if that will slow down the PFsense in any measurable way. It would somewhat be good to run ESXI anyways because with just pfsense I don't know what I'd ever use the 4 HDD bays for on that server.

OR if it would hinder performance too much I could just run it on the DL380 instead. But all of this is only if there is even an OS I can load to basically only run an AP.

OR, somebody here just has a vastly better plan that what I'm thinking because that happens a lot as there are people who know more than I do on here.

One other question I also kinda had is if I can't get 802.11ax at a reasonable cost, to maximize a slower wifi, could I get something with multiple ethernet ports and aggregate between my switch and AP?

 

[zer0sum]

You'd be far better off in the long run with a dedicated AP

Check this thread - https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...wireless-as-an-unifi-alternative.26384/unread

 

[BoredSysadmin]

improving Wifi speeds is a MASSIVE CAN of worms. You want fast wifi? Easy - just get a 60Ghz WAP and 60Ghz client - with LOS and you're good to go
Oh, but Let me guess, you want to cover more than just one room with wifi? Do you have neighbors which are also using Wifi? Do you have LED lights or Microwave ovens? I assume yes to all questions and all of these go to complicate what you could get out of wifi and how much you'd have to spend to get to 1/2 way of what you hope for.

 

[ttabbal]

Personally, I'm waiting to upgrade wifi gear for 6e stuff to be more available. I don't think I own any ax compatible devices at the moment. The added band is a huge benefit, particularly if you have neighbors with 5.8ghz stuff. That said, if you can, wired is always better. It's better to invest in pulling new wire if you need to than trying to get more speed out of wifi. Particularly if you can get fiber in, then you can easily and cheaply do 10Gbe. There are a few nutjobs around here with 100Gbe at home.

Unless you are maxing out the 1gb link with wifi traffic, don't bother with LACP or multi-gig setups for it. It's unlikely you are, very few people are fortunate enough to be able to get 1g throughput over wifi. You need an incredibly clean RF environment and line of sight in the same room. Note the speed reported by the marketing and driver are irrelevant. What matters is how much data is actually moving over the wire. That will be far less than the link rate of the radios.

If you have any interest in IPv6 on Xfinity, you should consider OPNSense. pfSense will work for the basic case of a single network, but if you want to do VLANs or anything else, it won't work well. If your prefix ever changes, pfSense falls over. At least it did last time I looked, it might have changed in the past few months. Just something to be aware of to avoid having to migrate later.

Skip the idea of putting a wifi card in the firewall to act as an AP. It usually doesn't work, and you're stuck having the AP at the firewall. With standalone APs, you can put them wherever you like. And you can have many of them if you wish. I had a dead spot, so I just put a AP in that room and turned the radio power down on a different channel. Works great and was cheap. It was a consumer router, but just turn off DHCP, and use a LAN port. Now it's an AP. Not as nice as a full ruckus/unifi or similar, but good enough for one room.