Today my UAP-AC-PRO finally showed up.  After months of trying to find one at a distributor, I was able to snag one of the few from shopblt.com.  There are a few parts to setting this up, it is not a simple home wireless setup, but I am very impressed with the ease of use and the extremely good coverage.

My previous wireless setup involved a Ubiquity Edgemax Router with 3 Apple Airport Express routers in bridge mode.  The initial configuration of the Ubiquity system was pretty simple with just a few more moving pieces.  The UAP-AC-PRO is a WAP only, requiring a management server.  In my case, I happened to have a home media server which was available to serve as a wireless controller.  The install was very straight forward once I changed the port on another application running on port 8080.

Because I am using a TP-Link switch and a Ubiquity EdgeMax router it took me a few tries to understand the management interface on the controller. The Networks section was confusing until I realized that it was only for managing an end to end Unifi system with their UniFi Secure Gateway as a router and their UniFi Switch.  For an enterprise deployment this is impressive, an incredibly simple way of managing and end to end network.

Once I got past that, it was simply a matter of adding wireless networks and configuring the guest access. I opted for one network for my wife and I, one for the kids, and a separate guest network.  These are all on separate VLANs, with firewall restrictions.  This is obviously overkill, but hey it is what I do.

My final configuration looks something like this.  I did end up with one oddball, my kids XBOX does not have a wireless NIC.  Since the XBOX is nearly 7 years old now, I decided to use an old Powerline network adapter to connect it.

So not exactly automation, but a critical infrastructure component.  So far I am very happy with this choice, and design.   Using the UniFi WAP I have removed two network switches, two wireless access points, and several meters of network cable.  The POE on the WAP makes it far easier to place, and the level of control and ease of use is exactly what I wanted.  The only minor dark spot on this system is every change to one of the wireless networks does take them all down for a few seconds, not a huge issue, just a little frustrating if you aren’t prepared for it.  

All in all the perfect system for someone who needs more than a basic home wifi router can provide but doesn’t want to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.