Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those uses. This includes:
a dedicated network router and dedicated access points. The placement of the access points is key. They should be in the dead center of the area they're meant to cover and not be near any radio absorbing materials. You pretty much can't do that if you have to put your access point at the place where your internet comes into your house. I use Ubiquiti Edgerouter and AP equipment[0]. I had to wire cat6 between my basement and my entryway closet to get good placement of my access points.
testing and optimizing frequencies for the environment. I live out in the suburbs, but I still have to contend with my neighbor's RF noise. I use a tool for MacOS called Wifi Signal [1] that identifies clear channels and regularly suggests improvements.
Understanding the differences in the technologies available. I have a large house, and lots of high bandwidth equipment, as well as some low bandwidth equipment. The low bandwidth equipment (eg. Nest thermostats, raspberry pi garage door controllers) stays on the slower, longer range 2.4 ghz access point and I don't have to particularly care about placement. The high bandwidth equipment (laptops, desktops, set top box) is set to prefer the high bandwidth short range 5ghz network, and I placed my access points close to their points of use. Equipment like phones and laptops that move around are set to prefer the 5ghz network, but accept the 2.4 ghz network when they're too far from the access points. Newer access points allow you to specify minimum signal qualities to encourage clients to switch networks sooner when their signal quality drops too far to be useful.
I put a lot of effort and more money than normal into this solution, but the result is that my family generally doesn't notice the network. It just works, all the time. When we visit other people's houses, the wireless is bad and that's just something that is weird about other places. I want to say guests in my house get good wireless coverage, but if they do something with their devices that my family doesn't (like try to stream movies from a hammock in the back yard), or get on the "wrong" network, I can't guarantee much.
A lot of good points here. But your opening statement...
> Making wireless work isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem and buying off the shelf products, unfortunately. Nor is it a binary "works" vs. "doesn't work." I want to say I have "flawless" wifi at my house, but in reality I've looked at the use cases of all of my regular users and optimized the wireless network to be reliable and performant for those uses.
... I think fits with the question the OP asked, and my follow up to. Since it's not a binary, and people have different levels of acceptance, and different levels of work put in to getting that number closer to 1 than 0, that is my issue. A stable router and wired devices "just works" for at least the last couple of decades.
I can likely get a better WLAN than the one I have, but I have already put in more time than I'd like to. At this point if I can't throw money at it, I'll rather just throw money at installing cat6a, which I did for the stuff I cared about (desktop, htpc, server).
> I put a lot of effort and more money than normal into this solution, but the result is that my family generally doesn't notice the network. It just works, all the time.
Contradicting as it is to your first statement, do you really mean this though? Or is it simply "works well enough, within reasonable efforts, means and expectations"?
Regarding the first and last statements contradicting, I mean that when my family uses the network in the ways I have anticipated and built around, it works consistently and without interruption. This is different than saying it just works for everyone and anything they want to do. I think "just works for everyone doing anything" is what people want, and expect when they spend hundreds of dollars on a product, but I don't believe that's possible when you're dealing with the current state of the art in computer wireless networks. You need to take into account the environment and the requirements.
Also, yes, replacing wireless links with cat6 where possible is certainly the more reliable solution. Fixed location high bandwidth devices shouldn't be using wireless if it can be avoided at all.
a dedicated network router and dedicated access points. The placement of the access points is key. They should be in the dead center of the area they're meant to cover and not be near any radio absorbing materials. You pretty much can't do that if you have to put your access point at the place where your internet comes into your house. I use Ubiquiti Edgerouter and AP equipment[0]. I had to wire cat6 between my basement and my entryway closet to get good placement of my access points.
testing and optimizing frequencies for the environment. I live out in the suburbs, but I still have to contend with my neighbor's RF noise. I use a tool for MacOS called Wifi Signal [1] that identifies clear channels and regularly suggests improvements.
Understanding the differences in the technologies available. I have a large house, and lots of high bandwidth equipment, as well as some low bandwidth equipment. The low bandwidth equipment (eg. Nest thermostats, raspberry pi garage door controllers) stays on the slower, longer range 2.4 ghz access point and I don't have to particularly care about placement. The high bandwidth equipment (laptops, desktops, set top box) is set to prefer the high bandwidth short range 5ghz network, and I placed my access points close to their points of use. Equipment like phones and laptops that move around are set to prefer the 5ghz network, but accept the 2.4 ghz network when they're too far from the access points. Newer access points allow you to specify minimum signal qualities to encourage clients to switch networks sooner when their signal quality drops too far to be useful.
I put a lot of effort and more money than normal into this solution, but the result is that my family generally doesn't notice the network. It just works, all the time. When we visit other people's houses, the wireless is bad and that's just something that is weird about other places. I want to say guests in my house get good wireless coverage, but if they do something with their devices that my family doesn't (like try to stream movies from a hammock in the back yard), or get on the "wrong" network, I can't guarantee much.
0: https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ac/ 1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wifi-signal/id525912054?mt=1...