Help us make the Firewalla AP
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Order Firewalla AP7 here: https://firewalla.com/products/firewalla-ap7
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my house is not wired, so I am not going to pay thousand dollars to run cables through the ceiling for new APs. I would rather spend more on desk units. Labor in the Bay Area California is expensive, if I want to put new cables, I would just pull the cable to each room, then I am talking about a lot of money on labors.
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I live in the area where airplanes sometimes turn around for landing on to local airport, although the airport itself is far from my home, if I’m using WiFi routers with omnidirectional antennas like desktop units some people want, part of 5GHz spectrum is blocked automatically to avoid interference with airplanes landing radar systems, and because of that most neighbors WiFi radios are crowded on frequency’s not affected by this restrictions, so because of that the 5GHz spectrum is used inefficiently. But with ceiling WiFi access points, with antennas with signal radiation predominantly downwards, I don’t have this problem and I can utilize those frequencies without restrictions.
Thats why I need a ceiling unit
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By the way, the survey you see at the beginning of the thread is meant to help us decide what's important to the community. For example, most of the surveyed are interested in a desktop unit, and next is a ceiling mount, followed by a wall mount.
This is the reason we are releasing the ceiling mount two to three months after the desktop unit.
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Hello,
I have absolutely no interest in Wifi7, mostly because it's worthless, it's nothing more than a chipset change. I've been sitting in on a number of seminars and Wifi7 workshops and there's nothing that excites me here. First, nothing in the home network, at current, can support the speeds. Second, The bottleneck is at the RG and ISP. Third, with exceptions, most residential customers are not going to purchase of even understand the concept of Wifi7 and won't purchase the equipment necessary to overcome the speed limitations of the rest of the home network.
Firewalla, I would wait for Wifi7 to become a little more "baked" and sorted out before you jump on the bandwagon. And besides, Wifi8-9 and, dear god, 10 is on the horizon.
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@Peter Davis
I am on board with you, but I am only interested in the WIFI7 MLO and AFC because it can do wireless backhaul with all the radios. HOWEVER, non of the companies can fully cook the MLOP and AFC feature (Asus, UNIFI, ORBI etc). yea, probably I am the only person who is interested in the wireless backahaul.
Right now I am using Asus Routers with UNII-4 channels (channel 149 to 177) for wireless backhaul and MESH speed is stable above 1200Mps/1200Mpbs between 3 units. ( main unit in my office, 1 unit in my garage 30 ft away, another unit is at the end of the house, 30 ft away, with mutiple walls)
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If we sign the contract this month, the early access units may arrive in late December (in limited quantity). We may do a quick early access sale where the hardware is production quality and the software may be 'early access.'
From software perspective, we already have something running for a while now. Most of our team members have been using it for a while. The 'firewalla' magic still need a few more touch-ups and cleaning
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Looking forward to this, I have tired a bunch of WiFi AP and Routers (as Access Points) over the years.
Unifi, Asus, Synology, Orbi Pro and got rid of them all as they just don't compare at all to a pair of Alien Routers I got back in 2020 along with the FWG (now a FWG-Pro)
Desktop units in the cylindrical format would be my preference, like the Alien with at least tri-band (quad-band with two 5Ghz radios would be great though!) Ceiling mounted units just don't have the range like desktop units do.
Little disappointed US only at first though :(
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Yes, too many AP's if not deployed correctly can be an issue as well; my suggestion is to start slow and optimize.
If you are playing with APs now, the firewalla WiFi test can help a lot. And once that tool integrates with firewalla AP (of the future), it will be a bit easier to measure coverage.
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Thanks. I would love to ‘get it right’ during the first iteration, because in theory I’ll be completely replacing my home’s WiFi. It sounds like it’ll be a limited run, so if I don’t order the correct number off the bat it may mean subpar performance with no way to address in the short term. That’s not a good spot to be in!
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@john, do you have a sense on what kind of performance you are looking for? That usually dictates the number of AP's you need. For example, I am fortunate enough to have 3 Firewalla AP's running and I place them so I can get a minimum 50mbit at the worst spot in the house + at least 20mbit in the yard.
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