Looking for Access Point Recommendations

We're opening a satellite location in a few months, and the APs we are currently using are just about useless. I would be curious which brands/models others have had good experiences with.

Bonus points if 802.11ac is supported, or for good performance in electrically noisy environments and/or metallic structures.

Let me know if more information is needed/would be useful.

Thanks in advance!

 

This is where you start:

Business Solutions

Browse around and decide what would work best for your particular setup(s).

Good luck.

 

Or just good routers config in AP mode.

 

I've see users over at ArsTechnica praise Mikrotik products often, so you may want to look into that.

 

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Any specific suggestions, model-wise? I am very happy with the Netgear R7000 at home (not my house, so I don't configure it - is it safe to assume that would have this option?).

 

The R7000 has an Access Point mode

 

Netgear R7000 is a very good router but using multiple of those would be very expensive and quite frankly an overkill. It wouldn't be using even a fraction of its abilities yet you would pay for what you will never be using multiple times.

 

They don't look that expensive at just under $200 when all the business AP's I am seeing seem to run $250-$800.

Do you have an alternative suggestion? I'm looking for something with proven performance, range-wise, in a larger environment with very congested RF frequencies. The closest I have to that at the moment is the Nighthawk in the front of my 100+ year-old house, which reaches to my room at the back of the house on the third floor.

I'm guessing we would need two at most to cover the building - I'm guessing it's not possible to get these to do any sort of hand off to eachother?

 

To be honest I don't really see the point of 802.11ac AP - I get it that you might want to have a dual band access point but not necessarily 802.11ac one.

What I'd do especially if you are looking at multiple APs, where price savings would be significant, is to buy something like TP-Link TL-WDR4300 for roughly $70 a piece and use those. Considering these devices can use different firmwares (ranging from stock TP-Link through DD-WRT all the way to OpenWRT) and have removable/upgradeable external antennas and are dual band -it's pretty much all you might need.

I'm pretty sure that Netgear offers better range but not three times better for sure, so even if you had to buy several more TP-Links to have good coverage in the facility you'd still save quite a few $. Plus you can use directional antennas if needed and so on - I don't know the size of the facility, number of APs that you might need and so on so I'm looking at flexibility here - you might be sure that you won't be needing any of those features.

Don't get me wrong - R7000 is a great router. If you take a look at the sticky, it's the one I recommend to buy but that is a recommendation for power users at home.
I wouldn't go for multiple R7000 as APs though.

 

Set one up this morning to see how it goes. So far, so good.