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Comment by csmajorfive | Hacker News Reader

For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.

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The Unifi access points are capable of wireless uplinks, but performance isn't going to be anywhere near as good as running some network cable. Otherwise as other people have commented you're looking at some of their ISP grade wireless network gear but that's probably overkill for the distances in question, its more designed to provide wireless ISP services across several kilometres than a bridge up the hallway.

Depends how much bandwidth you need and what the distance is. A pair of Unifi Nanostations (available in 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, 900Mhz models), will give you 100Mbit, a pair of Nanobeams will give you up to 450Mbit.

I use a single Nanostation 5Ghz out on the front porch to bridge back to my Unifi Wifi node

I need as much bandwidth as I can get over a pretty short distance -- let's say 30 feet. I'm bridging two closets at opposite ends of a hallway. One closet has the WAN connection. The other closet has a bunch of hard wire gear (NAS, home theater, etc).

You could use a pair of airfiber stations to get over 1 Gbit/sec. But they are not cheap. You'd probably be better off finding a way to run fiber (or even cat5) to get 10 gigabit.

Well my current solution works fine. I have an AC87 in each closet. The one with the gear runs in "wireless bridge" mode. I'm attracted to the prosumer Unifi stuff but there doesn't seem to be a simple solution to bridging. The airFiber units in our hallway is a little too much. And there's no easy way to run cat5.

Its hard to get simpler or cheaper than a pair of $60 Nanobeams that will give you 400+ mbit of performance and the integrated 16dBi antennas will help reduce interference from other devices. Ubiquiti also has a Litebeam with a 23dBi antenna that's even cheaper - $49... I don't have any experience with those, but I assume they would work just as well (but proper aiming would be a little more critical with the higher gain antenna)

If your existing routers live in the closets, the Nanobeams can too, you just need to aim them at each other.

Maybe their mesh product line would be of help?

I've had bad experiences with other mesh products (Eero, namely) but perhaps.

Oh -- I'm curious. I just bought a set of Eeros. So far they've made a big improvement (old house, thick walls, etc.). What problems did you have with them?

I found them to be slower than my ASUS AC87 in good coverage areas. Improving areas with spotty coverage was nice but outweighed by the speed hit.

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