UniFi Internet Access Points

posted March 11, 2021, by Andrew Biedron

Something that a lot of people don’t know about is how your WiFi works. All they know is that somewhere in their house, there’s a router that sends out a WiFi signal, and the farther they are from it, the worse their connection gets. But that doesn’t have to be true. There’s something called an internet access point that you can use to make your home network stronger and more accessible. They work by connecting to your router via an ethernet (basically just internet) cable and functioning as another place for your mobile devices to connect to your WiFi. That way, you don’t have to connect to your router through three floors, two walls, and a refrigerator if you want to watch TV on your laptop from the other side of the house.

My dad is an IT consultant and sets up small networks in homes and businesses. Before he gives a customer some technology he hasn’t used before, he always tests it out in my house, so every month we have a new TV clicker or sound amplifier hacked into our current system to see how it works. One time, that new piece of technology was a UniFi access point. Having used many different access points as a result of my dad’s experiments, I can say that these ones are some of the best out there.

I also work for my dad sometimes if he needs an extra set of hands on one of his jobs, so not only do I have experience using UniFi, I’ve also installed and configured them. This aspect of the access points is also really nice.

In terms of the setup installation, I think the best part is the management program. With a normal router, you can manage it through your everyday browser. With UniFi though, you have to use a special box that links your computer to the network, but the extra effort is totally worth it. In one app, you can see every access point on the entire network and all the details about each one. You can see which channels and frequencies they are on, how many people are connected to each one, whether they need any software updates, as well as many other useful things. It’s all clearly labeled and well organized, with tabs, dropdown menus, and everything else that makes a management program nice.

The physical installation is nice too. If you don’t need to mount it on anything, it’s as easy as plugging in the ethernet cable and just putting it wherever you want. If you do need to mount it though, the access point comes with a plate and some screws. You screw the plate onto whatever surface you want, and then the access point just slides right on. Sometimes getting the wire to sit in the right place can be annoying, and if you line it up wrong you might have to adjust some things, but for the most part, it’s a very nice and easy installation.

Another great thing about using UniFi is the super smooth roaming, which is the ability to automatically move from access point to access point. No matter how many of them you have, every point can all appear throughout your house as a single network, so when you walk from place to place, your devices will just automatically connect to a closer access point if your connection starts to weaken.

You can also put multiple networks on the same access point, which sounds weird, but is actually very cool. Say you work at a small business, and you want to have a network for staff and a network for guests. With UniFi, you can have both networks on the same set of access points, but have them function separately from each other. You could have a password protected network for the staff with certain things only available to people on that network, and then an open network for any guests or customers that come in. You could even give people on the staff network bandwidth priority over people on the guest network to ensure a stable connection for the people who need it.

Overall, UniFi access points are easy to use, easy to install, and even look pretty good. Maybe you’re reading this because you only have one cheap router in the corner of your basement and have to be sitting in one of five specific places to get a decent connection. Maybe you’re reading this just because you’re interested in network design. Whatever the reason may be, though, if you’re looking to upgrade your network, I have found that UniFi is the way to go.