More importantly, having multiple access points means that instead of having to take a “make my one base station scream as loud as possible” approach to whole-house coverage, you have the opportunity to fine-tune each individual AP’s 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio strengths and channel selections to create a series of interlocking cells that together offer vastly more consistent coverage-especially in the 5GHz range, which is almost certainly where you want your wireless clients connecting whenever possible.Īs it turns out, this kind of network tuning is a lot like sailing: it’s relatively easy to learn the fundamentals in an afternoon, but mastering it probably takes more time than you’re willing to commit unless you just really freaking love sailing. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I wanted some new homelab gear to tinker with so that I could get some hands-on time with an enterprise grade (or at least “enterprise-lite” grade) Wi-Fi system, because playing with the big toys is fun. I was trying to accomplish two things: first, to eliminate some persistent Wi-Fi dead spots that I just couldn’t reach, even by extending my network with a couple of Airport Expresses (Airports Express?). In mid-2015, I retired my Apple Airport Extreme and upgraded my home’s Wi-Fi with a set of wireless access points from New York-based networking OEM Ubiquiti. Maybe I should throw away everything I own and live in the mountains and grow my own food and never think about technology ever again.īut let’s back up a bit. Maybe I don’t even need computers anymore. Maybe I’ll just stand here for a few hours and not move, I think, mind going blank rather than face the thought of climbing back up into the baking attic and fishing out the cable from underneath mountains of insulation. Tiny drops of blood ooze from shredded cuticles. Sweat stings my cut hands-“man hands,” my wife has always called them, hands that seem to always sport an ever-changing collection of cuts and dry spots and calluses and torn nails as house or computer projects come and go. The words die on my lips and I drop my burning arms to my side. Then the opening stanza of a rich poem of invective leaps from my lips and my wife stares up at me from below, eyes wide, frozen just as I am, ready to catch me if I rage too hard and lose my balance.īut perched precariously on the top step of an inadequate and shaky ladder in the corner of my living room, drenched in sweat and speckled head to toe in pink insulation and sheetrock dust, body aching with dull red heat, I just can’t maintain the torrent of swearing. There is a moment of perfect stillness after the cable slips through my fingers and vanishes back up the hole in the ceiling like an angry snake.
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