I’m a big fan of Ubiquiti and own both their wireless AP’s and Firewall Edgerouter. At work we use Cisco, HP and other Enterprise brands but at home I use Ubiquiti as you get Enterprise grade solutions for the cheap.
I’ve been using aht UniFI AP at home for years and it’s been great compared to all other wireless home solutions I’ve tried before. Now they’ve released their UniFI AP AC LITE so I decided to get one and do some comparison of my old UniFI AP to see if 802.11ac is any better than 802.11n for home networks.
Now, remember that this is a home setup so I didn’t do any deep analysis. My UniFI AP has been working great for every day work but when copying large files such as ISOs or pictures, I tend to connect an Ethernet cable to get more speed. During the tests, I had an additional ~10 more or less inactive devices connected to the Wireless such as iPhones, iPad, Sonos soundsystem, an AppleTV and a Chromebox. I have a 100 Mbit down/10 Mbit up fibre Internet connection even though it seems when connecting via cable I do get some additional Mbits.
UniFI AP Performance
I connected to my WLAN sitting next to the AP, therefore 99% signal strength. However, notice the 144.4 Mbps speed instead of 300 Mbps but this is quite common if you have any other wireless networks around which I guess most of us have.
I first tried an Internet connection test service and apparently, the UniFI AP can’t keep up since I only got on average 60 Mbit down/12 Mbit up.
Downloading files from my local server to my laptop, on average 7,5 MB/s:
Uploading files from my laptop to my local server, on average 8,5 MB/s:
UniFI AP AC LITE Performance
So I added the additional AP AC LITE to the network:
Then I disconnected the old AP to make sure it didn’t interfere. My laptop silently connected to the new IP:
The Internet connection test service went up to average 120 Mbit down/12 Mbit up (thanks for the free Mbit Mr ISP…)
Downloading files from my local server to my laptop, on average 27 MB/s:
Uploading files from my laptop to my local server, on average 30 MB/s:
Conclusion
Even though I didn’t do any deep analysis, you can see what to expect (at least in my setup) if you decide to upgrade your network to the Ubiquiti UniFI AP AC LITE which runs 802.11ac. For me, it’s definitely a keeper. Maybe I’ll keep the UniFI AP for redundancy since the family would go crazy if the Wireless would be down more than a few hours.