I live in a 2-story + basement brick house. Currently I have one wifi router (WRT1900ACv1) which is roughly in the middle of the ground floor. There are two wifi-only devices at opposite ends of the space -- one on a far wall of the basement, one at the opposite far wall of the upper floor -- that keep dropping off the network.
Clearly this is a job for some range extenders. What I think would be suitable is two "bridged AP" devices, one for the basement and one for the upper floor, that take Ethernet backhaul and provide AP service but not DHCP or DNS or anything, connected either to the existing WRT1900 main router, or to a new main router.
There is also a cluster of devices on the ground floor, one room away from the router, that don't have wifi, only Ethernet; they are currently behind a RE5000 configured as a wifi-to-Ethernet bridge, but this has been unreliable and if I am running Ethernet cables anyway I plan to run a branch line to a 4+1-port layer 2 switch that I already have.
I'm looking for hardware recommendations for:
- most importantly, the bridged AP devices. These should have good reliable wifi radios, Ethernet backhaul, and optionally two to four downstream Ethernet outputs. Power over Ethernet would be nice but is not required.
- possibly, an upgrade to the main router, WRT1900ACv1 being quite old at this point. If the bridged APs are powered over Ethernet, this would need to supply that power. This should have at least eight downstream Ethernet jacks; wifi is not required as I can just put a third repeater on the ground floor.
Connectivity to the outside world is 100Mbps (symmetric) and I have no plans to upgrade that. Gbps-speed local Ethernet and Wifi would be nice but is not required.
