Ceiling Mounted Wireless Access Point

I'm looking for a Wireless Access Point suitable for ceiling mounting. I want one which is virtually plug in and go.

For some reason our TV in the kitchen cannot communicate with a WAP in the room above, it can "see" it but speed and connection is dire. So plan is to drill through the upstairs floor boards and ceiling. If POE I can fit the adapter in the room upstairs without any problem.

I had looked at the Labgear ones from Screwfix, but the configuration seemed a lot more fiddly than the TP-Link TL-WA901N that I have upstairs, which had a simple install.

Appreciate any suggestions, thanks.

Cheers!

I have a Zyxel NWA90AX. It needs a POE power supply which in my case only worked if the cable length was about 1m It would not work with a 5m cable. It has a blue/green light to show that it is on. It is mounted on the ceiling above the stairs. I also have have an old Zyxel router. which is in a bedroom and above where I normally sit using my laptop.

@Ancient_Mariner,

Most TV's have absolutely dire connectivity. Several years ago my parents got me a 43" Toshiba UHD TV and the connectivity on it (ethernet & wireless) was absolute pants! The USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter I use on my Linux Mint laptop receives over 800Mb/s and the TV was only able to get under 75Mb/s (IIRC) regardless of whether it was wired or wireless. This was with the TV in the same room and only about a couple of feet (at most) away from the VM Hub! You would think, in this day and age, TV's would have state of the art connectivity! It seems that connectivity is an afterthought not a forethought!

I am just pointing out that you might need to consider the fact that your TV might be the problem and not your router.

HTH,

The Unifi U6+ (or U7 Lite, same price but slightly larger) are excellent APs in unobtrusive flying-saucer form factor, and come with the necessary ceiling brackets.

They are no longer supplied with PoE injectors, so you'd either have to buy the injector separately, or use a PoE switch.

It's not exactly "plug and play". You can install the Unifi controller software on a laptop. It will detect the AP, you "adopt" it, and then configure it - basically all you need to do is create a wireless SSID, and you're done. It will then work quite happily without seeing the controller again.

I believe it's also possible to manage them via the cloud, but I haven't attempted to do that.

I have two of these, in my converted bungalow, one at the front and one at the back, and they work really well. (Actually I'm using AC Lite, which was the previous gen Wifi 5, and see no need to upgrade)

In reply to a post by mking90031:

You would think, in this day and age, TV's would have state of the art connectivity!

Why? If it can handle a 4k stream with a bit of headroom for extras, what more does it need?

100mbits is fine for a tv (infact overkill).

Not everything needs gigabit speeds

Hi,

You would think that manufacturers would want to future-proof their TV's. Right now 100mb/s is fine but what about in a few years time? Maybe there might be an improvement in streaming services that requires extra bandwidth that 100Mb/s just can't cope with. TV's shouldn't be so disposable that we might need to upgrade just to keep up with streaming services. TV's should have a certain amount of future-proofness that prevents them being so disposable. Personally, I am still using TV's that are only HD Ready (1080p) from over 10 years ago although I do have an (non-functional for the most part) UHD TV as well. I don't stream from the TV's and prefer to stream from my VM Tivo boxes as they have superior ethernet and wireless than any of my TV's which mean ZERO buffering. Whereas with the TV there could be the possiblity (no matter how slim) of buffering.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Right now 100mb/s is fine but what about in a few years time? Maybe there might be an improvement in streaming services that requires extra bandwidth that 100Mb/s just can't cope with. TV's shouldn't be so disposable that we might need to upgrade just to keep up with streaming services.

There is a limit to the data rate of the optic nerve. I am not sure what that might be, but it is probably less than 100 Mb/s. There is no point in TV manufacturers increasing speeds beyond that point.

"Toshiba"

There is your issue. They are cheaper for a reason.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Hi,

You would think that manufacturers would want to future-proof their TV's. Right now 100mb/s is fine but what about in a few years time?

There's a school of thought that TV manufacturer's are building products that are designed to be outdated/fail after a couple of years.

I have a TP-Link EAP610 Access Point in our bedroom - POE. Happy with it.

As discussed here you don't need high bandwidth to stream TV - an HD stream requires about 5Mb/s and a 4K UHD stream needs about 25Mb/s. i.e. each TV needs a max of 25Mb/s if it's streaming 4kUHD... so unless you have an 8K UHD TV you don't need more than a 25Mb/s connection to each TV.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Hi,

You would think that manufacturers would want to future-proof their TV's. Right now 100mb/s is fine but what about in a few years time? Maybe there might be an improvement in streaming services that requires extra bandwidth that 100Mb/s just can't cope with. TV's shouldn't be so disposable that we might need to upgrade just to keep up with streaming services.

.

4k hdr+ needs around 30mbits to 40mbits. How many outfits are streaming 4k?

Disney, netflix and sometimes iplayer, sky is probably too.

itvx, ch4, ch5, nowtv isn't

Even at 4k, you don't need 100mbits plus. 8k hdr+ you would need depending on the bit rate, 80 to 120mbits.

So a question, how is it future proofing.

Also i'm completely aware, that we are talking about £1 difference probably in parts.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

There is a limit to the data rate of the optic nerve. I am not sure what that might be, but it is probably less than 100 Mb/s. There is no point in TV manufacturers increasing speeds beyond that point.

So speaks a person that has never experienced real 4K at 150 to 200Mbps where it gets a chance to resolve true 4K resolution and is truly jaw dropping. Most people are watching 15Mbps highly compressed streaming services that will barely resolve something resembling good HD let alone 4K. What we watch isn't hitting anywhere near the limit of our optic nerve or even the resolution on our TVs, because it falls well short of that due to compression.

The weakest link by far isn't our optic nerve, but overly compressed video we get as standard. TV manufacturers will stick at 100M Ethernet as it saves a buck or two, has less compatibility issues, and most people will struggle along with Wi-Fi as a path of least resistance to watching utter tripe, both in quality of the picture and content! As people don't know what they are missing, we continue to receive highly compressed video services that resolve nothing close to what they advertise.

In reply to a post by E300:

So speaks a person that has never experienced real 4K at 150 to 200Mbps where it gets a chance to resolve true 4K resolution and is truly jaw dropping.

Its where I prefer 4K blu-ray disc to streaming, but its not as easy to get them anymore. Better with the larger and larger screens.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

You would think that manufacturers would want to future-proof their TV's.

Quite the opposite.

I bought a Samsung "smart" TV some years ago. A long time ago it lost the ability to play BBC iPlayer; it got slower and slower, and eventually the app just got so large that it the TV couldn't load it. This was not due to the bandwidth into the TV, but the slow CPU and small RAM.

Solution was to get a Roku. A few years later the same fate befell it. Now I have a Firestick and it's still working well.

In general, don't expect any "smart" TV you buy today to be smart in 3-5 years time. Just make sure it has enough HDMI connectors that you can plug an external decoder into it.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

I don't stream from the TV's and prefer to stream from my VM Tivo boxes as they have superior ethernet and wireless than any of my TV's which mean ZERO buffering.

I think you're saying the same thing. As the built-in "set top box" in a TV gets older and older, it gets less and less suitable for modern broadcasts.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by mking90031:

You would think that manufacturers would want to future-proof their TV's.

Quite the opposite.

I bought a Samsung "smart" TV some years ago. A long time ago it lost the ability to play BBC iPlayer; it got slower and slower, and eventually the app just got so large that it the TV couldn't load it. This was not due to the bandwidth into the TV, but the slow CPU and small RAM.

Solution was to get a Roku. A few years later the same fate befell it. Now I have a Firestick and it's still working well.

In general, don't expect any "smart" TV you buy today to be smart in 3-5 years time. Just make sure it has enough HDMI connectors that you can plug an external decoder into it.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

I don't stream from the TV's and prefer to stream from my VM Tivo boxes as they have superior ethernet and wireless than any of my TV's which mean ZERO buffering.

I think you're saying the same thing. As the built-in "set top box" in a TV gets older and older, it gets less and less suitable for modern broadcasts.

I've done something similar with my Panny, it's still got a good picture and I'm not going to buy a new 'top of the range' tv for it to become dumb in a few years.

In reply to a post by E300:

So speaks a person that has never experienced real 4K at 150 to 200Mbps where it gets a chance to resolve true 4K resolution and is truly jaw dropping.

Thanks for your somewhat patronising reply.

If it is truly jaw dropping, then there is something wrong with it. We do the majority of our viewing away from a television. It is called real life. We do say this aurora or that sunset was jaw dropping. But not because of the quality with which the eye can see it, but rather because of the spectacle itself. We see things at the same resolution when we go to work or out to walk the dog and we are not blown away by the resolution, because quite simply we are always seeing at the maximum capability of the optic nerve. We would never get anything done if everything we saw was jaw dropping.

In reply to a post by E300:

The weakest link by far isn't our optic nerve, but overly compressed video we get as standard. TV manufacturers will stick at 100M Ethernet as it saves a buck or two, has less compatibility issues, and most people will struggle along with Wi-Fi as a path of least resistance to watching utter tripe, both in quality of the picture and content! As people don't know what they are missing, we continue to receive highly compressed video services that resolve nothing close to what they advertise.

Well maybe. But it still stands as a fact that we are ultimately limited by the capability of the optic nerve. A quick google on the question "what is the effective data rate of the optic nerve?" returns answers around 10Mbit/s, which really substantiates what I said and indicates that the problem is likely not that 100Mbit/s is not enough data for television - more likely, if there is a problem it is how effectively that bandwidth is used.