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.