The Angry Dad's Guide to Awesome Home WiFi

Tired of the family complaining about sketchy wifi? Dave takes you on a tour of a large UniFi installation and reveals the secrets of his WiFi success. Covers topics ranging from AP selection to VLAN partitioning, fast roaming, handoff, band steering, and more!

[aminorityofone]

See, the trick is to have a house small enough to only need 1 access point.

[nilsrp]

Yes, VLAN video is needed. Thank you Dave! 👍

[basroos_snafu]

It's truly amazing how you manage to point out every important aspect of the subjects you dive in to, time and time again. I hope you realize how helpful this is, perhaps intentionally, but in any way of good use. So, thank you Mr. Plummer!

[jamiethomas]

As a farmer, mechanic, and tech person with some programming experience I love your channel! ALL your videos interest me from the lessons in computer history(got my first pc in '93), programming, your garage, your truck and light mods, and showing us how your home network is setup. It's only slightly out of reach for most but gives us a glimpse into what we may be using eventually or parts we may want to copy ourselves. Just keep showing us around and how you do things as it all contains very valuable lessons/information. Even though I fully grasp most everything you've discussed I still feel I've learned something by the end. As mentioned, you explain things along with all the hiccups you encountered doing it yourself. This is how I try to explain things to others but it is underappreciated in most cases and seems like a waste of my breathe at times. I appreciate the way you do it. It feels like accelerated learning. Have a good one!

[PotatoFi]

Great video! A couple of clarifications: Band Steering usually works by ignoring Probe Requests in 2.4 GHz. When a client sends Probe Requests in 2.4 GHz, the infrastructure will ignore them X amount of times, causing most clients to only see the 5 GHz APs. It works... but can cause devices in 2.4 GHz to take longer to associate.

Fast Roaming works by speeding up authentication when a client roams. Basically, it skips a number of steps in the association/authentication process. As a result, it's not actually seamless, but it is fast enough that the user typically won't notice, or the interruption in their application will be minimal.

Sweet network setup!

[joshm]

Very clearly explained. I especially liked the last section on VLAN & the importance of segmenting your network.

[henrybecker]

Hi Dave. This was a very interesting session. I would appreciate a wireless VLAN tutorial. Many thanks.

[theinitiate]

OMG that house! Very nice, Dave.
I use UniFi as well. I had to run cat6 in my house, man that was a job.
I also used the Ubiquiti in wall access points too. So every room in the house has it's own hard-wired ethernet and WiFI access points.

Next up is setting up a media server so I can stop consuming so much data from the outside world.

[sikend]

Dave, my APs have been fighting me for the last 4 days making my family crazy. thank you again for being punctual on solving my issues that I didn't even realize you knew I was having. Informative and useful as always. and yes, a video on VLANs would be greatly appreciated.

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Dave, I greatly appreciate your hard work on making this channel and I would definitely appreciate a video dedicated to VLAN explanation, implementation, and descriptions of use cases.

[Neophobic]

I found your channel like an hour ago and I've already learned so much. Thank you so much!

[JazAero]

Thanks again Dave. I am a retired IT manager but have been out of the game for so long that I feel literally left behind with today's technology. I actually retired prior to the AdVent of Wi-Fi becoming the standard that it is today. (back in the day everything was hard lined many hours at a punch down block LOL) Your videos are like an advanced refresher course . I enjoy every one of them and to be quite honest they bring back so many memories to those early network/PC days . absolutely, I think you should do a VLAN follow-up.

[bobgroves]

Hi Dave. Great Stuff!
I'm sure a VLAN tutorial would be well-received by us all.
btw I hope your back is progressing well.

[kylek]

Great video! I completely agree about hardwiring APs. In fact, when working ISP tech support I always advised people to hardwire any non-portable devices to alleviate them off their wireless bandwidth, especially in apartments or densely populated areas. It’s amazing how much people rely on Wi-Fi these days, yet they take so little if any time at all to understand it.

[ecur]

My UDM Pro died after 2 years of service right after attempting the latest UnifiOS update. I had a bad feeling about it and waited a while till finally decided to update. It no longer booted, thankfully I still had my old Linksys router which had 8 ethernet ports and I was able to have a functional network while I RMAd my unit. Really enjoyed your video thanks for sharing.

[bg]

A few years ago, my son talked me into buying a brand of router I'd never heard of. Ubiquity makes a brand called Amplifi. I bought the Amplifi router and it's been bullet proof since. Even automatically downloads firmware updates, slick mesh points and it just works. Hat's off to Ubiquiti for solid hardware

[Genetixxxxxxxxx]

Thank you. Yes please, VLan Videos would be great. Much needed.
Along with the why, when how and alternatives and do’s and dont’s but please always discuss the security side to do things and offer an alternative with minimal compromise etc.

Thank you for your contributions and helpfulness. Great channel.

[rjy]

VLANs are an oft misunderstood concept. I really struggled with it when I was trying to get my head around it for my home network and one thing I found is that the ease of deployment seems to be variable between switch vendors.

I'm giving a talk on VLANs and Switchdev next week :)

[kicsq]

I have a UDM Pro as well, with 5 APs, 4 in the house and 1 in the sheshed. I love the system. Gotta add one more AP where I have a small deadzone in the most critical usage place, the bath room.

[brianfritz]

Dave, great minds think alike. I'm a fan of the Ubiquiti solution as well. I'm just starting the process of setting up an IOT network and would love to hear what you have had luck doing. I think the specific trickier points to set up are going to be items like... how to Cast from a phone on main network to Roku on IOT network. I'm sure the firewall rules and which rules for typical items are going to be the trickiest part of this!