I'm wondering if this is a good or bad time to buy into 802.11ac hardware. Are substantial improvements due in the next year or so?
My iPad 5 doesn't speak 802.11ac, so I believe. So that is a limiting factor anyway. I would definitely like a better distribution of coverage around the house. Janet has problems in the kitchen and in the bedroom's bay window. There is currently one Zyxel NWA3560-n WAP in the office upstairs, which shines down through the floor into the lounge below well enough, despite the foil-coated plasterboard on the lounge ceiling. There is a second TP-Link WAP mounted on the landing window which shines outside into the field. I am thinking about improving outside coverage, since for the moment at least I have no neighbours.
The horrendous price of a Ubiquiti multi-pack (~£730 - see
AAISP shop -
http://aa.net.uk/broadband-accessories.html ) is holding me back at the moment, but one can only hope that the price will come down. I take it that with such Ubiquiti systems the three units in the pack act as a seamless single SSID, not multiple SSIDs as currently. In my current system I think I have to manually change over to select the appropriate SSID - I don't know if it will change over automatically unless the signal vanishes completely, whereas the ideal would be to have my iPad set up to pick the fastest performing audible WAP and have the WAPs 'associated' into a known group. I don't know how this kind of a Ubiquiti-type system works in detail, perhaps someone would explain the implementation details and correct terminology to me.
