My current set-up for Wifi does not provide enough coverge across my place.
I currently have a FritzBox at one end of the house, and looking at a WiFi extender to increase coverage.
I was considering pocking up a used Airport Express. A more expensice option is the Eero system which is getting some positive reviews and might be wirth considering further down the track as a bigger investment.
Any other suggestions-recommendations?
I can’t account for other options, but I do use Airport Express successfully, fits in nice with the ecosystem.
Personally I use AirPort Express units as I wanted audio streaming too.
Also, my AirPort network is only N as my Time Capsule is a bit old. I wouldn’t mix new with old. i.e. you want all hardware to be the same generation in my experience to make sure devices seamlessly switch.
Recently been hearing the Accidental Tech Podcast ads & discussion around two newer brands: Eero & Ubiquiti. If I was starting from scratch and didn’t want AirPlay I’d probably look at them these days.
I couldn’t get my AEBS to act as a bridge for my Netcomm wifi modem… Apparently Apple doesn’t always play nice with others… So check first if possible?
Most vendors won’t work with each other. Just how it is… I am running two Mikrotik routers in a wirless bridge setup. Basically they act as a long ethernet lead (except over the air) so that I can extend our network into another room where I have no ethernet ports. Of course the end location is limited in speed to the wireless speed the units communicate at, but I can plug ethernet devices into the router at the other end and they talk back to the main lan. It’s a pretty sweet trick, and does well for things that I don’t need high speed transfers for… (in this case enables a TiVo to get guide data without needing to plug in any USB wireless dongle that is Tivo specific).
I’ve got a mix of devices for WiFi.
At the front of the house is a 4th gen Time Capsule (2011 vintage).
At the back of the house is a 3rd or (4th gen??) AirPort Extreme (2009 vintage??)
One wasn’t enough to get across the whole house so the second one is cabled in to provide that extra coverage.
I’ve also got a couple of airport expresses that I used to use as wireless bridges when I was in a rental that are used in the middle somewhere too. Similar to @purana one is providing an ethernet port to a stereo in the kitchen unless I get a cable run there one day and one is being used to provide a USB port to a printer (which makes it a network printer!) until that dies and I get a new printer.
Setting up Apple devices is dead simple, just tell it to add to the network and away it goes. From what I gather all this does it copy in the SSID and password to the newly added device. The idea being that each device connecting only needs to know one SSID and password and can connect to whichever WAP it is getting the strongest signal from… theoretically this can happen with multiple different providers hardware, I think the only thing that having all Apple does it manage the channels a little better to ensure they aren’t clashing with each other?? Although the big question is are they talking to each other to do this??? Or are they each automatically trying to skip around as needed.
I keep considering getting one higher powered device (probably ubiquity) and putting it into the roof space in the middle of the house (using power over ethernet) and having a single WAP… or maybe still one at either end. For the moment everything is working so I haven’t felt the need, that and none of my devices support wireless AC yet so there is no real benefit.
I used to love Ubiquiti but had a bit of a problem with a local supplier and that put me off the brand. Since I could only buy it from them.
Moved to using other gear instead (which is more direct competition to them).
I’m always open to alternatives, I’ve just previously heard good things about Ubiquity so figured I’d give them a go when the time comes.
Add mikrotik to the list. Available from a supplier in Melbourne. I won’t name them, as it might be against rules. But if you hit up my twitter and/or blog you will see them mentioned from time to time (or you can message me).
Perhaps I should do a post about the wireless bridge 
I want to buy another unit to setup a wireless bridge between my lan and my neighbours so we can have a larger network for sharing stuff.
There’s no rule to say you can’t name where to get gear. MacTalk might have had such a rule, but AppleTalk does not.
I used to live next door to the inlaws and we put a hard ethernet connection between the houses, initially to share internet back in the day but later just to share server storage space. The issue with connections between houses like this is managing independent networks (which each want to run DHCP), subnets and all that (but that is a WHOLE other can of worms I can go into if you ever want).
That’s what we want. Each network will be separate and independent… However we will have a static route that enables the traffic between us to traverse the wireless bridge.
Will do a seperate post talking about the setup when I get it working. I think I know the configuration settings I need on my units to do it, just a matter of trying (and buying another more high end mikrotik).
If you lock the wifi channels, the interop problems usually go away. There is no real interoperability test for multiple vendors doing auto channel selections. Moral of the story, find a quiet channel and lock it.
When you start using things like WDS, this is when you will find that vendor A won’t work with Vendor B etc. No matter what you configure.