Fiber! And MikroTik to Ubiquiti
Somehow, and I don't know why, my neighborhood that doesn't even have reclaimed water...got fiber optics connection. Fiber to the curb.
Ya'll, I couldn't sign up any faster. 2GB symmetrical. Done. How much? $65. And my friends are really sick of my speed test screenshots. Worth it.
Do I need 2GB connection? No. Do I have 2GB capable equipment? Also no.
:D
Well, now I do, mostly.
For the longest time I was using MikroTik devices. Really robust, very enterprise, extremely capable, difficult to learn. I think that is a fair summary. Through the years I ended up with 3 devices: hAP ac3, cAP XL ac, and then hAP ax2 as the newest addition. I had 2 CAT6 drops in the house, and then a couple of unmanaged switches. Everything was working alright, besides MikroTik not being that great in wi-fi department.
RouterOS on the other hand, was rough. I learned quite a bit using it, but it was not straightforward. Even the official documentation seems at different stages of completeness or accuracy.
Although I don't need 2GB speed, I want to have it. That's alright! But I did need to upgrade my devices. And I made decision to step away from MikroTik and step into the Ubiquiti ecosystem.
First, I ended up with Dream Router 7. I really liked it, except that the actual wi-fi part of it dind't work that great. I ended up returning it in favor of UCG-Fiber. Man, this is an amazing device. It is small, powerful, and without Wi-Fi built in. In other words, I decided to go very modular with my set up, and have single purpose devices.
Since there is no built in WiFi, I decided to go with 2 ceiling (not yet) mounted APs: U7 Pro. I don't have any devices capable of Wi-Fi 7, but I did this conciously to future proof my set up. I picked up both APs used, so I think I did pretty well.
I've been super happy with my network updates so far. I find Ubiquiti a lot more user friendly, and although maybe not as deep as RouterOS, it's perfect for my use case.