In Canada, your choices for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are far and few between. Where I am in Ottawa (the nation’s capital dontchaknow) it really comes down to two: Rogers and Bell Canada. I won’t talk about the rates and how we in Canada are charged amongst the highest for the least in the world (Google it), rather I will talk about my experiences with using Rogers and their Cable Modem.
Rogers uses a Hitron POS. When I lived in Ottawa back in 2006-2010, I used Rogers and returned this POS at least three times. Why? The WiFi portion of the modem would just stop performing. Note that this opinion of the Hitron is mine based on a decade of use.
Now back in Ottawa since 2014, I went back to Rogers (Bell didn’t have the fibre lines in my area of Barrhaven in Nepean at the time). I have since returned the Hitron POS three times (four?). I am on my fourth (fifth?) cable modem. And they don’t give you a new one, you get a refurbished one that someone else returned because it was crap. Add to this that the WiFi signal can barely cover a house of less than 2000 sqft, and that it struggles to support four people, plus I was rebooting the router EVERY DAY, and I simply had enough. When you complain to Rogers you get the literal shrug. They don’t care. They look at you as if this is YOUR fault. If they did care, they would replace the shitty cable modems with ANYTHING, and would lower their rates. They treat ones and zeroes like it’s water or electricity. News Flash: It’s not.
Enter Ubiquiti. A company formed by a former Apple WiFi technician named Robert Pera when he noticed Apple WiFi was underpowered. A co-worker of mine highly (and I mean highly) recommended Ubiquiti and their Unifi products. So, I just went out and bought a complete Unifi solution. I bought the Unifi Security Gateway (router), the Unifi 8 port 150W POE switch, the Unifi AC Lite WAP, and the Unifi Cloud Key. I bridged the Rogers router, connected everything, struggled to understand just what I was doing for about an hour, then had a short chat session with Ubiquiti tech help, and bam! I have a WiFi signal in my house that is probably pissing the neighbours off (by dominating the channels). This thing can handle four users simultaneously with no problem. It uses 2.4GHz ands 5GHz simultaneously allowing maximum throughput. This thing SINGS.
I’m so happy right now!