Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long-Range Access Point U6-LR

Product Information

This item comes without PoE injectors and must be bought seperately if you are not using them with a PoE Switch. Before running the tests I first connected both notebooks with an ethernet cable to the switch, run the test, which resulted in a 960Mbit connection speed. When further away, you can see the impact of the lower EIRP of the U6-Lite. The UDM and AC-HD are able to compensate with better beamforming, and ended up performing slightly better than the U6-Lite from the furthest location. This is where the U6-LR shows it’s biggest advantage over the U6-Lite. Its higher gain antenna and higher transmit power allow it to reach further than any of the other models I’ve tested. A better antenna and few extra dBm is enough to allow the U6-LR to effectively cover a larger area than any of the other APs listed. You can also run the test with multiple threads, which can increase the total speed that you can get, to do this use the -P switch: iperf3 -c 192.168.1.10 -P 5 -t 10 Wrapping Up

That’s all part of the promise: the “LR” stands for “long range”, and though you can’t see them, the U6-LR features downward-tilting internal aerials that aim to offer improved coverage. As for speeds, the 2.4GHz radio bandwidth is pegged at 600Mbits/sec, while the 5GHz radio supports a far faster 2,400Mbits/sec. The Ubiquiti UniFi U6-LRis apowerful wireless Access Point leveraging advanced WiFi 6 technology to provide powerful wireless coverage to enterprise environments.I just wanted to compare the old access points with the new Unifi WiFi 6 access points in a real world scenario. Again, keep in mind that these tests didn’t show the full potential of the access points. They are capable of even higher throughputs when using multiple clients (or multiple threads) or if you have a client with a WiFi 6 3×3 adapter, for example. The throughput at 30 feet was 238Mbps up and 121Mbps downstream, but things get a bit problematic at 45 feet and farther. That because the attenuation shot up to 79dB and the throughput was barely decent, 43.9Mbps upstream and 12.7Mbps downstream. At 70 feet, I could no longer see the network, so it’s 0Mbps. Before reaching conclusions, I just assumed that it’s the fault of interference (which did ramp up after 30 feet) and it’s natural when using the 160MHz channel bandwidth on 5GHz.

The 160 Mhz channel width is at the moment only supported on the U6 LR. In the chart below you won’t see the full potential of the 160 MHz channel width, due to the limitation of the 2×2 Wifi 6 adapter in my notebook. The advantage of the Unifi 6 Long Range with its 4×4 MU-MIMO 5 GHz radio really comes into play when connecting with multiple clients. For the best results, directly connect to the “server” to the same switch as the access points are connected on.

To test only the speed of the Wi-Fi connection between the client and the AP, my iPerf server was connected over gigabit Ethernet to my Switch Lite 8. I primarily used my dedicated pfSense box for this, but I also used my PC and laptop depending on what I was testing. To specify which AP and which band was being used, I made an AP group for each AP, and swapped them in and out as needed. I then stepped through the different channel widths and bands, letting the connection stabilize before beginning my tests. I ran all of my tests with multiple TCP streams, and occasionally reversed the direction as a point of comparison. These tests ran for 60 seconds, so a typical client command would look like: iperf3 -c 172.25.10.5 -P 8 -t 60 Ubiquiti's UniFi WiFi 6 Long-Range (U6-LR) is a high-performance Access Point leveraging advanced WiFi 6 technology to provide powerful wireless coverage to enterprise environments.It delivers an aggregate radio rate of up to 3.0 Gbps with 5 GHz (4x4 MU-MIMO and OFDMA) and 2.4 GHz 4x4 MIMO radios. The U6-LR seamlessly blends into any environment, and is capable of being mounted in indoor and semi-outdoor environments (IP54 rated).

One of the advantages of WiFi 6 is that it allows devices to use the same WiFi channels by breaking up the channel into smaller groups (Resource Units). This way more devices can communicate at the same time. Other improvements are MU-MIMO in both downlink and uplink direction, Target Wait Time, Dynamic fragmentation, and more.

Ubiquiti U6-LR Videos

The quoted wireless specification is given as the maximum radio performance. Achievable range and throughput will vary depending on the regional regulations where the radio is deployed. When possible, place two Lite‘s in the center of each wing of your home, that would give the best result. Otherwise, go for the LR. Compared with Ubiquiti’s nanoHD Wi-Fi 5 Access Point, for little more money, the UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point provides future proofing, noticeably higher speeds with Wi-Fi 6 devices and improved range. For anyone looking for a new Access Point now, opting for the UniFi 6 Long Range Wi-Fi Access Point is a no-brainer. While Wi-Fi 6 is more about efficiency improvement rather than speed enhancement, we still measured significant throughput increases. With modern Apple devices (equipped with 2×2 MIMO), we measured real, close-range throughputs of over 900 Mbps, compared with about 640 Mbps achieved with the nanoHD Access Point. In other words, throughputs nearly match Gigabit Ethernet, which is a very impressive result. So, optimally deploying several UniFi 6 Long Range devices in a home or business would finally do full justice to the fastest ultrafast broadband connections. Here you can really see the performance improvement of the new U6 LR. The speedtest are done on 40Mhz for the 2.4Ghz band and 80Mhz for the 5Ghz band. The performance improvement of the U6 lite is between 20% and 30%.

With every foot of free space and every obstruction, a Wi-Fi signal attenuates and gets weaker. 5 GHz signals attenuate faster, and provide around half the range of 2.4 GHz. When deciding on how many access points you need, a good general rule is don’t expect 5 GHz coverage to extend further than 2 walls or 30 feet away. The U6-LR extends this circle out a bit, but with the others APs, roaming to 2.4 GHz or getting low SNR 5 GHz performance is possible at the far edges. enabling a minimum RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) to prevent distant devices from connecting to the Access Point (to improve overall quality). But, while Zyxel, EnGenius and TP-Link have released powerful WiFi 6 access points a couple of years ago, proudly showcasing the best that the standard could offer, Ubiquiti didn’t really care about its competition. So it took its time, only recently making available a 2.5GbE WiFi 6 access point. The Ubiquiti U6-LR still offers a 1Gbps port and, considering the price tag of the device, it makes a lot of sense. To be fair, the entire series is surprisingly affordable, but U6-LR supports 160MHz channel bandwidth, OFDMA, 4×4 MU-MIMO and the support for the excellent UniFi controller. For comparisons of all UniFi AP models, see my UniFi Comparison Charts and UniFi Access Point Buyers Guide.For most home networks is the Unifi 6 lite the best choice, it’s fast enough, reasonable priced, and not too big. The nanoHD covers are really great when you need to place the access point in sight. If you already run optimised Wi-Fi 5 Access Points and are happy with the performance, you don’t need to be in a rush to upgrade all your existing equipment. As the UniFi ecosystem allows you to mix Access Points, upgrading Access Points in high-traffic areas to Wi-Fi 6 may provide a cost-effective evolution path for many. As for the WiFi part, the Ubiquiti U6-LR uses a combination of two chips for the 5GHz band (it actually made me think whether it’s actually tri-band and it’s not): Mediatek MT7975AN and Mediatek MT7915AN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 4×4:4 + Bluetooth 5 chip. As for the 2.4GHz radio, it seems to be using the Mediatek MT7622 chip (802.11a/b/g/n 4×4:4). Features