I’m currently using Eero https://eero.com/ for my home network, as it mostly works well and is easy for my partner to enable and disable our kids devices at bedtime etc. The interface is quite slow, and I worry about being so cloud and Amazon dependant.
I’m wondering if there’s a local-only, ideally open, alternative? Most alternatives eg Ubiquiti seem to be becoming cloud based, and the likes of open wrt isn’t very partner-friendly.
Is there a middle ground? My requirements are modest, just a few wireless access points plus a handful of wired devices. Internet is max 1 gigabit.
Are you looking for a mesh wifi setup or can you run an Ethernet cable to each location you want an access point? If you can’t run a cable to each spot then an off the shelf mesh wifi system is still your best bet, there may be some that are less cloud connected but they are meant to be dead simple so that usually means an app and a cloud service of some sort.
If your just looking for an alternative to content and ad filtering for the kids I would recommend AdGuard for a partner friendly setup and Pihole for a more enthusiast setup.
I run my Eeros on a wired connection so I don’t really /need/ a mesh.
I’ll look at adguard and pihole - I had been thinking in terms of the network controlling access for kids, I suppose there are other ways of achieving that, eg through a firewall or dns.
Since you don’t need an off the shelf mesh you could definitely go with just regular access points, check out ruckus and ubiquity (they have cloud stuff but it’s completely optional) used stuff on ebay. You can just setup each access point with the same SSID and password and your devices will pick the best one for the most part. You could also play with broadcast strength if they overlap too much.
AdGuard and Pihole are both dns based btw.