APs for large IOT & mesh network

[madbrain]

I am a prospective user for Ruckus APs.

I have a large home, with about 320 2.4 GHz IOT devices, most of them Wiz lightbulbs and Kasa smartplugs. I only have Ethernet wiring between 2 rooms, and must use mesh network to support clients in all locations. Currently, I use 10 Unifi U6-LR APs. There are 2 mesh chains. 2 wired APs, six 1-level downlink mesh APs, and two 2-level downlink mesh APs.

I have run into major limitations with Ubiquiti.

One is that the Ubiquiti specs about maximum number of client associations per AP are false. These APs choke after about 120 connections. Depending on timing, when rebooting the wired APs, such as for firmware upgrades today, the IOT clients all rush to the wired APs first, and since the max # of association is reached, the mesh APs are stuck and can't connect. The only workaround for this is scripts I have written to kick off some IOT clients temporarily, which allows the mesh to come up. Far less than ideal ! The mesh APs also don't honor their priorities for about 30 minutes. Eventually, when the mesh is settled, everything works, though.

The other problem is that I have been trying to use Radius to assign certain IOT clients to differnet VLANs. The Unifi APs completely fall apart when I do this, even if I reassign just a single client. I have had a case open with them for a long time, and am not sure they can ever fix this in their firmware.

I'm thinking of ditching Ubiquiti because of these issues. It seems the R650 or R750 series might be the best suited. Before I try them, I would like to know if anyone can confirm that the association limits are actually respected per the Ruckus specs, unlike Ubiquiti. And also whether using Radius for MAC-based VLAN assignment will work.

For my router, I use pfSense in a Proxmox VM, and would like to keep it that way.

I would inquire with Ruckus directly about this , but the chat function does not appear to work. I also can't open a case without model & serial number. If there is pre-sales support, I don't know how to access it. So, I'm posting here.