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About LinkBacksThis would be of interest to know where your trial units came from?
This would be of interest to know where your trial units came from?
If all I need to replace my linksys business WAP4400N is Ubiquiti UniFi indoor Acces Point 2.4 GHz, 802.11b/g/n, 3 pack WiFi System including the UniFi Controller software for £140 I would be so happy but I need to convinced that it would be up to the job of getting a class of say 20 laptops up and running happily in a relatively quick time as it takes up to 20mins or not at all in some cases, obviously I wouldn't be using 3 ap's in the same area so one would have to suffice per 20 laptops or more.
In the world of wireless networking - Fast, Cheap, Good - Pick 2 - very much appliesOriginally Posted by grahamd22
Sorry mate I'm not quite on your wavelength do you mean that you get what you pay for or that this is a good solution?
I would like my car to perform like an F1 MP4 return the fuel economy of a Fiat 500 have the interior space of a Bentley and be pre-occupied with half naked ladies.... but it isn't going to happen!
You have nothing to loose by trying this system out, we are continuingly rolling out more AP's the feed back is positive and the performance superb considering the cost per unit.
In any managed system the controller is the most expensive part, followed by the AP's.
The Unifi system is currently only limited by it's backhaul, 2 x MIMO is more than capable of using all of the available 100 mb uplink and the points are capable of 100+ connections however this means contention is your biggest problem.
30 users sharing a single 100Mb link is not optimal but this applies to any of the manufacturers.
High bandwidth client servicing requires multiple radios, 40Mhz slots, Gigabit Backhaul and enough bandwidth back to your servers to deliver your profiles at an acceptable rate.
Ruckus, Meru, HP and almost all of the big players have Gigabit connected AP's with some sporting 2, 3, 4 Radios
With wireless potential of 600Mb and a Gigabit connection into your network sure they should all get the job done in one way shape or form.
You are asking for the impossible for a budget price...
The Fast, Cheap, Good, pick any 2 snipe does apply to Unifi because it's cheap and good!
Unfortunately fast is not an option with only one radio and a shared and heavily contended 100Mb uplink.
It's like comparing my B-Class Deisel to a McLaren MP4-12c
I have had ten devices all streaming media at once iPlayer, 4OD, Demand5, BBCHD, You Tube through a single unifi AP without dropping a packet, so as far as Im concerned thats about as good as it gets!
Yes, I too await the Unifi "Pro" version with Dual Radios, AF Compliancy, Gigabit uplinks, 8 VLans and Mesh capability as these will surely destroy the current competition, but in the meantime I can live with 3 points in one location running on low power 1,6,11 style to deliver what is without doubt the most cost effective managed wireless system I have seen to date..
Dont knock it until youve tried it.
How have you setup your ap's did you use a radius server or just password protected (which is the basic setup now we have one to try)?
We have a private VLAN with WPA2 key and a Guest VLAN.
We are already trialing the V2 Firmware and are printing access code vouchers for the guests.
If somebody wants WiFi the receptionist just supplies them with a voucher. The vouchers last for however long we want them to.
Radius works just fine if thats the way you want to deal with it.
What features would the Ubiquiti Unify system provide? Does it manage the range of the AP's ?
Is it better to not use Radius as we don't seem to be able to get the iphones to talk to it?
I don't understand that comment POE is 48v?
Ben
Not quite, 802.3af is 48v,
POE was around in various forms long before the af standard was adopted and many of the last mile wireless systems in remote parts use passive 18-24v POE
The Unifi system uses 18-24v and if you want to connect them to an AF POE source you need the active to passive adapters in line between switch and AP
Ok well that's what I was referring to
I've seen the ubiquiti adaptors and stuff and saw that the pro range is going to have built in 802.3af
Ben
I believe the newest points are now to the 802.3af standard (well that was stated to me when questioning them on the Ubiquiti forum). I have about 20 of the newer points and I will try one with our PoE switch if I get round to it today, surrently we use the boxes they provide with the points (not a PoE switch and adapter), which is quite inconvenient!.
On a sidenote we have now had Ubiquiti points throughout the school (36) in total, 15 of these were added over this summer to improve the current Wifi offerings throughout the school. Our batch of 20 we took a punt on have been excellent, we have not yet found a fault with them. As stated before the software controller does not have an many features as others vendors offerings but then you are paying 4x even 5x the price per point for them and then the controller to! The controller has improved though over the last 6 months and for £75 an AP I cannot see why any school would not consider them.
We have ours setup with 2 SSIDs, running over different VLANs, one for guests/ students and one for staff. We don't use the guest portal though so cannot comment on that, although this term we do intend to start having laptop trolleys (urgh) using them to login, so we will put some more strain on them. The current height of users we have had on one point (just people mobile devices/ laptops) is about 38 according to the console with no known complaints, however i cannot say all devices with browsing the Internet heavily for example and at the price per AP I can afford to put a new AP in to help share the load.
There are no 802af compliant Unifi points yet so please don't fry one of yours.
The Pro version due Q4/11 will have Dual Band, Dual Radio and AF gigabit compliancy until then it's 24v or AF with droppers.
Just got my first outdoor ones today and they are so cool, incredibly small and the range is just brilliant but even at 24v they get hot on full power.
I'm playing with the output levels right now and measuring the body temperature.
If I run it at a full Watt I bet it will glow in the dark!
Quick update, whilst playing with my Unifi over the weekend trying to push it to the limits and beyond...
I found that if you tweak the Custom Power Settings it is possible to change the restricted -30 dBm output up to -20 dBm which is awesome (apart from being illegal)...
But, then I noticed that one of my beloved Laptops was unable to get hooked up any faster than 65M.
Turns out that the Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter installed in the Samsung is only capable of 65M !
WTF! Why on earth give a laptop a 1 Gigabit Video Adapter 8 GB of RAM and a 64bit version of Windows but then kick it in the nuts with what must be the crappiest Wifi adapter on the planet!
So before you run away with the idea that because it says 802.11n on the box it MEANS FAST think again, 802.11n on a single 20Mhz slot is at best capable of almost 70Mbps and even if you do have an Oki Coki a/b/g/n Double Barrelled Turbo, 16 Antenna £600 Access Point its never going to go any faster than about 65M.
Im gutted now because my £190 Netbook copies files off of my NAS at least 3 times faster than my shiny new i5 Samsung....
Now, wheres that screwdriver time to swap the wireless cards over in these buggers....
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