UniFi Wireless

[Cruiser_Scotland]

Hi

I'm starting to toy with the idea of UniFi for our school..... currently using unmanaged wireless, and cannot afford the likes of Ruckus, Meru, Aruba etc.

I'd be interested to hear anyone's experiences of UniFi - particularly does anyone know if they support guest access, VLAN'ing, NAT etc? If we go down this route it'll likely lead to students using their own devices.

Can anyone recomend a supplier if we decide to get some test kit?

Many thanks!

[markcuk]

http://ubnt.com/downloads/guides/UniFi/UniFi_AP_QSG.pdf

Great kit and cheap got ours from here Landashop, the Landatel's online shop I helped set these up for apartments in Tenerife

[strawberry]

use them, cheap, great looking, functional. Best thing to do is splash £150 for 3 and give them a test. You can download the software and have a fiddle for free.

[m25man]

PM sent, I have been installing Unifi for the last Year and have stopped using everything else as nothing matches it for the price.

No point into turning this into another mines better than yours thread, not everyone needs wirespeed campus wide seamless roaming for £30k an install.
It does everything it needs to do at a price that wont make your eyes bleed when a new version of 802.11 is released...

[markcuk]

PM sent, I have been installing Unifi for the last Year and have stopped using everything else as nothing matches it for the price.

No point into turning this into another mines better than yours thread, not everyone needs wirespeed campus wide seamless roaming for £30k an install.
It does everything it needs to do at a price that wont make your eyes bleed when a new version of 802.11 is released...

Can I ask one thing about them can you now turn off the ring light?

[m25man]

Yes, in V2.x you will find it under settings, system, LED Enable/Disable

[Achandler]

Im sorry but the ring light is the best part, nothing like walking down a dark corridor with UFO shapes glowing above your head!

Yes we use them and they are perfect for what we need as a secondary school.

[m25man]

Beam Forming, Gigabit backhaul, Blanket Coverage, Seamless Roaming, High Capacity all great features but all most of us want is something that works that will not consume the entire IT budget for the next 5 years.

With 802.11ac and Gigabit Wifi expected to be mainstream in less than 3 years investing £30k in a system that nobody will thank you for is a mindless ego trip.

I have said it before here and will say it again the only stupid thing you can't afford to do with Unifi is not to try it!!

[RobFuller]

The Inifi kit looks really good, a quick question. Does the AP handle all the traffic onto the local LAN or does it all get routed back to the controller, also if the controller is down for whatever reason, will the AP continue to handle traffic?

Cheers,
Rob

[plexer]

The traffic stays at the ap, the controller configures, monitors and maintains the ap.

If the controller goes down your ap keeps working but some services like guest access won't.

Ben

[drewp]

I have been looking a various wireless solutions; Unifi looks interesting from a low cost point of view, but is it too inexpensive?

How is it performing in your environments?

[RobFuller]

Thanks plexer,
I did look at some of the guest features, but to be honest if I want guest/sixth form/staff access ill probably set it up using windows radius then they can just use their normal AD credentials.

I take it you have an implantation yourself, how do you find it, performance good, reliable etc?

[plexer]

Hi no I don't have it deployed atm allthough it's an option I've put on the table for a primary.

Ben

[Achandler]

We have an implementation of 35 access points here, and an average of 300 devices on the Wifi (Staff and Guest), mostly ipod/ ipads and phones, so mainly web browsing and checking emails, but also laptops (on the network using AD credentials).

I personally have found the system good, it does everything we need it to and some extra that we don't use., we have only once had a problem with the Wifi since we introduced it but restarting the controller software solved this, i must also add the system has vastly improved over the time we have had it.

Initially the controller had to be run from a user account, now it can be run as a system service which shows active development and in the right directly. They are also planning new types of points.


I do have two minor complaints about it though, although these are being addressed. Firstly the APs do not work with PoE switches unless you buy adapaters for them which add a cost of about £20 per AP should you want to use one. Secondly, if you don't use a PoE switch but instead use the inline PoE adapters provided, they come with European plugs, which is an annoyance.

[m25man]

I do have two minor complaints about it though, although these are being addressed. Firstly the APs do not work with PoE switches unless you buy adapaters for them which add a cost of about £20 per AP should you want to use one. Secondly, if you don't use a PoE switch but instead use the inline PoE adapters provided, they come with European plugs, which is an annoyance.

We are now shipping these with .5m UK 13a to C5 mains leads included.
There has been a problem with AF adapters if supplied with more than 48v for too long (some HP switches kick out up to 58v) they can overheat and shut down, I'm expecting the uprated AF to 24v inline PoE adapters next week.