Access Point Recommendations?

[Fleetwood]

Hi all,

 

I've got a budget of around £200 to get six access points - could anybody reccommend me some good ones? They need to be PoE, have as good speed as possible for the budget, ceiling-mountable (must) and not too hard to setup (newbie to setting up a wireless network that isn't at home, haha.)

 

Cheers m'dears.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Dos_Box

[FN-GM]

To be honest i can't think of anything at £200 apart from using cheap consumer AP's.

[RichB]

You'd be pushed to find 6 access points for home for £200 let alone for work. I know this doesnt really help but for a decent wireless point(s) you should ask for a realistic budget.

[Meldrew]

Last high speed AP I purchased was £350 each...

[john]

Fraid you won't get anything that suits all that for that money, even the Unifi kit isn't anywhere near that price. Stick another 0 on it and you will be talking options.

[3s-gtech]

Ebay + Netgear WG102 will do it, that's about the only option in that price point.

[Oaktech]

Unifi Pro will get you 1 AP, Unifi standard will get you 3 standard AP, but you will have to use the supplied poe injector as they aren't standard POE. controller is free, software based, doesn't have to run all the time and is pretty easy to set up.

 

Ubiquiti UniFi UAP 802.11n MIMO Access Point - 3 Pack

[jamesreedersmith]

Agreed - look at unifi - could do all six managed good access points for 350-400.

[Fleetwood]

Indeed 'tis a low budget, I've never looked into this stuff before so I never questioned it when they said. I'll see if it can be bumped up the UniFi equipment looks good, what's it like hardware wise? Any known issues/anyone used them before?

[Oaktech]

Controller is a bit fiddly to set up/bit sensitive to server config/bit too willing to go belly up is my main complaint. I have no complaints about the hardware.

[Dos_Box]

I've changed the thread title to make it relevant. Please ensure that if you post a new thread the title reflects the problem/question being asked as it makes it easier for others to locate in the future.

[Fleetwood]

Cheers Dos_Box, sorry about that.

--

 

So I've just seen this - would it be any good or am I being a bit too naiive? Haha

[Oaktech]

Noooooooooooooooooooo...

 

We got *given* 3 of these by a local company. From the get-go they wouldn't support more than a couple of clients without crashing. Then they stopped allowing connections unless the connection was totally unsecured and then we threw them away.

 

Le Edit, They were brand new.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Oaktech

[Fleetwood]

Alrighty. Time to work the magic and give them the "If you want it done properly you need a proper budget" card.. not in those exact words of course

 

Would entry-level Cisco APs be any good?

[Oaktech]

Alrighty. Time to work the magic and give them the "If you want it done properly you need a proper budget" card.. not in those exact words of course

 

Would entry-level Cisco APs be any good?

 

 

I don't know the cisco units well, but a wet piece of string is better than a tp link.

 

I'd run with the 'if you want it done, do it properly' approach!

 

I'd still look at the unifi because the cost to expand is so low. We literally sly another one past the purse strings every couple of months in the middle of another order!

[Fleetwood]

The UniFi kit does look good, and seems pretty easy to install (and mounts to the ceiling, yay!) - Will put this to them and see what they say, the individual units seem a good price like you say so there's plenty of room to expand.

 

Thanks for your help

[john]

Would entry-level Cisco APs be any good?

 

No as they are probably Linksys brains internally with a Cisco badge and price tag

 

I'd be saying Unifi or Ruckus Ruckus will be more than the Unifi but look to the future in what you are doing an wanting you won't want to be replacing the Wifi Lan every 5 minutes!

[Fleetwood]

Ruckus has always caught my eye, but unfortunately due to the hierachy of things I'm limited to what I can have. (We're one of many schools in an org. so there's a general IT 'board' - we were put on a wifi trial [the plan was to do a full wi-fi cloud managed network, meaning every single site in our org. would have the same setup,] they didn't go ahead with it so it's left us in a pickle)

 

That's why I'm looking more at the cheap-o end, so if mangement suddenly turn around and say "We're putting wireless in!" it won't be a massive loss.. I know, it's all daft but I'm just following demands haha. UniFi seems reasonable cost, so I think that's what I'll be aiming for. Does anybody happen to know if the software for it runs fine on 2008R2? I can't see anywhere 'official' that says it does, only 2003.

[john]

Unify software runs on 2008 R2 from my testing its just a Java app.

[Fleetwood]

Cheers @john

[Oaktech]

it does indeed run on 2008r2, but equally it'll run on any old thing capable of running java. It's a bit more than just a java app as it installs mongodb and a webserver (possibly a version of tomcat) so you can access it from anywhere on the network. It's that bit that is a bit finicky as it prefers to run on it's own. It can coexist with other services but assigning it uncontested ports is a bit awkward.

[m25man]

Unifi will do what you want, however it is a professional system requiring some level of experience to setup and a controller service is required to get the best from it.

As a self confessed newbie and wifi beginner you need to learn and understand the Unifi system if you expect it to work for you!

 

Its not a plug it in and everything is done for you platform.

I'm running UAP-AC with 3.1.1 Multi Tenant on Amazon AWS and I have to say the performance has been incredible so far.

 

Do yourself a favour and get a single unit and try setting it all up yourself first, there will be someone on here down your way I expect willing to give you a hand if you get stuck.

Once you have the first one up and running just plug more in.

[synaesthesia]

Another vote for the Unifi stuff. Found it surprisingly easy to set up the controller on a linux VM. The points are not reliant whatsoever on the software, so the controller software can go all sorts of pearshaped and the points will keep serving.

[Fleetwood]

Thanks for the advice @m25man - I'll gladly admit I've never done this before, so buying one unit to get to grips with seems a good idea I'll see if I can go down that route first off.

 

What's involved with the 'Guest' network? I've never really understood the difference between the two.

[nicholab]

Unifi is great I would love to use it again the non pro stuff is at a great price point! You can manage the non and the pro together which is great for schools. Edited September 6, 2013 by nicholab