Ubiquiti Unifi in a secondary school environment

[DrCheese]

Hi,

 

Is anyone running Ubiquiti Unifi APs in a large secondary school with a large amount of users? Our Aruba system is rather long in the tooth & our APs are single radio 2.4ghz ones that I'm looking at replacing.

 

Getting in a Ruckus or other system is just too expensive during the current budget squeezes so I was looking at slowly replacing the points with the new AC points from Unifi. However, surely there has to be a catch I'm unaware of from them being so cheap.

 

Our usage would generally be

60 or so "netbooks" in the science department spread across 8/9 rooms & various student owned devices on our BYOD Network. Longterm assume that every student would have a device hooked in.

 

What are the Gotcha's?

Edited February 11, 2016 by elsiegee40

[Joanne]

I've installed a Unifi AP in a church... obviously this is absolutely nothing near the traffic that yours would see.

 

I find them to be easy to set up and the one I installed seems to be doing just fine. I got one of the long range ones. Buy a 3 pack and trial them for a bit.

[Achandler]

You'll be fine with that few items, I use to run one with about 500 BYOD on it, not all being used always obviously.

 

There are places with 1000+ devices on them. I do also know of a school though that had 1 to 1 devices (Apple) and had to replace Unifi because it wasn't up to it.

[Mr_Jiminy]

On top of this I'd like to know how the Unifi AP's handle a dense deployment of 80 iPad's.

 

I've dabbled with them for smaller infrastructures, but nothing along the lines of an education environment with mixed/ dense deployments.

[dry]

Be careful as only the latest version of the UAP-ACs are AC Wave 2 afaik. We've had UAP-ACs in our primary for a few months and they've handled 30-40 clients simultaneously logging in/out well (and have now pushed the bottleneck to the server!).

 

Make sure you get enough coverage and I'd say it'd be worth getting a wireless survey done before investing (depending on budget constraints) as it paints a picture of best locations for APs instead of saturating the school with a ridiculous amount of APs (as one hopeless consultancy suggested we do!)

[caffrey]

We've been running unifi with about 33 Pro Access points for about 2 years, it's been pretty much fit and forget with no real issues (reboot an AP now and again) for the budget / price I think it's great but of course it probably doesn't come with all the features of more expensive solutions (I've nothing to really compare it to so I don't know what I'm missing out on!) We also use toughswitches to power / manage them which again are cheap enough.

@dry what does the implications of wave 2 mean ? Just ordered a few of the new AC pros as they were cheaper than the old Pros

[AJWhite1970]

Replaced my ad-hoc 100 unit Buffalo DD-WRT solution with Unifi AP's about 6 months ago, currently have 70 installed over 4 sites and it works really well. The unifi management software is much improved and gives a single point of administration and the integration of google maps with coverage heat maps is really useful.

 

As others have said, not the most advanced solution out there but for me it's just been install and forget

 

Andrew

[Oaktech]

Worked for me - 45 Unifi access points in 4 blocks serving about around 500 devices/2500 users, a mix of school owned on the curriculum network and BYOD on a separate SSID/Vlan/DHCP server. Get the AP pro.

[Chris_]

We have just shy of 100 APs throughout our buildings, we're a nursery, primary and small secondary. They're excellent and very capable access points for the price. With every release of the controller more functionality is added, for example the latest release included band steering. We have a few SSIDs available on different VLANs offering BYOD access for users using radius authentication with our Smoothwall.

 

If you do go down the UniFi route it's well worth considering the 2 day Ubiquiti Enterprise Wireless Admin training course.

[TronXP]

We have on average 400 devices a day mainly BYOD, Works fine here, it's still not perfect for roaming between access points but it really depends on what your doing. In our situation it works perfectly for a good price.

[DalekSec]

We use it, around 400-500 clients each day around 70 APS ranging from normal APs to the new AP-AC Pro (which is awesome btw), would highly recommend, nice and easy to setup and good interface to work with

[DJamesS]

We have a variety of Unifi implementations across different types of sites. The posts above speak volumes on the number of clients that are being supported on Unifi systems. For the price, the features included are excellent, with multiple SSIDs and VLANs, bandwidth limiting, and guest access with redirection to a built in captive portal, and external captive portal if needed. Cloud based controller on AWS is also a great option if you have multiple sites and/or don't want to run a controller in house. Well worth getting your hands on even just a single unit to explore the features.

[NotSoFast]

Small secondary here with roughly 60 Chromebooks and a few phones and tablets working reliably and fast for a couple of years. Edited February 10, 2016 by NotSoFast

[dapaulio]

Average sized secondary. 1500 users. We have 50 ap spread across the site and yet roughly 500 clients per day majority byod. The only issue I have with them is the handoff on to another ap. the ap hangs on to the client for as long as possible rather than active searching for the best ap. Not a problem for byod but for domain laptops it can cause a few issues if on the rare occasions the user decides to go on a walk about with the laptop.

[Chris_]

Average sized secondary. 1500 users. We have 50 ap spread across the site and yet roughly 500 clients per day majority byod. The only issue I have with them is the handoff on to another ap. the ap hangs on to the client for as long as possible rather than active searching for the best ap. Not a problem for byod but for domain laptops it can cause a few issues if on the rare occasions the user decides to go on a walk about with the laptop.

 

You should probably look in to setting the min RSSI values on the APs so that the client disconnects if it's signal is below $value and will then connect to a different AP with stronger signal. This previously had to be done by manually editing a config file on the controller. With the latest release (4.8.12) it can now be set within the controller web UI.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Chris_

[dapaulio]

Thank you for that advice. I will look into implementing that upgrade and change tomorrow.

[AJWhite1970]

You should probably look in to setting the min RSSI values on the APs so that the client disconnects if it's signal is below $value and will then connect to a different AP with stronger signal. This previously had to be done by manually editing a config file on the controller. With the latest release (4.8.12) it can now be set within the controller web UI.

 

Thanks for this, I'd completely missed it's appearance in the radio settings Out of interest, what dBm value are people setting given a full site wide coverage?

 

Andrew

[dapaulio]

Thanks for this, I'd completely missed it's appearance in the radio settings Out of interest, what dBm value are people setting given a full site wide coverage?

 

Andrew

 

I would say that would depend on ap density in an area. I would suggest -65 to -70

I would download a wifi app that measures the signal strengths of each individual ap and determine the overlaps of each. No point setting -65 if you have 5 neighbouring ap within that radius. May be consider turning your transmit power down in higher density areas.

Think it may be a trial an error

[DrCheese]

Thanks for all the feedback guys - Glad to know it can handle what the average secondary school can throw it at. Hopefully getting some of the AC-Pro's in when our budget reopens and I'll go from there

[pirran]

Hi,

 

These are my current experiences of Unifi kit:

 

Testing out x6 Unifi AC Pro AP's (square ones), running x3 SSIDs two of which hit a windows radius server for AD authentication methods (computer and certificate authentication for school owned computers and then AD user account auth. for BYOD).

 

We got off to a good start, setup was simple and everything seemed to be going well. Zero hand off was turned off, we're broadcasting on 5+2.4Ghz. The APs are running from an 8 port Ubiquiti toughswitch(PoE ), unfortunately when heavily loaded an AP just stops broadcasting and seems to freeze/restart. A simple power cycle from the switch fixes things once the AP comes back up...very odd behaviour which pointed to insufficient PoE supply as these units can pull a lot of juice, the switch in question is designed for the job though so we ruled this out. Over the half term just gone we updated the controller and firmwares on the APs as it was a good few months out of date, we're just about to start testing again now.

 

So all in all a bit disappointing so far, I had really high hopes and wanted to start phasing in a lot more of the newer APs. Fingers crossed it's a firmware issue that's now been resolved, a little scary though when we have around 2000 devices connected at any one time.

 

Without initially intending to highjack this thread, has anyone else had problems?

Thanks

[Patrick]

I do have one Unifi AP that stops broadcasting. The lights on are on but no ones home. Rebooting it solves it. I'm going to swap it out for a spare and RMA it. I think mines faulty.

[Oaktech]

Hi,

 

These are my current experiences of Unifi kit:

 

Testing out x6 Unifi AC Pro AP's (square ones), running x3 SSIDs two of which hit a windows radius server for AD authentication methods (computer and certificate authentication for school owned computers and then AD user account auth. for BYOD).

 

We got off to a good start, setup was simple and everything seemed to be going well. Zero hand off was turned off, we're broadcasting on 5+2.4Ghz. The APs are running from an 8 port Ubiquiti toughswitch(PoE ), unfortunately when heavily loaded an AP just stops broadcasting and seems to freeze/restart. A simple power cycle from the switch fixes things once the AP comes back up...very odd behaviour which pointed to insufficient PoE supply as these units can pull a lot of juice, the switch in question is designed for the job though so we ruled this out. Over the half term just gone we updated the controller and firmwares on the APs as it was a good few months out of date, we're just about to start testing again now.

 

So all in all a bit disappointing so far, I had really high hopes and wanted to start phasing in a lot more of the newer APs. Fingers crossed it's a firmware issue that's now been resolved, a little scary though when we have around 2000 devices connected at any one time.

 

Without initially intending to highjack this thread, has anyone else had problems?

Thanks

 

My only negative experiences have been with faulty units or faulty cabling.

[Chris_]

Hi,

 

These are my current experiences of Unifi kit:

 

Testing out x6 Unifi AC Pro AP's (square ones), running x3 SSIDs two of which hit a windows radius server for AD authentication methods (computer and certificate authentication for school owned computers and then AD user account auth. for BYOD).

 

We got off to a good start, setup was simple and everything seemed to be going well. Zero hand off was turned off, we're broadcasting on 5+2.4Ghz. The APs are running from an 8 port Ubiquiti toughswitch(PoE ), unfortunately when heavily loaded an AP just stops broadcasting and seems to freeze/restart. A simple power cycle from the switch fixes things once the AP comes back up...very odd behaviour which pointed to insufficient PoE supply as these units can pull a lot of juice, the switch in question is designed for the job though so we ruled this out. Over the half term just gone we updated the controller and firmwares on the APs as it was a good few months out of date, we're just about to start testing again now.

 

So all in all a bit disappointing so far, I had really high hopes and wanted to start phasing in a lot more of the newer APs. Fingers crossed it's a firmware issue that's now been resolved, a little scary though when we have around 2000 devices connected at any one time.

 

Without initially intending to highjack this thread, has anyone else had problems?

Thanks

 

2000 devices over 6 access points seems a little optimistic. I think the suggested max clients on the UniFi AC is ~200. Also, the UAP-AC requires 802.3AT (POE+), the toughswitches only provide passive POE.

[Blue_Cookeh]

2000 devices over 6 access points seems a little optimistic. I think the suggested max clients on the UniFi AC is ~200. Also, the UAP-AC requires 802.3AT (POE+), the toughswitches only provide passive POE.

 

Think that post jumped the gun a bit, he could have been testing 6 APs, with a load more that aren't UniFi!

 

How many clients were connected to the crashing AP @pirran; ?

 

We're a small school but we have UniFi deployed and the APs seem to handle 45 clients per AP without crashing. Even still, we've deployed more APs now so that there's one in every classroom and a few scattered around office areas in a lower power config.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Blue_Cookeh

[pirran]

Hi,

@Chris_ - I'm currently working with x30 Cisco Aironet dual band APs with a hardware management controller that will support up to 50. Since Cisco purchased Meraki their focus has changed somewhat and our particular controller doesn't have many supported APs left on the market. Unfortunately with no redundant PSU and licencing from Cisco at the moment the controller it's a nasty single point of failure(it would also cost 5k+ to replace).

For testing purposes I'm running a 8 port ubiquiti toughswitch that apparently supports the 802.3AT standard (their 5 port doesn't support this), I realise these square units draw a lot of juice and we're running x2 of them from supplied POE injectors.

 

I dipped my toes in with a set of 6 Unifi units with the thoughts that if they're not suitable for the secondary, they probably/hopefully would work for a primary I support (70 on roll).

@Blue_Cookeh - between 27 and 35 devices connected to an AP with almost all of them on 5Ghz and authenticating using 802.1x back to a windows radius server. Today after updating the controller and firmware (hadn't updated since before xmas) we ran a test with 32 laptops all streaming youtube and bbc iplayer, no problems to report so far. The kids are back in tomorrow so I should get more feedback this week.

 

Changes made - I've now assigned manual channels to the APs as we're not running ZHO and I'm pretty sure the auto function wasn't doing a lot for channel selection, I mapped it out nicely. RSSI has now been set to -15 which is obviously a bit low, i'm just being cautious.

 

Any other ideas?

Does anyone run zero hand off in a secondary with a lot of devices? I got he impression this could cause some performance issues with the unifi kit.

 

All suggestions welcome!

THanks again.