CAWJames Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 Morning fellow learned persons Are the Unifi AC access points still a good budget choice for WiFi? the price point compared to the big boys is still quite wide, so looking at them for an option. Cloud key at main site and a 10 pack per centre. I run the original N flying saucers at home, one in the house, one in the garage and another in the polytunnel with the server installed on my garage debian server, and its excellent, so I hope the AC is a shift further on. Did they ever sort the auto passing off of clients to other AP's?(I think this is part of the AC protocol anyway, but they may have done something else with it, as I know they were working on it before the AC's came along) Any anecdotal evidence so I can add it to my list? Thanks James
DalekSec Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 We use Unifi, and since the AC range came out only brought the AC ones, The AC Pros are amazing, in some places in the school we had walls 2-3feet wide and solid and the signal still gets through! Even the AC Lite which is half the price does a crackin job! Well worth the money imho, thinking of getting some for home.
achedgy Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 Got a school using the AC Lites, fab access points and moving round the site, laptop happily moves from AP to AP. Would happily recommend
CAWJames Posted October 13, 2016 Author Posted October 13, 2016 Excellent[cue Mr Burns hand wringing] I have full coverage at home with the original unifi kit, even down the field with the cat 5 and armoured power cable I ran down the hedge to the polytunnel!! I can google anywhere! How do they handle load? Do you see any problems when a whole raft of students descend on a point? or are you pretty well blanketed with multiple AP to handle it? Our other vendor N's start to chug over 25 ish connections. Thanks James
achedgy Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 We have it blanketed so every room can see two ap's (sometimes more) had 60 ipads across 2 classrooms next to each other and it was fine.
DalekSec Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 We have quite good coverage so don't normally have 20+ on one AP, only time we do is when ipads are out etc but even then don't seem to have a slowing problem (iPad lessons are normaly on the normal Pro AP not AC)
Blue_Cookeh Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 Been fantastic with our trolleys of iPads and Netbooks, handles the load very nicely
AJWhite1970 Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 Another site fully covered by Unifi AP's here, just install and forget. Never had an issue with them (well obviously shortly after typing this and pressing send the karma gods will think of something but hey...) Andrew
mikeprice Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 We put these in a while ago and have had no problems we went from complaints about not being able to connect to complaints about battery life 'cos the laptops are being used much more
sllorep Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 I'm glad these units are getting some good reviews as I've just ordered 10 to start a rollout. Out of interest who has an onsite controller and who has cloud based one? We got one unit in for testing a while back and have installed the controller (set as s service) on an internal server and everything works fine so far (School SSID, BYOD SSID and Guest SSID). I had to play around with the Smoothwall to allow the Voucher entry URL through from Guest VLAN to the server but it works ok. Just wondering. Ta.
LeMarchand Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 I'm glad these units are getting some good reviews as I've just ordered 10 to start a rollout. Out of interest who has an onsite controller and who has cloud based one? We got one unit in for testing a while back and have installed the controller (set as s service) on an internal server and everything works fine so far (School SSID, BYOD SSID and Guest SSID). I had to play around with the Smoothwall to allow the Voucher entry URL through from Guest VLAN to the server but it works ok. Just wondering. Ta. I've done the same as you at 3 sites - no major problems.
DalekSec Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 I'm glad these units are getting some good reviews as I've just ordered 10 to start a rollout. Out of interest who has an onsite controller and who has cloud based one? We got one unit in for testing a while back and have installed the controller (set as s service) on an internal server and everything works fine so far (School SSID, BYOD SSID and Guest SSID). I had to play around with the Smoothwall to allow the Voucher entry URL through from Guest VLAN to the server but it works ok. Just wondering. Ta. Same setup aswell, works fine and dandy!
CAWJames Posted October 13, 2016 Author Posted October 13, 2016 All sounds very good plus spend £3-4k on 30-40 Unifi or £30k on other solutions, hmmm I wonder! Think I might get some in to test, thanks all
mikeprice Posted October 13, 2016 Posted October 13, 2016 Our controller is on site - don't see the point in paying for the cloud version and I prefer having it all under my control ( OK - so I'm power crazy - one of the perks of the job!) 1
CAWJames Posted October 13, 2016 Author Posted October 13, 2016 I don't mean a controller in the cloud they do a mini plug in stick set up to be a server and they call it a cloud key! No subs
caffrey Posted October 14, 2016 Posted October 14, 2016 I just run it in a VM I'm having issues with older AP-Pro's (Ideally I should think about starting a rolling replacement to AC-PRO's, but money) with disconnections, the newer AC-PRO's are rock solid There's also the issue with Smoothwall BYOD and Unifi with a "Calling-Station-Id attribute is missing from the RADIUS packet" error in Smoothwall which I've never gotten to the bottom of or never got an answer. I think this is causing issues with disconnects on iPads - we get a lot of server not found which can only be fixed by turning the iPad wifi off and on again, again I've been unable to locate the source of this issue or fix it (which is really annoying) Still it works and it's cheap, more expensive solutions can equally have issues I guess.
mikeprice Posted October 14, 2016 Posted October 14, 2016 I don't mean a controller in the cloud they do a mini plug in stick set up to be a server and they call it a cloud key! No subs Didn't know that! However it takes so few resources you may as well just use something that already exists - even if it stops for a while the APs just carry on as they were and the network is OK so it's not even worth using a seperate VM - except for neatness
Blue_Cookeh Posted October 14, 2016 Posted October 14, 2016 Didn't know that! However it takes so few resources you may as well just use something that already exists - even if it stops for a while the APs just carry on as they were and the network is OK so it's not even worth using a seperate VM - except for neatness This is an important point to remember, all the UniFi gear can run without the controller running if you don't need the statistics or guest portal
Chris_ Posted October 14, 2016 Posted October 14, 2016 I just run it in a VM I'm having issues with older AP-Pro's (Ideally I should think about starting a rolling replacement to AC-PRO's, but money) with disconnections, the newer AC-PRO's are rock solid There's also the issue with Smoothwall BYOD and Unifi with a "Calling-Station-Id attribute is missing from the RADIUS packet" error in Smoothwall which I've never gotten to the bottom of or never got an answer. I think this is causing issues with disconnects on iPads - we get a lot of server not found which can only be fixed by turning the iPad wifi off and on again, again I've been unable to locate the source of this issue or fix it (which is really annoying) Still it works and it's cheap, more expensive solutions can equally have issues I guess. Which firmware are you using on your AP Pro's? We had some issues with them disconnecting on 3.7.8 so downgraded to 3.7.5 and they've been fine since.
caffrey Posted October 14, 2016 Posted October 14, 2016 We're on 3.7.8.5016, they were fine just before. Controller 5.0.7 was lots of disconnects, 5.2.7 was fine and now 5.2.9 is terrible again
m25man Posted October 15, 2016 Posted October 15, 2016 There's a really long thread in the Unifi support forums regards your issue. Old Unifi hardware runs on old controller, no problem. New Unifi runs on new controller, no problem. Old Unifi on new controller, problems begin. Mix old Unifi and new Unifi on same controller = big problems The new controller v4 onwards added support for Gen2 hardware and more importantly DFS channels on 5Ghz to get .ac speeds. (And it appears a load of other stuff that Gen1 hardware just doesn't understand!) The very latest controller/firmware bundle is actually now rolling back the firmware on Gen1 APs and locking them into a pre .AC mode with no DFS channels. This has been going on for ages and it's still not totally fixed. Any one with a mixed Gen1/Gen2 Unifi environment will have these issues. It's still a great system but in the last year it has really tested its users, if your mixing UAPs keep them as physically separate as possible run them on the lowest power settings possible and manage your DFS Channels carefully. Yes rolling all of your Gen1 hardware up into Gen2 AC is the way forward but the transition can be painful. See here, but give yourself an hour or two to read it! http://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Connectivity-Problems-UAP-UAP-LR-UAP-Pro-UAP-Outdoor5-UAP/td-p/1558278 Where we had a lot of Gen 1 Hardware deployed we found that keeping them well away from Gen 2 kit issues were minimised, but the bottom line is if you have a mixed Unifi environment of older APs and .ac APs and they are in range or overlap each other you can expect issues. Read the above UBNT Forum thread it's interesting, ironically there is another similar thread for the early .AC hardware the Square units and the UAP AC outdoor which has now been pulled as it never worked and is soon to be replaced by a Gen2 hardware version. I've still got plenty of sites running on V3 with old hardware and firmware that are rock solid and new sites with new hardware and V5 controllers that are fine but in fairness just about every site with mixed hardware and updated controllers has issues and it hasn't been sorted for over a year now. A series of borked firmware updates have left some APs permanently toasted and micro managing them is proving to be a challenge for some. I've been a Unifi advocate since I flew the first hardware in from the USA and still shift a lot of kit, but don't try and compare it with the likes of Cisco/Aruba its firmly down at the bottom of the managed "Enterprise" Wifi range and looks like being so for a while to come. Let's not fill this thread with with cries for help for struggling Unifi users, their is already enough of that on the UBNT community forums. It's sufficient to say that Fast, Cheap, Good - Pick any two applies. It's a great introduction to enterprise Wifi, it's limited but still good VFM so do your research before jumping in with both feet. 1
caffrey Posted October 15, 2016 Posted October 15, 2016 I read through that thread earlier, and this morning I rolled the AP-PRO's to 3.7.5.4969 - I do have a mixed environment (33 Pro's and 3 of the new AP-AC-Pro's) I only got the ac-pros as the AP PRO's were being phased out and were more expensive - It's only presented issues with the last few updates. Fingers crossed the rolling back fixes it, but from what I've read on there it's not helped much and for some it's led to replacement. I have no fault with Unifi - for the price it's great and we've been running them for 3 years without issue, I'm planning on upgrading them all to ac-pro's when budget allows.
RobFuller Posted November 25, 2016 Posted November 25, 2016 (edited) I just run it in a VM I'm having issues with older AP-Pro's (Ideally I should think about starting a rolling replacement to AC-PRO's, but money) with disconnections, the newer AC-PRO's are rock solid There's also the issue with Smoothwall BYOD and Unifi with a "Calling-Station-Id attribute is missing from the RADIUS packet" error in Smoothwall which I've never gotten to the bottom of or never got an answer. I think this is causing issues with disconnects on iPads - we get a lot of server not found which can only be fixed by turning the iPad wifi off and on again, again I've been unable to locate the source of this issue or fix it (which is really annoying) Still it works and it's cheap, more expensive solutions can equally have issues I guess. I think I'm suffering with this issue on the 3.7.27.5440 firmware on both AP-Pro's and AC-PRO's, what diaganoises did you do to check? Do you experience this issue with the AC-Pros? Rob Edited November 25, 2016 by RobFuller
caffrey Posted November 25, 2016 Posted November 25, 2016 I'm running 3.7.17.5220 on the ac-pro's, they've been up for 66 days and counting. Just starting a roll out of them
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