Unifi for secondary school

[CHM-ITServices]

Hi all,

 

Just wondering if anyone out there is using unifi for their wireless? I'm looking for some feedback on performance etc. I'm a secondary school with 1350 students no BYOD (yet). All staff have a laptop (180) and move room to room, building to building throughout the day. I'm particularly interested in knowing how it 'hands off' form one AP to the next.

 

I have just purchased 5 AC HD units, with a view to trialing in our Sixth form building.

 

Thanks in advance

[ITJS2015]

They have there good points and bad point about them, I look after 7 schools and each school have them all but that was down to my manager as they are an easy setup and manage.

 

They are suppose to be quite powerful and can handle upto 50 devices per AP but when I have 30 laptops going through 1 ap I seemd to struggle on a 1gb switch

 

The firmware upgrades do have an effect on wireless card on laptop devices and iv seen that they have good and bad signals even when your next to your AP or next door.

 

How stable is your core switch ? and do you have any edge switches ?

 

Do you have any POE switches to connect them to rather than use Injectors ?

[DalekSec]

I love them, easy to setup and cheap!

 

Had it at old place, and we are thinking of moving over to them at the current. I haven't used it on a scale like yours, old place we had around 300 students and 80 staff on the WiFi and it worked fine.

 

I even use it at home!

[AJWhite1970]

Everything Unifi here, 60 AP's, 22 switches, 2 cores plus 20 x Unifi Video for CCTV and mFi's for temperature monitoring and a NanoBeam to link a site across the main road.

 

Secondary school with 1000 students and very heavy wifi traffic, never missed a beat with performance.

Edited September 26, 2017 by AJWhite1970

[Blue_Cookeh]

Love them. I was going to suggest you looked at the higher end models like the AC HD in a larger environment like that but it looks like you already have that down

 

For a site like that I'd really recommend using something like Ekahau to do a proper site survey before you install, and carefully manage placement where you think you'll have large numbers of devices in small areas. Multiple APs on very low power will outperform one on higher power in places like classrooms with carts of laptops, but that goes for any wireless vendor.

 

We're seeing very good performance on AP AC Lites with carts of around 30 netbooks on one access point. The newer and more high end APs Ubiquiti do also have dedicated radios for spectrum analysis etc. I had quotes for Meraki, Cisco and Ruckus, none of them could touch the price to performance we got with Ubiquiti.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Blue_Cookeh

[CHM-ITServices]

They have there good points and bad point about them, I look after 7 schools and each school have them all but that was down to my manager as they are an easy setup and manage.

 

They are suppose to be quite powerful and can handle upto 50 devices per AP but when I have 30 laptops going through 1 ap I seemd to struggle on a 1gb switch

 

The firmware upgrades do have an effect on wireless card on laptop devices and iv seen that they have good and bad signals even when your next to your AP or next door.

 

How stable is your core switch ? and do you have any edge switches ?

 

Do you have any POE switches to connect them to rather than use Injectors ?

 

Hp Procurve switches accros the site. Core is is a 5406zl and edge switches are 2510 and 2520(poe). 10gb backbone.

[CHM-ITServices]

Love them. I was going to suggest you looked at the higher end models like the AC HD in a larger environment like that but it looks like you already have that down

 

For a site like that I'd really recommend using something like Ekahau to do a proper site survey before you install, and carefully manage placement where you think you'll have large numbers of devices in small areas. Multiple APs on very low power will outperform one on higher power in places like classrooms with carts of laptops, but that goes for any wireless vendor.

 

We're seeing very good performance on AP AC Lites with carts of around 30 netbooks on one access point. The newer and more high end APs Ubiquiti do also have dedicated radios for spectrum analysis etc. I had quotes for Meraki, Cisco and Ruckus, none of them could touch the price to performance we got with Ubiquiti.

 

This will be my first time rolling out a wifi solution, so as you can imagine i'm quite apprehensive! I've just been looking at Ekahau, have you used it? is it something that is going to take months to learn or is it something that i can pickup quite quickly? If you have used it, which elements did you use? (i.e. heatmapper, spectrum analyser)

 

thanks

Edited September 26, 2017 by Jam_lane
typo

[CHM-ITServices]

Everything Unifi here, 60 AP's, 22 switches, 2 cores plus 20 x Unifi Video for CCTV and mFi's for temperature monitoring and a NanoBeam to link a site across the main road.

 

Secondary school with 1000 students and very heavy wifi traffic, never missed a beat with performance.

 

@AJWhite did you do the install yourself? how did you decide on AP placement? How does the unifi deal with roaming devices, passing from Ap to AP?

[Mr_Jiminy]

but when I have 30 laptops going through 1 ap I seemd to struggle on a 1gb switch

 

Based on x30 laptops, most wireless solutions will on a 1gb switch, without an uprated backbone.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Mr_Jiminy

[mikeprice]

We installed Unifi a while ago and it works fine - never really have to do anything with it once it was set up.

Moving from Ap to Ap seems seemless and it just works

 

can't comment on high load but it works OK with 15-20 laptops on one AP

[nicholab]

I interested has Ruckus fallen out of love with edugeekers due to budgets cuts. If I was using Unifi I would get the cloud key as it then nicely packaged controller. But this might be a limiting factor https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/217549368-UniFi-How-many-APs-can-the-Cloud-Key-handle- just don't run it on pfsense it a nightmare to keep updated.

[Katy]

We're about to roll out 20 APs in our junior school, to replace the patchy coverage with old HP MSM460s (it was fitted 1 per 2 rooms, so of course with it being new build with tin foil in all the walls it's hopeless). I've just set up a virtual machine running the controller rather than putting it in the cloud - it was very easy to set up.

 

There are other schools in our trust which run Unifi throughout and have nothing but good things to say about them.

 

(Bonus with this is the HP access points we take down are being re-deployed into the senior buildings which were also fitted 1-per-2-rooms to give 1-per-room across the whole site)

[Mr_Jiminy]

I interested has Ruckus fallen out of love with edugeekers due to budgets cuts. If I was using Unifi I would get the cloud key as it then nicely packaged controller. But this might be a limiting factor https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/217549368-UniFi-How-many-APs-can-the-Cloud-Key-handle- just don't run it on pfsense it a nightmare to keep updated.

 

Personally I would only put this in place in a smaller environment, without the availability of a spare VM.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Mr_Jiminy

[sted]

I interested has Ruckus fallen out of love with edugeekers due to budgets cuts. If I was using Unifi I would get the cloud key as it then nicely packaged controller. But this might be a limiting factor https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/217549368-UniFi-How-many-APs-can-the-Cloud-Key-handle- just don't run it on pfsense it a nightmare to keep updated.

my main issue with ruckus is licensing if you want to add more aps. Ive got schools with both (granted primary) and tbh neither give me much grief both need the odd ap rebooting now and again, ruckus needs a pc to install to and a bit of faffing with java/cmd to make it run as a service personally id just run up a client vm for it if i was starting from scratch rather than shove it on the server as i could then just move the vm indefinitely without really affecting owt else, ive had more ruckus aps fail but by the same token ive got more of them

[AJWhite1970]

@AJWhite did you do the install yourself? how did you decide on AP placement? How does the unifi deal with roaming devices, passing from Ap to AP?

 

Hi

 

Yes all self installed. Not seen any issue with roaming, as long as the SSID is the same between AP's then everything roams. I can walk from one side of the site to the far side of the second site the other side of the road without issue.

 

When I did each building I had 6 AP's with SSID AP1, AP2 -> AP6 and placed them where I thought they should go. I then used wifi analyzer on an Android device to check signal strength and visibility. I had to tweak a couple here and there, add a couple of extras to one building that appears to be a giant Faraday cage as signal is terrible even from room to room and drop down to only needing 4 in another building.

 

About as simple and reliable as it gets, bit like me really

[richbrowncardiff]

We are 100% unifi and love it.

 

76 Ap's 46 switches and performance is very very good. I used to have constant complaints and now have 0! I have 1800 students and 200 ish staff. wifi used by 800-1000 concurrent users no issues thats along side the 800+ wired devices being used at the same time.

 

i'm a massive fan.

[pow]

As I keep saying, I'm not as impressed with the switches as I am the APs

 

I've just gone all all EDU APs to use the tannoy feature which is working brilliantly in my school.

 

I'm still favouring our Netgear ProSafe over the Unifi Switches.

[AlanD]

“They are suppose to be quite powerful and can handle upto 50 devices per AP but when I have 30 laptops going through 1 ap I seemd to struggle on a 1gb switch”.......

 

There is a lot of widespread ignorance and hype surrounding wireless. Much of the time this originates from those selling it, and is quickly adopted by SLT ...yes...and sadly network managers that don’t do their homework, but simply read the headline gloss of AP promotions. For example..you might believe that “ac” is going to deliver gigabit speeds and replace wired computer rooms (queue much laughter from this in the know....). Yes, if you have an “ac” router at home with 160MHz channel width you might get 800Mhz rate.....but that is UDP....and you will want to compare this with wired full duplex...it’s going to 400MHz. But you won’t get 160Mhz on an enterprise AP (there are lots of reasons for this...the UK has 5minute delay time on weather radar DFS channels...and in UK there isn’t the same uni band allocation..less generous than USA....and in any case you will have neighbouring access points ). So you might decide on 80MHz channels ...but in a classroom block you will probably be using 40MHz...so we are down to 200 or 100Mb/s in terms of what wired delivers. And that is not 100Mb/s to every clients it’s 100Mb/s to all clients. So your gigabit switch...even if a poor one is not going to be a problem.

 

Then you will ask “what about multi streams...If I have a 3x3 AP I will get 3times the data surely?” Well, yes you transmit rate in windows or on the AP will show 3 times the rate..but that is no guarantee that the client gets 3 times the data. Multiple streams depend on stream separation, and the only way to get complete separation is to place the separate aerials of your clients and APs several metres apart or on different sides of a wall. Yes higher QAM rates helps “ac” resolve these spatial streams, but only when signal to noise ratio is very high do you get significant increases with multiple streams. Think 20% more rather than double for two streams, as a rule of thumb....and for 3 streams...well you might not notice any difference because of laws of decreasing returns. In any case, I bet you have nothing better than 2 stream clients. Multiple streams do help with maintaining data rates at further distances..so don’t dismiss it...but it’s not going to give you significantly higher data rates.

 

And what about MU-MIMO? Yes...it’s worth having..as long as your clients support it. But it’s not 4 clients being served at once...for all sorts of complicated maths the best theoretically is x1.75 and in practice, closer to x1.2

 

And to get these rates the AP needs to in the room with the clients and on the ceiling with no bodies in the way....

 

So you are thinking 150Mb/s or maybe over 200Mb/s if you you have a relatively isolated classroom where you can use a wide channel.

 

No...I forgot to mention single channel collision domain.....Some of you won’t remember the days of networks joined up by coax cables or using hubs rather than switches. With a 100Mb/s hub one client might get 100Mb/s from a server....two clients might get 50Mb/s each...ten clients might get 10Mb/s each. ....but once you get to 20 clients they don’t get 5Mb/s each as you might expect but only get 3Mb/s each. What has happened to the other 40Mb/s? Well...network collisions start to get really messy when you have 20 clients...and your 30 clients is even worse.

 

And just in case that isn’t bad enough there is no collision detection mechanism in wireless...so a client on the far side of an AP can be transmitting at the same time as your client is transmitting and neither client will know about the other apart from the AP which fails to receive both packets and has to wait for timeouts and retransmission.

 

So your 30 clients are going to get 3Mb/s each...which can be surprisingly fine for 30 tablets browsing, and maybe even 30youtube clips playing...just.....but your laptops will be painfully slow from startup. It’s not going to be gigabit networking as we know it.

 

You can help mitigate this with classroom planning. Go to the start of lessons with a teacher..make sure laptops are switched on an running before the lesson starts...the teacher can’t do this. It’s going to be a disaster if it’s the first switch on of the day and virus updates are going to install in the bacground...or worse...windows updates.... And then computer group policies are going to install. Allow 30 minutes for all this. Then encourage the teacher to get the class to pick up and logon to to laptops as they arrive..no queuing outside the door ..nor waiting in the lesson for some key point and telling the class “now all open your laptops and logon”. And make sure they don't close/shutdown laptops at the end of lesson otherwise the next class will have a long wait. Log off...and sleep or hibernate only...configure your laptops to do this when lid is closed.

 

You know these wireless vendors are spinning lies when they start talking of speeds up to... or theoretical speeds...etc

 

Yes, some of the APs have dynamic channel allocation, airtime fairness, QOS, beamforming, load balancing, roaming, etc etc....and they all help..a little...but nothing is going to get over the fact that wires is not going to offer anything like wired when it comes to dense deployment of high bandwidth.

Edited September 27, 2017 by AlanD

[markwilfan]

@AlanD some great info there..really interesting stuff.

 

So unifi? Or pay 4x the amount for something that will be just as good.

[PotNoodleTech]

I've got Cisco Wireless and HP procurve now. If I woke up tomorrow and was given a budget to get new wireless and switches, it would be Unifi.

 

I've visited @richbrowncardiff 's excellent school to sample his coffee machine, er.... I mean evaluate his best practise and was very impressed with every bit of UNifi kit he showed me from the cameras to the APs to the software, switches, routers and no stupid licencing or support contract requirements like the big companies.

[hallb15]

+1 for unifi here. Best decision we've ever made. We replaced 16x old Netgear WNDAP350 with 14 Unifi AC units (some lite, some pro) and have better coverage, better performance, and simple central management. The cloud key is a no-brainer as it removes the need to run the software on a VM or physical machine.

[AlanD]

Hi all,

 

Just wondering if anyone out there is using unifi for their wireless? I'm looking for some feedback on performance etc. I'm a secondary school with 1350 students no BYOD (yet). All staff have a laptop (180) and move room to room, building to building throughout the day. I'm particularly interested in knowing how it 'hands off' form one AP to the next.

 

I have just purchased 5 AC HD units, with a view to trialing in our Sixth form building.

 

 

Well - I highly approve of you doing a trial....don't take anyone else's words for how good something is.

 

I've always thought all wireless systems - yes including the latest all singing dancing Wave2 "ac" stuff - are essentially rubbish in that they are often asked to do a job in a school that is beyond what wireless technology can really deliver. Wide channels are great and will deliver really quick speeds in that room - but only if you don't have to put in lots of access points in neighbouring rooms - because then you will need to use narrow channels and you lose most (...not all I agree - but the significant part of) the benefits of "ac".

 

And all access points - by any manufacturer use only one of two different chip sets ...because only two chips sets have 802.11 licencing. More than that - they have to use the same microcode as well - to get that licencing. So in "raw" packet terms one access point is much the same as another - apart from the management layer.

 

True - Management makes a difference - but its not life changing. 30 laptops in a classroom is going to be slow - regardless of whether you have the highest cost AP or cheapest. There are some bells and whistles with those at the high end of the market...but I bet most never use them once they have played with them for the first week...and probably end up deciding that the default settings actually work best of all.

 

Roaming is interesting. Because with "n" chipsets AP management software used to migrate clients from one AP to another transparently by cloning and masquerading MAC addresses of the AP (so the client was unaware they had moved). This transparent roaming meant you never lost a single packet- when say - using VoIP.

 

"ac" chip sets don't support this...so roaming is typically achieved by one AP dropping a connection and the client taking a look at see what else it can connect to. This used to work really badly because old clients tended to reconnect to the same access point and hold on regardless of how weak that connection had become. Modern clients behave much better. So, unless you have some old kit - I would expect roaming to work just fine. If this really matters to you - you would do well to look at an even cheaper "n" access point. You still get to use 40MHz channels - and 2x AP using 40MHz channels in a single area will give you more throughput than a single AP using 80MHz with large numbers of clients because the collision domain for each access point only has half the number of clients....but no....for single client the speeds would be slower.

[CHM-ITServices]

I've just had this sent to me by my current support company (who initially installed the schools aging Meru wifi)...

 

Ubiquity is cheap and cheerful, quite literally there is no support apart from online forums and if it breaks buy a new one. However, it does have its place in the market and if you’re looking at those lower dense requirements it will do a job. No, it won’t compete on performance against the big boys such as Meru, Ruckus, Aruba etc but if you’ve only got a handful of devices are you really going to notice the difference?

[DalekSec]

I've just had this sent to me by my current support company (who initially installed the schools aging Meru wifi)...

 

Ubiquity is cheap and cheerful, quite literally there is no support apart from online forums and if it breaks buy a new one. However, it does have its place in the market and if you’re looking at those lower dense requirements it will do a job. No, it won’t compete on performance against the big boys such as Meru, Ruckus, Aruba etc but if you’ve only got a handful of devices are you really going to notice the difference?

 

Sounds like a support company who want to fleece you for all your money.....

[AlanD]

Yes the problem with Unify is that suppliers don't make nearly so much money out of it...and don't get their slice of the annual hosting charges (completely rip off)....so they are going to paint a bleak and uninformed picture. If you took out a Merkai AP or Ruckus from a classroom and replaced it with Unify no user would notice a difference....you'd need a stop watch to see any difference....and randomly, that difference sometimes show the Unify AP is faster.