Thinking of renewing WIFI

[northeast_technician]

Hi all I am thinking of renewing my wifi in school, currently i have 5 cisco access points around the building, its a few years old now so I know speeds etc will be quicker. Can anyone offer some recommendations for implementing a new wifi system in school (we have around 40 ipads in school and half a dozen laptops that use wifi)

[DalekSec]

UniFi is the way forward!

 

Speed and Price are both huge plus points! If you only need 5 the AC-Pros are the obviously choice.

[northeast_technician]

UniFi is the way forward!

 

Speed and Price are both huge plus points! If you only need 5 the AC-Pros are the obviously choice.

 

Are they available through most resellers?

[hallb15]

+1 For unifi.

We got ours from 4Gon and Comms Express but yes they are available from several places.

Ubiquiti Networks - 4Gon Solutions

https://www.comms-express.com/search/unifi/

[DalekSec]

Are they available through most resellers?

 

As far as i'm aware!

 

Used MS Distribution in the past to buy them in bulk.

 

I have unifi at home and i brought them off Amazon (only 2 points)

 

As for the software that runs them, it's free!

Edited October 12, 2017 by DalekSec

[northeast_technician]

 

As for the software that runs them, it's free!

 

I love the "F" word

[GuyJD]

I've had UniFi here for the past 2 years and not had a problem with it, plus from memory they sell them in packs of 3 or 5 and you save a bit doing that. I bought mine from Storm but every one of my suppliers was able to give me a price on them.

[northeast_technician]

I might make it my mission at Bett next year

[Katy]

I've just bought 21 x AC Pro ones, they come as singles (with PoE injector) or 5 packs (no injectors but you're expected to be using PoE switches). Got pricing from Comms Express, XMA and Complete IT so they're easy to get hold of. We just installed the controller software on a fresh Debian virtual machine but you can use the "cloud key" (poor name for something that physically sits on site) for smaller installations.

[Norphy]

Are Unifi supporting standard POE/POE+ now or are they still using their janky version of it?

[Katy]

Are Unifi supporting standard POE/POE+ now or are they still using their janky version of it?

 

Some of the APs support the standard 802.3af, some want the 802.3at version, and the cheaper ones are labelled something odd which looks like their own made up version of it

[DalekSec]

FYI

 

[Michael]

I've bought packs of 5 recently UAP-AC-Pro which work with PoE (not all the models do) - all really easy to configure, despite some Staff thinking they're smoke alarms

 

They look pretty smart ceiling mounted on a tile, you can barely see them!

[AlanD]

Hi all I am thinking of renewing my wifi in school, currently i have 5 cisco access points around the building, its a few years old now so I know speeds etc will be quicker. Can anyone offer some recommendations for implementing a new wifi system in school (we have around 40 ipads in school and half a dozen laptops that use wifi)

...there is no guarantee that replacing the access points , which presumably are “n” and possibly 3x3, with “ac” ones, wave 2 or otherwise is going to give any improvement. If you have 5 spaced out access points, presumably not in the classrooms you are not going to benefit from the higher Qam rates of 5ghz because that requires very strong signals with APs in the classroom. You’ll get great speeds in the corridors next to them though. You would be able to use wider 80Mhz channels on 5Ghz but it doesn’t work well through walls. If you use more access points, you are probably back to 40MHz, but you would get stronger signals. And keep in mind that if your devices don’t support “ac” you are wasting your money investing in new APs because no one will know.

[FN-GM]

I have 2 at my house and it fixed all my WIFI issues. Obvously only a small deployment, but I am really impressed.

 

despite some Staff thinking they're smoke alarms

 

That is exactly what my dad though!

[Blue_Cookeh]

Been running UniFi APs for about 5 years now, just getting around to upgrading them to the AC Lite models. Zero issues, great price, amazing throughput.

[XiJ]

Unfi. From running a single AP in the house that covers the entire plot to 20+ in a primary school running hundreds of devices. It works brilliantly. It’s been in since the unifi AP ‘n’ days but but we tend to run AC-lites.

[northeast_technician]

Do you have to set each one up manually or can you add it to the array

[Katy]

Do you have to set each one up manually or can you add it to the array

With Unifi, you set up wireless network groups on the controller and then plug your new AP into the network and it appears in the console, you just then click "adopt" and it will automatically apply whatever settings you picked as the default, so it's really easy to do and you don't have to manually do anything on each AP besides rename it and drag it onto the map really.

[Michael]

...there is no guarantee that replacing the access points , which presumably are “n” and possibly 3x3, with “ac” ones, wave 2 or otherwise is going to give any improvement. If you have 5 spaced out access points, presumably not in the classrooms you are not going to benefit from the higher Qam rates of 5ghz because that requires very strong signals with APs in the classroom. You’ll get great speeds in the corridors next to them though. You would be able to use wider 80Mhz channels on 5Ghz but it doesn’t work well through walls. If you use more access points, you are probably back to 40MHz, but you would get stronger signals. And keep in mind that if your devices don’t support “ac” you are wasting your money investing in new APs because no one will know.

 

All iPads are dual band ready up to 'n' and the latest iPad Air 2 or later support AC.

 

The Unifi solution is very powerful, but you're right, optimal positions in classrooms rather than corridors is key.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I have 2 at my house and it fixed all my WIFI issues. Obvously only a small deployment, but I am really impressed.

 

 

 

That is exactly what my dad though!

 

I have two at home as well and likewise, impressed with the performance!

[mikeprice]

We stitched to Unifi about 2 years ago

 

all the APs are connected to Cisco switches with POE

 

since then the wifi have been accessible over the whole school with no problems - start up the console every morning and just check everything is still linked in

 

Only had a problem when one of the main switches failed!

In fact it was the Unifi console that showed me something was wrong

[howartp]

I have 2 at my house and it fixed all my WIFI issues. Obvously only a small deployment, but I am really impressed.

Ditto - bought a three pack for Church but only needed two to cover it so I accidentally brought the third one home....

 

Covers everything but the study, but that's technically outside the house walls so wifi has always struggled to get in there.

[Zoom7000]

Meraki here across our trust. Highly recommended!

[bitznpcz]

Another +1 for Unifi APs - for primary schools it's a no brainer. You pay for the AP and that's it. No licence, no hardware controller, no firmware upgrade fees. I've switched a lot of my schools over to UBNT.

[nathan]

Unifi in all our primaries, for the price it was a no brainer. We have the original version still going strong in one of our schools