Unifi AC EDU deployment

[forkies]

We are looking at replacing our existing ageing and expensive meraki wireless system with Unifi. We have got one Unifi AC EDU wireless point deployed and are very happy with it, not only for the wireless but as a PA system.

 

My query is, to make this viable we would need one AC EDU in each classroom and possibly in certain communal areas/corridors for the PA system to be heard in all areas. Therefore I am concerned this may cause interference for them being quite densely deployed. We would be going from our sparse 26 AP deployment to over 80 to cover all areas and vastly improve our WiFi deployment.

 

Most of our buildings are 1960 ish solid brick double skinned in some places. But we have two new buildings (one going up) which are mdf backed partitions with steels.

 

Has anyone got these APs and/or have any thoughts about this?

 

Thoughts much appreciated,

Tom

[gh5000]

Buy three more, put them in 4 adjacent classrooms/rooms. Turn the transmit power on the APs to low and then get testing.

[Katy]

I've got 21 of the AC Pro in a new build, one per classroom, wireless "just works" and I didn't have to do any messing with power etc. Although our new build is steel frame with this weird thick board covered in tin foil for the partition walls with what feels like 18 layers of plasterboard either side (it's probably about 2 or 3) - on our old APs we had one per two rooms and really struggled so it may be that the walls were blocking the signal for us (and therefore would reduce interference when they're one per room)...

[IrritableTech]

We’re currently deploying twenty odd EDUs because we needed a PA and we’re also having to deploy more densely due to audio levels rather than WiFi. Our intention is to reduce the 2.4GHz power, but leave the 5GHz as it is. There are more channels to play with at 5GHz and it travels less well.

 

Having three or four to test should give you the info you need.

 

Just be aware that it looks like the UK distributes are selling off their EDU stock, presumably because they’re not popular. Ubnt haven’t announced them as EOL though.

[Meldrew]

My understanding is that the APs automatically adjust their power so that they don't interfere with each other. We have Unifi APs in every room in some of our buildings and no problems.

 

Meldrew

[Mr_Jiminy]

Buy three more, put them in 4 adjacent classrooms/rooms. Turn the transmit power on the APs to low and then get testing.

 

What ghanel said, perhaps medium to low and configure band steering to prefer 5Ghz.

[BKGarry]

I have recently replaced all 51 of our Meru APs and controller with 41 Unifi AC Pro APs, apart from tweaking the old VLAN settings so that the ports are trunks to the APs rather than a static VLAN. It worked great.

 

I did have to put a wildcard into the source for our RADIUS authentication as traffic is coming from multiple SSID identifiers rather than just one for our Domain Wireless but that way the only thing that stumped me for a bit.

 

I can quite commonly have 80+ devices (of which 95-100% are full fat domain joined laptops) and it just works for us, the only time I have had a struggle is when I authorised a 1+gb cumulative update on the WSUS server, but appart from that all good,

 

Some of these APs are barely 10 metres away from one and other with no walls in between and they just work too,

[Accura2k7]

We have 50 EDU currently deployed, like your, every room with no issues at all, they do overlap slightly but no actual problems in their use/connections. Happy to talk in more depth if you want more info!

[daven1985]

Happy to provide my 2 cents... if you want to hear them.

 

When installing the EDU's they will work even if the radios are turned off. So if you find that you have too many AP's around the school (say your corridors for example) you can just turn their radio's off. They will still work as a broadcast solution but they won't interfere with your existing wireless. I have installed over 130 EDU's in my school and while I haven't started using the broadcast yet they are on my to-do list this year.

 

I am even getting my AV Expert to pull one apart to try and replace the speaker with an external bell speaker!

 

https://dl.ubnt.com/customers/UBNT_CS_Central_Coast_Grammar_School.pdf

 

https://www.eduitguy.com/2018/04/23/ubnt-infrastructure-part-1-how-ubiquiti-got-onto-the-tender-list/

[PotNoodleTech]

This is great info guys!

[Oaktech]

It really is - I'm going to be doing this in about 18 months as we move to a single network across 2 sites. We currently run a Ruckus N network and once we have paid for the upgraded controller licence and new APs we are far in excess of what it will cost to install an AP-AC-Edu in almost every room.

 

2 Questions - How loud actually are they? Has anyone found a way of integrating them with an existing class change system?

[PotNoodleTech]

Happy to provide my 2 cents... if you want to hear them.

 

When installing the EDU's they will work even if the radios are turned off. So if you find that you have too many AP's around the school (say your corridors for example) you can just turn their radio's off. They will still work as a broadcast solution but they won't interfere with your existing wireless. I have installed over 130 EDU's in my school and while I haven't started using the broadcast yet they are on my to-do list this year.

 

I am even getting my AV Expert to pull one apart to try and replace the speaker with an external bell speaker!

 

https://dl.ubnt.com/customers/UBNT_CS_Central_Coast_Grammar_School.pdf

 

https://www.eduitguy.com/2018/04/23/ubnt-infrastructure-part-1-how-ubiquiti-got-onto-the-tender-list/

 

Read your blog very interesting, looking forward to more posts! Particularly interested in what you are going to do with your server infrastructure as like you, I think so many schools waste vast sums of money on server infrastructure chasing that 100% reliability dream and often end up with a system less reliable due to over complexity.