Need some advice regarding Unifi switches

[JOrdan01070]

Hi I have been looking at replacing my old network which consists of hp 1410's, netgear gs728tp's, hp 1810's and a dlink dgs1210 with unifi kit but I want to look at creating a couple of vlans. We are a 2 form primary, juniors in one building infants in another with a om1 fibre link between the two.

 

What I have been looking at is the following, a usg-pro-4 connected to a us-16-xg switch as the core connecting to 2 us-48-poe switches and 1 us 48 switch, an OM3 fibre link to infants and ict suite were there would be another us-48-poe switch. All the switches would be connected at 10Gig back to the us-16-xg.

 

For the Wireless replace the netgear ap with nano HDs.

 

In total I would reduce the 11 old switches to 6 and have better management overall.

 

Do you think I am on the right path.

[FN-GM]

What features are you looking for? Are you after bog standard switches? Or maybe features that can stop internal network attacks and rouge DHCP servers accidentally introduced on devices?

[Davit2005]

Go for EdgeSwitches rather than Unifi range. EdgeSwitch GUI is catching up with Unifi but you have a lot more functionality with the EdgeSwitch and they are slightly cheaper when I looked. PLus I had a lot of issues when I enabled spanning tree on the US-8-150W I had at home which put me off them.

 

I currently have 2 ES-16-XG's and one ES-24 Lite at home. The ES-16-XG also provides routing so instead of having to do router on a stick with the Edge Router you can use the ES. But bear in mind the Unifi Switch range offers no stacking or resilency for routing like vrrp etc. as far as I know.

Edited September 14, 2018 by Davit2005

[BKGarry]

I have recently, over the past 18 months, replaced my entire network within unifi/ubiquiti kit.

 

I would say replace your wireless first, by far the easiest part, and I did it staggered over a week or two. I went from meru AGN aps to the AC pro.

Then I did the switches, that's where is got fun, our internet connection isn't actually a direct connection, it is a wan port on a layer 3 switch to the LA LAN. So we have to have our IP addresses just pass through. So I am not using a USG I'm using an Edgeswitch 16 XG for routing and unifi for the rest.

I have and unifi 16-xg which has the servers plugged in with cat6a for 10gbps. If the 48 port Poe are in the same cabinet, get the SFP+ cables. I have two of the same connected to the XG with this. Just didn't see the point of sfp+ to fibre then back the other way in the same room. You get the throughput without an issue.

 

I reduced (a mix of 24port 1Gbps and 48 port 10/100) from 28 switches and 8 Poe injectors to 8 unifi switches and one Edgeswitch

[JOrdan01070]

@FN-GM, @Davit2005 and @BKGarry. Thank you for the help and ideas.

 

FN-GM network security is a concern and so is rouge DCHP servers I know the UNifi and edgeswitchs do DHCP guarding.

 

I was looking at doing the network upgrade in stages with the wifi in one building first, then replace the fibre between the buildings and wifi.

 

Depending on budget this upgrade could be over a couple of years. Hope fully new features like ARP etc added by the time I need to buy.

[BKGarry]

@JOrdan01070 that is what I did here, over a slightly shorter span, but I did do it in stages, as long as your WiFi SSIDs are the same and it points to the Same RADIUS rules, it'll work.

 

Set yourself a RADIUS template for the passkey (or whatever it wants to call it) and add each access point to it as you go along. What I did with that was set DHCP reservations for each AP and added them to RADIUS before I put them up. Then just used the phone app to adopt them and make sure the settings were correct. I was averaging on getting 4-5 done an hour when installing with this method, so managed to do our entire school within a couple of weeks.