Unifi and Cambium Resellers?

[fiza]

Can anyone recommend Unifi or Cambium WiFi resellers? Anyone bought any recently what kind of price are we talking?

 

Need to replace an old Ruckus system in a our Primary School and the budget is not there to replace it with the latest Ruckus kit.

[DGardiner]

Can anyone recommend Unifi or Cambium WiFi resellers? Anyone bought any recently what kind of price are we talking?

 

Need to replace an old Ruckus system in a our Primary School and the budget is not there to replace it with the latest Ruckus kit.

 

Last order we made for unifi (hardware and install ourselves)

 

CloudkeyG2 Plus: £139

5pk UAP ACPROS £510

[robyholmes]

4Gon or MS Distribution for UniFi gear. 4Gon tend to come in cheaper.

[Primus]

We used 4Gon and got an excellent price on Unifi APs a couple of years ago, more recently for Unifi switches we got our best price from Switchshop.

[Chris_Cook]

We get our Cambium Wifi from click on it london Home - ClickOn IT London

 

Not sure on pricing, but I think its in a similar ball-park.

[chazzy2501]

I use a company called switchshop.co.uk great customer support. Example: I once got a bunch of HP POE switches that wouldn't accept my 3com sfp adaptors and they sent me out a tray of compatibles for free! They also send out an advent calendar every year

[CAWJames]

Give Dave Moxon at Kuiper Technology a call for Unifi, I've found him able to beat the likes of 4Gon in the past in terms of price. Also the guy that basically halved our last Watchguard purchase from other resellers(40k to 20k!)

[Alawil]

Give Dave Moxon at Kuiper Technology a call for Unifi, I've found him able to beat the likes of 4Gon in the past in terms of price. Also the guy that basically halved our last Watchguard purchase from other resellers(40k to 20k!)

 

We used purdicom for Cambium, they were excellent with great pricing, great presales technical support and provided software based WiFi planning.

[fiza]

Last order we made for unifi (hardware and install ourselves)

 

CloudkeyG2 Plus: £139

5pk UAP ACPROS £510

I've been told that the 3 and 5 packs don't come with PoE adaptors or mounting brackets. Can you confirm?

[Primus]

I've been told that the 3 and 5 packs don't come with PoE adaptors or mounting brackets. Can you confirm?

 

They don't come with PoE injectors but they do have the standard mounting bracket. If you're wanting to mount to a drop grid ceiling then you need the pro mount anyway as it saves you screwing through ceiling tiles and clips onto the rails.

[fiza]

They don't come with PoE injectors but they do have the standard mounting bracket. If you're wanting to mount to a drop grid ceiling then you need the pro mount anyway as it saves you screwing through ceiling tiles and clips onto the rails.

So to get the PoE we need to buy single packs? In some places the existing APs are ceiling mounted but most are on the wall.

[computer_expert]

So to get the PoE we need to buy single packs? In some places the existing APs are ceiling mounted but most are on the wall.

 

Yep, Only single packs come with the POE injectors. Both the single packs and 5 pack boxes have the mounting brackets. The assumption with the larger 5 pack is that you have a POE switch to power them all.

 

Double check with supplier as old single pack stock won't have the injector. I can't remember when it was changed to include the injector (but was at some point in the last few years).

 

Edit: The above applies to UAP-AC-PRO models

Edited June 13, 2020 by computer_expert

[DGardiner]

So to get the PoE we need to buy single packs? In some places the existing APs are ceiling mounted but most are on the wall.

 

You get mounts with the 5pk no POE injector tho - the mount is not a rail type though.

 

https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/23890-ubiquiti-uap-ac-pro-5/ you can see them here in the images

 

the unifi switches arent too pricey either - for the added cost of the POE injectors you might find it a bit more beneficial to spend that money on one of those

[fiza]

Just realised I was being thick!! I don't need PoE injectors as the APs will connect into PoE switches!

[fiza]

Which Unifi AP's are recommended for a small Primary? Ruckus system currently as 22 APs and covers the whole school. Will the Nanos do or should I look at the Pro? Very little price difference by the looks of it.

[EddyAllen]

Which Unifi AP's are recommended for a small Primary? Ruckus system currently as 22 APs and covers the whole school. Will the Nanos do or should I look at the Pro? Very little price difference by the looks of it.

I've looked in to this quite recently and it really comes down to what type of devices you are going to be connecting with. Nano's have faster 5GHz radios but slower 2.4GHz although the Nano does have Wave2 Beamforming. In terms of MU MIMO the AC-PRO also has one extra 2.4GHz radio and one less 5GHz radio, again leaning in favour of a 2.4GHz ecosystem instead of a 5GHz system. A lot of our devices will be connecting at 2.4 instead of 5 so we ended up going for the AC-PRO instead.

 

You will find it easier to get full-site coverage on 2.4 than 5 due to the higher attenuation on 5GHz. You will also get a much higher performance degradation gradient from 5GHz.

 

For WiFi devices you ideally want something that is going to use the least bandwidth possible; clients which rely heavily on on-demand cloud usage such as chromebooks. The system I inherited was using roaming profiles on some old surface tablets which were frankly unusable with many of them simply timing out when a class of 24 attempts to log on at the same time. Converting them to chromebooks and accessing everything through the browser has made the world of difference and now they are perfectly usable devices.

 

TLDR; If you've got lots of brand new mobile devices and plenty of funds go with the Nano. If, like most schools, you run a broad range of old and new hardware and want best coverage and consistent performance go with the AC-PRO.