earlyriser Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 We have been running Unifi at our school for around 9 months. I just couldn't go past the initial price in comparison to the competition, and so far it's been working brilliantly. As far as I'm aware it doesn't have some of the 'smarts' of the alternatives (i.e the AP's aren't aware of each other and don't shift traffic automatically dependent on load), but we haven't had a single technical issue since I installed and commissioned it. We have 38 AP's around the school, and between 3-400 devices accessing the wireless networks (3) at the same time. I have occasionally seen individual AP's with 50+ clients with very little impact on performance at the client end. I haven't done any scientific testing at all though, really just looking that staff and students can login, browse the web, transfer files etc. all with reasonable speed. For under $9000 NZ (That's about 5000 pounds) we have good, stable wireless coverage across our entire campus and so far the staff and students (1000+) have been happy 1
m25man Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Great to hear that our Antipodean cousins have also smelt the coffee, unfortunately the air is so polluted over here its hard to get people to smell it even when its right under their noses. As a nation of folk who are used to making every dollar stretch as far as it can go it comes as no surprise to find its been successful down under. Oh to be back in the Bay of Islands.... Edited February 2, 2012 by m25man
Avalon Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 We have been running Unifi at our school for around 9 months. I just couldn't go past the initial price in comparison to the competition, and so far it's been working brilliantly. As far as I'm aware it doesn't have some of the 'smarts' of the alternatives (i.e the AP's aren't aware of each other and don't shift traffic automatically dependent on load), but we haven't had a single technical issue since I installed and commissioned it. We have 38 AP's around the school, and between 3-400 devices accessing the wireless networks (3) at the same time. I have occasionally seen individual AP's with 50+ clients with very little impact on performance at the client end. I haven't done any scientific testing at all though, really just looking that staff and students can login, browse the web, transfer files etc. all with reasonable speed. For under $9000 NZ (That's about 5000 pounds) we have good, stable wireless coverage across our entire campus and so far the staff and students (1000+) have been happy great thats good to know, can I ask whether you manually set AP channels or let it automatically sort itself out? Trying to decide the best way to go about this ...
m25man Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 @Avalon we leave the settings to auto to the majority of ours and lettem get on with it it seems to just work fine. We have 3 AP's in one room which are set on a low power setting but auto channel and I often find that they have all switched channels between themselves overnight. I too have had 80 clients hanging off a single AP after I stupidly reset one remotely during a major event the crazy thing was that nobody even complained so Im not sure if it was a quick transition as the default screen refresh time in the Unifi console is 2mins and one minute they were quite evenly balanced the next 80 users on one device whilst the other was re-provisioning. When it didnt come back online I did have to walk out the the device and unplug/replug the PoE cable where it immediately came back online and within a few minutes they were all balanced out again.
earlyriser Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 great thats good to know, can I ask whether you manually set AP channels or let it automatically sort itself out? Trying to decide the best way to go about this ... We let the AP's auto decide what channel to use. We pretty much have an AP per classroom, so I imagine there is some bleed from room to room, and we do get client devices connecting to AP's in the classroom next door, but it never seems to cause any end-user issues
earlyriser Posted February 2, 2012 Posted February 2, 2012 Great to hear that our Antipodean cousins have also smelt the coffee, unfortunately the air is so polluted over here its hard to get people to smell it even when its right under their noses. As a nation of folk who are used to making every dollar stretch as far as it can go it comes as no surprise to find its been successful down under. Oh to be back in the Bay of Islands.... Don't worry, it's getting more and more polluted over here as us ex-pats arrive in the thousands The Bay of Islands however, remains as beautiful as always....
m25man Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 (edited) A live feed of Unifi in action..jgsys-tv on USTREAM: . All devices are BYOD Edited February 4, 2012 by m25man
danielstucke Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 This all sounds a little too good to be true. I'm looking at a new school-wide network, covering 42 classrooms plus offices & communal spaces. Costs clearly vary hugely between different solutions. Would this hold up to a 700 device network including a lot of iOS devices? Is it a software only controller? So would we just need to buy lots of access points? Thanks in advance!
Achandler Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Yes, it should be fine. You just need the access points. We have 35 points and an average of 250 devices on it absolutely fine, though I have seen 350 before. Including 80 or so staff iPods. 1
Joel Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Are the access points POE? If not, are there adapters and how do these work?
Achandler Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Yes they are PoE, you get inline adapters with the products or you can buy adpaters to work with a PoE switch.
soveryapt Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 You know, the more I read on this thread the more: a) I'm tempted to buy a 3 box set for c.£200 and install it at home b) regretting buying a number of NetGear ProSafe Points that I've installed around the school and wished I'd known more about this at the time as for the same money it looks like I could have done a lot more! Meh .. ah well .. live and learn ..
Achandler Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 i stumbled across these by accident to be honest when speaking to a Wifi Solutions company and have used them ever since.
Dave84 Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 I couldnt find any info on it but do the access points support 5Ghz Wireless N?
RobFuller Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Yes they do have 5GHz AP's but they cost a bit more from what I have seen, have a talk with 4gon they also offer educational discounts too. 1
plexer Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Wow on the prices they have listed you save 10p by buying a 3 pack instead of 3 individual points. Ben
plexer Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Indeed, allthough the mini ones are even cheaper. Ben
m25man Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 The cost of shipping the 3 packs is the same as the singles as everyone has different requirements after a while we found that stocking both was a false economy. Yes there is a lot more packaging but the economics of bulk shipments make them a nonsense. The instant AF adapters are the only way to power these from an AF Compliant Switch they are Passive 24v THEY ARE NOT af compliant if I have to hear one more idiot that buys these from me complaining that they don't work, I will scream! RTFM before you plug them in! I make a big point of emphasizing this and include it in all of the presales but you can not imagine how many people still order them and try to run them directly of a PoE switch. Unfortunately a second brain cell is not included in the kits! We will have a 5, 8, 16 and 24 port dual mode 24/48v Midspan available shortly for those that need high density deployments. NO there are no 5Ghz versions available yet. As soon as they are I will post. If you are seriously considering Unifi as a solution PM me and I will be happy to demonstrate a live system and discuss the advantages AND disadvantages. Just because Unifi might be one tenth of the price of some high end systems it does not make it the best choice. I will never recommend anyone buy more than 3 on a first order. Test it, trial it, deliver it. The only people that return them are those that are too ignorant to do some proper research and read the paperwork everyone else ends up deploying dozens and never look back. Ubiquiti make some of the best point to point solutions in the world and are respected for it. Unifi is their first venture into enterprise wifi and are learning as they go each software release gets better (with the occasional bug) but they listen to what the users want and implement it if its viable. Once again, the ONLY stupid thing you can do before buying that £20k system is not to try it!
Paid_Peanuts Posted February 9, 2012 Posted February 9, 2012 Currently we have a Cisco solution comprising of a WLAN controller 4402 with 40 AP's: 1242ag models. Providing coverage to site wide access for 550 laptops. Our existing solution is rock solid and have never had a problem. However we are in a position this year where we are replacing our 4+ year old laptops which currently have g network cards with new laptops capable of wireless n. So i was thinking to get the most from the laptops we could do with upgrading our wireless to support 802.11n. I was thinking i could replace my existing AP's with new Cisco wireless N AP's or I could look at a completly alternative solution. How do you think the Unifi solution would stack up against our existing Cisco offering? Other than laptops on the network we offer no guest access at the moment. The only other thing we do is we currently have 12 or so wireless VoIP phones which need the abaility to roam seamlessly from one end of the school to the other. Would this be ok with the Unifi kit or could we potentially hit issues there? Any advice or thoughts appreciated!
m25man Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 There is g/n or a/g/n you need to be certain of the capabilities of your clients. Clearly your Cisco Solution is able to operate on both 2.4 & 5Ghz bands, but how many clients actually use the 5Ghz band? Unifi does not have any 5Ghz capable radios yet, its a 2.4 Ghz only solution (dual band operation is expected shortly). As roaming by default is a client initiated function it's near impossible for a cell based system to make the roaming experience seamless, some try, some claim to be able to do it, single channel blanket systems CAN do it but the cost of covering an entire site with single channel architecture comes at a hefty price In all fairness when we had the ZyXel Dual Band AP's we only ever saw a handful of Macs on the 5Ghz channels everything else tended to just default to 2.4Ghz Since switching to Unifi the clients have no choice anyway. The management does a brilliant job of keeping everyone connected with the minimum of fuss. As Unifi stays firmly focused on delivering the best possible performance at the lowest possible price it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of some systems but it delivers an outstanding solution for a tiny price. @ShorehamGeek has now deployed 23 AP's and has his site covered for less than £1600 (inc VAT) and there are dozens of others here on edugeek that have wised up and are doing the same. You could of course spend £20k on a fancy beam forming, spectrum zapping, seamless roaming, gigabit backhaul, dual banded, 3x3 MiMo, airwave swamping system in the hope that your clients will actually use all of the features on offer? So if you want to save £18k on your next WiFi system give it a whirl because you have nothing to loose (apart from the £20k if you don't try it first!) 2
ShorehamGeek Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 There is g/n or a/g/n you need to be certain of the capabilities of your clients. Clearly your Cisco Solution is able to operate on both 2.4 & 5Ghz bands, but how many clients actually use the 5Ghz band? Unifi does not have any 5Ghz capable radios yet, its a 2.4 Ghz only solution (dual band operation is expected shortly). As roaming by default is a client initiated function it's near impossible for a cell based system to make the roaming experience seamless, some try, some claim to be able to do it, single channel blanket systems CAN do it but the cost of covering an entire site with single channel architecture comes at a hefty price In all fairness when we had the ZyXel Dual Band AP's we only ever saw a handful of Macs on the 5Ghz channels everything else tended to just default to 2.4Ghz Since switching to Unifi the clients have no choice anyway. The management does a brilliant job of keeping everyone connected with the minimum of fuss. As Unifi stays firmly focused on delivering the best possible performance at the lowest possible price it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of some systems but it delivers an outstanding solution for a tiny price. @ShorehamGeek has now deployed 23 AP's and has his site covered for less than £1600 (inc VAT) and there are dozens of others here on edugeek that have wised up and are doing the same. You could of course spend £20k on a fancy beam forming, spectrum zapping, seamless roaming, gigabit backhaul, dual banded, 3x3 MiMo, airwave swamping system in the hope that your clients will actually use all of the features on offer? So if you want to save £18k on your next WiFi system give it a whirl because you have nothing to loose (apart from the £20k if you don't try it first!) I'm very pleased with the system. I've not yet stressed the system as a whole, but have tested a single access point with 16 devices streaming video simultaneously (all I had to hand at that point). Expanding the system is trivially easy. Given the price, I'd suggest buying a couple of APs and giving it a go (that's how I started).
neitway Posted February 16, 2012 Posted February 16, 2012 it is too inexpensive, i want to look for another.
snoerre Posted February 18, 2012 Posted February 18, 2012 T Unifi does not have any 5Ghz capable radios yet, its a 2.4 Ghz only solution (dual band operation is expected shortly). Do you have any hints when the "Pro" devices will be released?
m25man Posted February 19, 2012 Posted February 19, 2012 Do you have any hints when the "Pro" devices will be released? The last update from a reliable source is here, see the last post, Feature request (spec change) - Page 3 - Ubiquiti Networks Forum They normally ship limited demo stocks out within days of an announcement but it can take 6 weeks before stock arrives from the master distributors. Keep an eye on Streakwave Wireless Inc. Distribution of Wireless Broadband Equipment as they are the USA's biggest Unifi stockist they will have it long before the UK. I would like to see them here before 11.ac stuff starts to start turning up on the shelves...
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