danielstucke Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Well thanks to the very kind @AChantler we've been testing out two units and are impressed so far. Few issues setting limits so devices pick quieter point but we had 42 MacBooks simultaneously log on and stream HD video today with no issues. Copying a 3Gb file over the network was slow at that point, but then it would be! Still nervous to commit as we may well be moving to iPad 1:1, every supplier you speak to says *sharp intake of breath* "well you'll need Meru for that". A solution 10-15 times cheaper may seem too good to be true, but I'm beginning to think that in these times of shrinking budgets we'd be mad not to!
ozzy Posted June 21, 2012 Posted June 21, 2012 Having read this thread with intrest I'm looking into a school wide wireless network for a primary school and can't quite believe what is being said about this kit. It looks and sounds great (£1500 for Unifi or £7000 for other makes!!!!). Is there any of the suppliers on edugeek that can get this? if so could you pm me.
twin--turbo Posted June 21, 2012 Posted June 21, 2012 Not used Unifi, but we use Ubnt NanoStations for Point to Point links with great success. Rob
Oaktech Posted June 21, 2012 Posted June 21, 2012 we have had 6 in place very successfully for 5 months, we have another 12 on order with wifigear for delivery in the next few weeks. We are replacing a large number of unmanaged linksys wap54g and netgear prosafe wireless devices which have been inplace since about 2004. We have trialled the unifi in place of the netgear and they are perfectly capable of sustaining a class of 20 laptops, and we have pushed it to 40 with very little degradation in performance. 1
the_quick Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Would you say that in comparison to wap54g linksys those are performing better? Rep from local supplier is coming to talk to us about unifi and they offered free survey, so very interested seeing those prices.
twin--turbo Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Would you say that in comparison to wap54g linksys those are performing better? Rep from local supplier is coming to talk to us about unifi and they offered free survey, so very interested seeing those prices. Ubiquiti do one thing . "WiFi" . As I said earlier we used Nanostation M5's for 5Ghz wireless p2p links and they are doing 30Mb over 2miles on a number of links so the kit is good. I have not used the unifi, no real need at present but from everything I have seen on the forum and from chatting with a couple of Techis in other local schools the system seems to perform very well. Rob
Oaktech Posted July 4, 2012 Posted July 4, 2012 Would you say that in comparison to wap54g linksys those are performing better? Rep from local supplier is coming to talk to us about unifi and they offered free survey, so very interested seeing those prices. We have some wap54g and they are not in the same league as unifi. We struggle to get more than 15 laptops on the linksys, but the unifi will stand up to 40, the wap54 are not managed so we cannot easilly restart APs or change global config which we can do with the unifi. The only thing the wap does slightly better is raw range, but it is only a difference of a few metres clear line of sight, and we have the standard unifi, we could get the longer range ones if it was a problem to us. The replacement cost of a wap54 (£58) is also so close to the price of a unifi (£68) that it is a complete no-brainer for us. 1
the_quick Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Got my 3 units today, anyone installed it on Linux box? kind find any downloads for linux, so maybe someone has it somewhere?
Chris_ Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Got my 3 units today, anyone installed it on Linux box? kind find any downloads for linux, so maybe someone has it somewhere? Guide on installing on Linux: UniFi - Release 2.2.5 - Ubiquiti Networks Forum 1
Oaktech Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Guide on installing on Linux: UniFi - Release 2.2.5 - Ubiquiti Networks Forum I was so there, and then the page hung!
the_quick Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Thanks for the link. Trying now, as usual linux does not want to play as it should. Stuck now on GPG key
the_quick Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Great got it working. really tempted to make it guess access and charge kids 1
Oaktech Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 Great got it working. really tempted to make it guess access and charge kids It's a side project for us, to make a guest wireless network with a pay portal, for our commercial venue hire.
m25man Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 The whole Hotspot Control/Payment thingy is very much a marmite solution as its been tacked onto the controller software and that means in order to work your clients need to see the controller itself which may not be the desired or ideal solution depending on how you deployed the controller PC/Server. Ideally the Controller will need to be located on a segment reachable from all VLANs such as a DMZ or even Cloudbased at S3 The Unifi community is full of people that have made it work for them with customised landing pages and AUP's The reason these things are so cheap is that you do need to be fairly tech savvy to set it all up and prepared to do some of your own bookwork, if you can do those things you can probably save your self £10k or more. If you cant/wont/too lazy to do any of these things, then buy an expensive solution and get somebody else to do it for you, but as most users have found the best bit is working it all out for yourself and having the satisfaction that you saved a bucket load of cash. I love my Unifi.
Oaktech Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 The reason these things are so cheap is that you do need to be fairly tech savvy to set it all up and prepared to do some of your own bookwork, if you can do those things you can probably save your self £10k or more. I've configured several other wireless manufacturers over the years, and yes, while this does take a bit of faffing, it also gives more control, but as soon as you start to 'Think Unifi' I feel that everything becomes really quite intuitive!
Wes Posted July 20, 2012 Posted July 20, 2012 Sure there's a place for Unifi, and many schools will get exactly what they need from the system and never have any troubles at all. There's a lot of rhetoric going around - 'it's good 'cos it's cheap - don't get suckered into features you don't need' (I'm not accusing anyone other than Ubiquiti's marketing dept. of this btw). There's no conspiracy between other WiFi vendors to overcharge schools or anyone else for that matter. There was never a cartel meeting where the price of WiFi was set, Unifi isn't threatening the Magic Circle by giving away the trick. It's cheap because it does less (less may well be enough for a lot of cases). The £50 WAPs are not intelligent, they have a single 2.4GHz radio and they don't have a firewall. Ubiquiti have recently released the pro version WAP, which added a 5GHz radio and I believe the price is now £180 per unit, plus you'll need the injector at £20 - so £200 per unit all in. Simply adding a 5GHz radio has increased the price 4 fold, imagine what the price would be if they added a firewall, some band steering and load balancing as well as proper roaming. Suddenly a £300 enterprise grade WAP doesn't look so bad, in fact it looks darn cheap. The enterprise vendors have features which are designed to make use of 5Ghz (where you have 19 non overlapping instead of the 3 offered in 2.4Ghz) by encouraging the clients that can into that band (most clients will just pick up on 2.4GHz and ignore 5, even if both are present). There's no Bluetooth, microwave etc in 5Ghz so there's cleaner air and clients and WAPS spend less time waiting for clean air in order to send data, which improves performance for everyone. You can also bond channels in 5GHz up to 450Mbps data rates. If you've got 450Mbps wireless, I think you have a solution that will last 5 years at least - I don't see a lot of desktop users on wired access at more than 100Mbps, and Gigabit Ethernet has been cheap for years. Unifi only offers 5Ghz at £200 per AP, so at best two thirds of the price of your enterprise solution, not the dramatic figures being marketed. I would say if you want to buy the £50 UAPs and have 100Mbps (it only has a 10/100 Ethernet port so let's not kid ourselves it'll run at 300Mbps like the marketing says) 2.4GHz WiFi, expect to rip it out in 2 years or less, so why not buy UniFi (aside from the hassle of finding somewhere to plug in those tens of PoE injectors and re-cabling again in 2 years time) but the with Pro version WAP the price no longer makes taking the huge hit on features worthwhile, in my opinion.
chazzy2501 Posted July 20, 2012 Posted July 20, 2012 Can I just put my +1 for Dlink kit if you can't afford a managed system. The 3200AP I have are 5 years old and of no issue they are plenum rated so you can put them IN the celing and the bracket they come with can be padlocked. They supply software to discover and clone settings to all of them. The 3200 is a G standard but with a little more cash you can even get dual and quad channel ones. a 3200 will set you back £114inc VAT are directly POE compatible, support multiple SSId with VLANs and 802.1x authentication. Also they don't need a central PC to stay working.
MrWu Posted July 20, 2012 Posted July 20, 2012 (edited) Sure there's a place for Unifi, and many schools will get exactly what they need from the system and never have any troubles at all. There's a lot of rhetoric going around - 'it's good 'cos it's cheap - don't get suckered into features you don't need' (I'm not accusing anyone other than Ubiquiti's marketing dept. of this btw). There's no conspiracy between other WiFi vendors to overcharge schools or anyone else for that matter. There was never a cartel meeting where the price of WiFi was set, Unifi isn't threatening the Magic Circle by giving away the trick. It's cheap because it does less (less may well be enough for a lot of cases). The £50 WAPs are not intelligent, they have a single 2.4GHz radio and they don't have a firewall. Ubiquiti have recently released the pro version WAP, which added a 5GHz radio and I believe the price is now £180 per unit, plus you'll need the injector at £20 - so £200 per unit all in. Simply adding a 5GHz radio has increased the price 4 fold, imagine what the price would be if they added a firewall, some band steering and load balancing as well as proper roaming. Suddenly a £300 enterprise grade WAP doesn't look so bad, in fact it looks darn cheap. The enterprise vendors have features which are designed to make use of 5Ghz (where you have 19 non overlapping instead of the 3 offered in 2.4Ghz) by encouraging the clients that can into that band (most clients will just pick up on 2.4GHz and ignore 5, even if both are present). There's no Bluetooth, microwave etc in 5Ghz so there's cleaner air and clients and WAPS spend less time waiting for clean air in order to send data, which improves performance for everyone. You can also bond channels in 5GHz up to 450Mbps data rates. If you've got 450Mbps wireless, I think you have a solution that will last 5 years at least - I don't see a lot of desktop users on wired access at more than 100Mbps, and Gigabit Ethernet has been cheap for years. Unifi only offers 5Ghz at £200 per AP, so at best two thirds of the price of your enterprise solution, not the dramatic figures being marketed. I would say if you want to buy the £50 UAPs and have 100Mbps (it only has a 10/100 Ethernet port so let's not kid ourselves it'll run at 300Mbps like the marketing says) 2.4GHz WiFi, expect to rip it out in 2 years or less, so why not buy UniFi (aside from the hassle of finding somewhere to plug in those tens of PoE injectors and re-cabling again in 2 years time) but the with Pro version WAP the price no longer makes taking the huge hit on features worthwhile, in my opinion. The UniFi PRO is 48v POE compatible 802.11af , so no need for an injector Edited July 20, 2012 by MrWu 1
Wes Posted July 20, 2012 Posted July 20, 2012 The UniFi PRO is 48v POE compatible 802.11af , so no need for an injector £20 saved!
Oaktech Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 Sure there's a place for Unifi, and many schools will get exactly what they need from the system and never have any troubles at all. There's a lot of rhetoric going around - 'it's good 'cos it's cheap - don't get suckered into features you don't need' (I'm not accusing anyone other than Ubiquiti's marketing dept. of this btw). There's no conspiracy between other WiFi vendors to overcharge schools or anyone else for that matter. There was never a cartel meeting where the price of WiFi was set, Unifi isn't threatening the Magic Circle by giving away the trick. It's cheap because it does less (less may well be enough for a lot of cases). The £50 WAPs are not intelligent, they have a single 2.4GHz radio and they don't have a firewall. Ubiquiti have recently released the pro version WAP, which added a 5GHz radio and I believe the price is now £180 per unit, plus you'll need the injector at £20 - so £200 per unit all in. Simply adding a 5GHz radio has increased the price 4 fold, imagine what the price would be if they added a firewall, some band steering and load balancing as well as proper roaming. Suddenly a £300 enterprise grade WAP doesn't look so bad, in fact it looks darn cheap. The enterprise vendors have features which are designed to make use of 5Ghz (where you have 19 non overlapping instead of the 3 offered in 2.4Ghz) by encouraging the clients that can into that band (most clients will just pick up on 2.4GHz and ignore 5, even if both are present). There's no Bluetooth, microwave etc in 5Ghz so there's cleaner air and clients and WAPS spend less time waiting for clean air in order to send data, which improves performance for everyone. You can also bond channels in 5GHz up to 450Mbps data rates. If you've got 450Mbps wireless, I think you have a solution that will last 5 years at least - I don't see a lot of desktop users on wired access at more than 100Mbps, and Gigabit Ethernet has been cheap for years. Unifi only offers 5Ghz at £200 per AP, so at best two thirds of the price of your enterprise solution, not the dramatic figures being marketed. I would say if you want to buy the £50 UAPs and have 100Mbps (it only has a 10/100 Ethernet port so let's not kid ourselves it'll run at 300Mbps like the marketing says) 2.4GHz WiFi, expect to rip it out in 2 years or less, so why not buy UniFi (aside from the hassle of finding somewhere to plug in those tens of PoE injectors and re-cabling again in 2 years time) but the with Pro version WAP the price no longer makes taking the huge hit on features worthwhile, in my opinion. I'm not going to agree with you in this instance, The Unifi does exactly what we need at the moment, for a price i can get the purse strings to put out for. But I would like to thankyou for a considered argument not a rabid meru/aruba/ruckus fanboi dissing. 1
SYNACK Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 I'm not going to agree with you in this instance, The Unifi does exactly what we need at the moment, for a price i can get the purse strings to put out for. But I would like to thankyou for a considered argument not a rabid meru/aruba/ruckus fanboi dissing. I have to agree with everything he is saying, he does not appear to be disapproving of your usage as he does state that it can be a workable solutions for some schools. All of his points are entirely valid though. Saying that, I have spec'ed Aruba and Ruckus at bigger schools but I am looking at the 'Pro' Unfi APs for a really small school. I can see them working really well there but if the wireless keeps going the way it is at the larger schools the UnFi gear would collapse under its own weight or just be massively inefficient without a stack of manual managment. For that I went to the Ruckus/Aruba stuff that can do it all automaticly and autoheal instead of the stuff that needs a bit more handholding for optimal operation. I would not even consider the non 'Pro' stuff as is excludes the 5GHz band and tries to stuff everything down a 10/100 link, really, what is this 1997? The 'Pro' ones are much better as the include the 5GHz radio with the much less contested RF space and a GBit interface. Again UnFi should kick butt for the small deployment that I am looking at but the larger one would be inefficient in comparison and with the limited shared bandwidth space of WiFi you really don't want it pissing away half of your bandwidth with unnessisarily overpowered signals and partitioned unteamed algoithyms for a collective problem. It is all about what you need from the system and that depends heavily on your environment.
SimpleSi Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 but I am looking at the 'Pro' Unfi APs for a really small school I know your a geek god but I really think the cheap ones are fine for anyone in a "small" school (100 pupils in mycase) (unless every child/teacher has 11n Ipads ) Si
SYNACK Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 (edited) I know your a geek god but I really think the cheap ones are fine for anyone in a "small" school (100 pupils in mycase) (unless every child/teacher has 11n Ipads ) Si Yes, now for limited connectivity (just web) and heavy limiting on the managment traffic like GPO software deploys, it will work alright but you need to be mindful even now of the ammount of traffic you are looking at pushing over it. The school I am thinking of using them in is around the 100-120 pupil mark, much smaller than I am used to dealing with. My issue is that they are in quite an affluent area and looking to hang practiclly everything off it along with student devices. I am not only looking at the now but at the 3-5 year mark where I don't want them screaming at me because the system if choking. I know that 802.11ac is comming out soon making n look like a 56k modem but for base level traffic having access to the much wider 5GHz band to support many more devies at once in the same area. They tend to hate rebuying stuff so it makes little sence starting behind the eight ball to begin with. 802.11AN is one of my rules that I generally don't break without a very good reason if only because i don't want to deal with the headache in a year and a halfs time, in the end its all about keeping my life as peaceful possible as its hard to be zen with your phone screaming every six minutes about the latest Apple iPoo not working with the wireless system that is only x years old etc, etc. As with everything I give it a little overhead to cope with any unforseen stuff immediatly and the standard stuff in the fullness of time. Edited August 17, 2012 by SYNACK
SimpleSi Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 Well since your saying that everyone WILL have 3 wi-fi devices then fair enough to go Pro I would like to work in a country where money flows easily and the IT priority is an easy life for the NM Simon
SYNACK Posted August 17, 2012 Posted August 17, 2012 Well since your saying that everyone WILL have 3 wi-fi devices then fair enough to go Pro I would like to work in a country where money flows easily and the IT priority is an easy life for the NM Simon It's funny being on the other side for a change, this school is different to the others in that it is in an affulent rural area instead of one of the much poorer areas. It is because of this that their focus is quite different, I'd even call their wired infrastructure investment copletely lacking - marketing FTW . TBH we are probably looking at 20 devices per WAP absolute max but that is still higher than I would like. We/I would be pushing managment traffic like software deploys over it and with some of the - sprawling - open source stuff we use N is a must. 300MB over wireless is a killer.
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