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adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

arnika road posted:

Pros: Cheap, functional, flexible, good support, active community, features being added regularly, and they look good. Official SDK for the firmware.
Cons: Supply chain issues, lack of pro tier features (vlan/radius/ipv6, although most of this is coming in future firmware), some reliability issues in the past (some older DoA units, incredibly basic http exploit, self-zapping secondary poe ports on the nanostation)

Basically what you'd expect from a new company trying to disrupt the market (and doing a v. good job)
unifi supports radius and vlans.

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KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


You missed Meraki, HP, Motorolla, and BlueSocket (Adtran) in that list. There are more, but those are the ones I hear about on a regular (weekly) basis.

Intraveinous
Oct 2, 2001

Legion of Rainy-Day Buddhists
We've been implementing the Aerohive APs with the cloud based controller. So far it's been a snap. Web interface is very intuitive while still being powerful. RF performance is outstanding, and the costs aren't too terrible, much less than the Cisco gear we had before.

For an idea of scale, I've installed 12 APs across 3 different areas so far as my pilot, and plan to have about 150 APs up and running by the end of the year. They also have a new router product to do small branch office and home users. 1x1 MIMO Wireless N, a few fast eth ports, USB for 3G/4G backup connection, and a cloud VPN feature to have an automatic connection to the corporate network from where ever it's got internet access. I'm looking at getting a few demo units to use as a replacement for some old PIX 501s I have at small branch offices on DSL lines.

unknown
Nov 16, 2002
Ain't got no stinking title yet!


KillHour posted:

You missed Meraki, HP, Motorolla, and BlueSocket (Adtran) in that list. There are more, but those are the ones I hear about on a regular (weekly) basis.

Added and modified the first post. If there's others, post 'em.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


Meru (has a unique single-channel architecture) and Engenius (cheap, decent stuff) to name a few more.

Pudgygiant
Apr 8, 2004

Garnet and black? More like gold and blue or whatever the fuck colors these are

KillHour posted:

Engenius (cheap, decent stuff)

We saw a 50% DOA rate on Engenius equipment, fwiw. I don't know if that's because it's crappy equipment or because shipping to Afghanistan is never kind, but I know I'll never buy it again.

Pyroclastic
Jan 4, 2010

I'll chime in on Ruckus. My district was originally going with Xirrus' products. The first ones we got were really expensive; I was told they cost us $4000+ per AP. With them being so expensive, we could only put one in a building and their coverage basically sucked, especially with our buildings being old and rather solidly constructed--lots of brick, metal, and thick walls.
I saw an ad in a K-12 Connected flier for Ruckus, and checked them out online. Their marketing spiel and cost impressed me enough and I pointed them out to our admins (I'm just a lowly computer janitor). When I came back from summer break, they had used some got-to-spend-it-or-we-lose-it capital projects money and bought two ZoneDirectors and 50 APs, PoE injectors and a handful of PoE switches from Ruckus, plus installation.
When we started installing, we discovered that one of the APs ($600ish) at least matched the effective range of the Xirrus APs, and now we could afford to provide probably 95% coverage in our schools.

The only problem we've had (apart from a couple dead injectors and one AP that wouldn't connect) was from the SMC PoE switches; they would decide to disconnect the AP from the network and could only be fixed by resetting the switch. A firmware update has solved that. The whole system is solid through repeated power outages. We've seen a single Ruckus AP handle mobile labs that made the Xirrus unusably slow and lossy.

That being said, the Xirrus APs were running in a secured mode, while our Ruckus network is currently open (can't get at our network without being in the domain and you have to login to our webfilter to access the internet). We're supposed to move to radius someday, so that may affect performance.

As an added bonus, the APs are small, light, and unobtrusive.

I have no idea what level of support contract we have, but when I contacted them for the issue with the PoE switches, they responded quickly and with the fix, and I didn't even go through our support channel.

We're quite happy with Ruckus.

mattisacomputer
Jul 13, 2007

Philadelphia Sports: Classy and Sophisticated.

I'm looking into possibly doing a wlan shot of about 750ft. I've never done one of these before and am just curious if I can roll it myself instead of getting a vendor to spec something this summer. Can anyone reccomend two APs that can work with this distance? I just need to connect this warehouse thats adjacent to one of my schools to the LAN.

pubic void nullo
May 17, 2002


TheRife posted:

I'm looking into possibly doing a wlan shot of about 750ft. I've never done one of these before and am just curious if I can roll it myself instead of getting a vendor to spec something this summer. Can anyone reccomend two APs that can work with this distance? I just need to connect this warehouse thats adjacent to one of my schools to the LAN.

You could try a nanobridge, http://www.ubnt.com/nanobridge
Also, the supply chain issues are worse now, roc-noc is completely sold out of them.

mattisacomputer
Jul 13, 2007

Philadelphia Sports: Classy and Sophisticated.

Thanks, I'm going to put it in my budget for this summer. Looks exactly like what i need.

ryangs
Jul 11, 2001

Yo vivo en una furgoneta abajo cerca del río!
Is it just me, or are SonicWall SonicPoints just loving terrible?

Weird Uncle Dave
Sep 2, 2003

I could do this all day.

Buglord

arnika road posted:

You could try a nanobridge, http://www.ubnt.com/nanobridge
Also, the supply chain issues are worse now, roc-noc is completely sold out of them.

For a shot of under 1000 feet, you probably don't even need the NanoBridge; a pair of Nanostation units will be great (also easier to mount, and I think a bit cheaper).

Take the extra money, get a FCC 3650 license, and as a bonus you'll be in a band practically guaranteed to be free of interference.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





ryangs posted:

Is it just me, or are SonicWall SonicPoints just loving terrible?

Everything SonicWall is terrible.

Syano
Jul 13, 2005
That really isnt true anymore. Sonicwall has a bad rap because of previous generations of hardware being so flaky. Their new gen stuff though is pretty acceptable though. We have a pair of E5500 units in HA configuration terminating a couple hundred VPNs and they are rock solid.

That being said, yes, sonicpoints are probably the worst access points in existence. We have a single one we put in production to test out since we had the E5500's already to act as controllers. Its horrible. Have to reboot it almost weekly. Had a hell of a time getting it to work with iDevices. I will never buy one again

ptier
Jul 2, 2007

Back off man, I'm a scientist.
Pillbug

ryangs posted:

Is it just me, or are SonicWall SonicPoints just loving terrible?

SonicPoints are complete garbage. We have had to take out 2-3 at client sites because they just poo poo the bed. It's 2012, wireless connectivity should just be working. I can understand some RADIUS issues maybe, but come on.

SoincWalls, at least the TZ100 and TZ100W kinda suck with corner cases but they are continuously getting better.

DeathAgain
Apr 12, 2005

Pour me another one!

ptier posted:

SonicPoints are complete garbage. We have had to take out 2-3 at client sites because they just poo poo the bed. It's 2012, wireless connectivity should just be working. I can understand some RADIUS issues maybe, but come on.

SoincWalls, at least the TZ100 and TZ100W kinda suck with corner cases but they are continuously getting better.

The new TZ and NSA units with integrated wireless have different wireless chipsets in them now. Same deal with the new SonicPoints available (the NDR).
They're getting a lot better.

madsushi
Apr 19, 2009

Baller.
#essereFerrari

DeathAgain posted:

The new TZ and NSA units with integrated wireless have different wireless chipsets in them now. Same deal with the new SonicPoints available (the NDR).
They're getting a lot better.

"A lot better" for SonicWall would bring them up to the "not poo poo" level. Much easier to just buy equipment that already works.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I'm putting a Meraki unit in at our HQ and then slowly rolling them out to all of our locations that currently have wifi. Some of them are on the traditional crappy SOHO WAPs, some on old Ciscos. It will make it so much easier for me to work on these things, especially as some of them are a few hundred miles away.

MrMoo
Sep 14, 2000

Some Meraki gear include WAN accelerators, that's pretty sweet and dramatically brings down the cost compared to Riverbed et al.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I think this probably qualifies me as an idiot, but I definitely saw something in a thread about Wi-Fi that was a small cheap (<£100) device that plugged into a home workers router and established a VPN link back to the office without any input from that user, then shared it out over a built in AP and had a single ethernet socket in case you wanted to plug in a desktop.

I've gone back through this thread and can't find it, and looked at any VPN type threads in here as well, but I have no idea where I saw it. If this sounds familiar can you jog my memory please?

ior
Nov 21, 2003

What's a fuckass?

Caged posted:

I think this probably qualifies me as an idiot, but I definitely saw something in a thread about Wi-Fi that was a small cheap (<£100) device that plugged into a home workers router and established a VPN link back to the office without any input from that user, then shared it out over a built in AP and had a single ethernet socket in case you wanted to plug in a desktop.

I've gone back through this thread and can't find it, and looked at any VPN type threads in here as well, but I have no idea where I saw it. If this sounds familiar can you jog my memory please?
(it actually has two ethernet sockets for tunneling back to the HQ)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/wireless/ps5678/ps11579/data_sheet_c78-651456.html

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
The integrated wireless in Sonicwall TZwhatevers is loving terrible.

Intraveinous
Oct 2, 2001

Legion of Rainy-Day Buddhists

Caged posted:

I think this probably qualifies me as an idiot, but I definitely saw something in a thread about Wi-Fi that was a small cheap (<£100) device that plugged into a home workers router and established a VPN link back to the office without any input from that user, then shared it out over a built in AP and had a single ethernet socket in case you wanted to plug in a desktop.

I've gone back through this thread and can't find it, and looked at any VPN type threads in here as well, but I have no idea where I saw it. If this sounds familiar can you jog my memory please?

The Aerohive BR100 provides this functionality as well. I'm supposed to have 20 of them coming in a week or so to test them out. I had originally planned to just order 2 or 3 as a test, but when we put in our order for 100 additional APs, they threw in 20 BR100s for free.
https://www.aerohive.com/products/routers/br100

Langolas
Feb 12, 2011

My mustache makes me sexy, not the hat

I've played with quite a few different vendors + models of wireless in the past year.

I use a Cisco 5508 controller with my corp network and I tied it into WCS.

I love the ubiquity stuff and for any small deployments I would use that.

If I am a Cisco shop, I will go with the Cisco AP's and controllers because they are honestly easy to setup once you do it once imo.

I don't like engenious AT ALL. Lack of support, bad firmware etc. really turned me off.

Sonicpoint/wall/poo poo stuff can DIAF too holy poo poo.

I really want to get my hands on some Aruba stuff though, I haven't had the chance to play with them yet.

I'm still kind of out to sea on what I would want to do on a next large scale wireless deployment. Go Cisco again or go with another vendor? Its all situational for me :(.

bort
Mar 13, 2003

Have you updated software on a Cisco WCS/Controller/AP stack?

I have some infrastructure I need to get from version 6 to version 7 and don't know how much to worry about it.

I'm also about to get my hands on my first 5508. Looking forward to playing with it!

probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax

adorai posted:

I am totally impressed with Unifi from Ubiquity. It's super inexpensive for the feature set.

I'm reading over it and I can't believe what I'm seeing here - $69 for the AP and the software free? Can anyone else vouch for this? I'm really interested.

Also, I saw someone say that it doesn't support active POE, just passive. From my research that means it has a limited range in feet compared to active POE, right? For instance it may not be stable with the supplied poe adapter to be at ground level, and the AP to be on the 4th floor of an apartment complex?

This price with the features seems in its own class....

probably drunk fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Feb 17, 2012

parasyte
Aug 13, 2003

Nobody wants to die except the suicides. They're no fun.

probably drunk posted:

I'm reading over it and I can't believe what I'm seeing here - $69 for the AP and the software free? Can anyone else vouch for this? I'm really interested.

Also, I saw someone say that it doesn't support active POE, just passive. From my research that means it has a limited range in feet compared to active POE, right? For instance it may not be stable with the supplied poe adapter to be at ground level, and the AP to be on the 4th floor of an apartment complex?

This price with the features seems in its own class....

What's really fun about Ubiquiti PoE is that it's their special 24v version (they don't natively support 802af), so if you plug one into a normal PoE switch you have a dead UBNT device on your hands.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


They seem to be taking loving forever to release the UniFi Pro (dual GigE, real PoE :fap:), my distributor doesn't reckon we will see it this year. At the moment I'm getting by with the standard UAPs and the PoE adapter things for them, because gently caress power injectors.

probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax
Is this good? Says it will convert to 802.3af

http://www.ubnt.com/8023af

I figure those, plus the unifi, could be cool...

ior
Nov 21, 2003

What's a fuckass?

Langolas posted:

I use a Cisco 5508 controller with my corp network and I tied it into WCS.

Get that WCS upgraded to NCS!

probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax
I spoke to Netgate and they verified that Unifi works with the POE adapters. They have them for $69 plus $19.50 per POE adapter. We ordered 5 sets, will update with trip report.

http://store.netgate.com/Search.aspx?k=unifi

stevewm
May 10, 2005
I had promised some time ago to do a mini-review of the UniFi APs...

Well I still intend to do so, whenever I am able to actually get some!


The project got sidetracked for a few weeks, but now I am getting back to it. Went to order only to find out EVERYONE is out of stock on the LR (Long Range) versions. I really want the LR APs, so it looks like I will be waiting a little longer.

I have plenty of other Ubiquiti equipment in the field, so I guess I should have expected this to happen. Ubiquiti makes nice equipment for the price, but they definitely have supply chain issues....

SpaceRangerJoe
Dec 24, 2003

The little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
I put 3 Unifi APs in some new office space we got. It's not a very large area, but the space is U shaped with concrete walls (old building). The setup was a piece of cake, but you can't use special characters in the wireless keys. I noticed some problems when you walk around the office, it doesn't seem to handle roaming from one AP to another very well. I don't know how much of this is a cheap laptop problem, versus an actual problem with the APs. There should be 20 or so people connecting to each access point with company laptops this week. I won't be surprised if half those people connect their phones as well, so that number could be a bit higher. I believe we will have twice that number in another week or two, so that will be a bit of a stress test.

So far, for a little over $200 worth of APs I'd say things are going well. I'm only running a single SSID, and no captive portal or anything. If I get frantic phone calls about citrix not working this week, things have not gone well.

stevewm
May 10, 2005
The UniFi APs don't do anything with roaming at all. The rely on the client to make the decision to roam over to a different AP.

There was some brief talk in their forums about a possible minimum signal level to be used to force a client to disassociate (and thereby hopefully re-associate to a stronger AP), but it hasn't went anywhere far as I know.

SpaceRangerJoe
Dec 24, 2003

The little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
That's what I was worried about. Oh well. For the cost, it should work for our needs. In the long run we'll probably end up trying the solution from Fortinet, since that's what our other edge equipment is.

Langolas
Feb 12, 2011

My mustache makes me sexy, not the hat

ior posted:

Get that WCS upgraded to NCS!

I was digging into NCS a little after I saw this, what would be one of the key features you like to force my hand to make the upgrade? I only monitor a few things in WCS currently. I hadn't even heard of NCS til you posted about it, Cisco has too many products for management imo

probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax
I just put 5 Unifi APs in a basic apartment environment with Power injectors. They were out of stock of the LR and the indoor POE injectors which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the outdoor ones don't have problems and the indoor ones had a few on a previous revision.

Installation was great. It was like installing smoke detectors, like literally. Wallplate, twist. Injectors were easy and very snug, APs came up fast, very simple single SSID with WPA but range is quite acceptabe.

Single AP shoots across entire floor, system in a zig zag pattern up to 4th floor where there are no AP spots, then to 5th floor where it is centered.

Interesting sidenote: I set these all up at my office, backed up the config and assumed I could just reupload the config at the new location and it would work. Since it was on a different subnet I needed to reboot all the APs to have them speak to the software, but they worked perfectly fine as dumb access points while we were installing.

These were such a good experience putting together and installing that I am going to continue recommending them.

Burning_Monk
Jan 11, 2005
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to know
Just reading through this thread when I noticed this in my news ticker...

Dell Will Acquire SonicWall
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-13/dell-to-acquire-sonicwall-from-investor-group-to-gain-security-equipment

the spyder
Feb 18, 2011
I installed two Unifi AP's in our brick/cement/metal framed/U-shaped office a few weeks back to replace two Airport Extremes. My users had actually stopped using Wifi for most things due to the terrible performance of the Airports. One AP is on each side of the U, nearly across from each other. Installation was a breeze, reception is full bars in every room, and no one has had a single complaint. Not bad for $140 in AP's. I ordered two more for our second site, but I do not think I will need both. One should do, that and they are so cheap, having a spare won't break the bank.

I really want to demo their Pro model coming out.

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probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax
The unifi install we did is doing great, no hiccups at all without a server managing, either.

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