Ubiquiti Wireless AP Features/Required Hardware

[pyromike25]

So I've been wanting a property wide Wireless network for my work and I've been looking into the Ubiquiti APs and thinking that they seem like a pretty good option.  However, I have a few questions I was hoping someone here might be able to clarify for me.

 

Firstly a "feature" question:  If we have multiple APs on the same Wired network can they be configured to be viewed from end user devices (i.e. laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc.) as one single Wireless network (i.e. same name and password) so that once you've connected to one no matter where you go from there you will connect automatically to any of the others that you are within range of?

 

Secondly, the required hardware question: What do you need to get started?  We already have an extensive Wired network on our property (consists of 4 physical buildings with underground fiber connecting them all as one network).  I would like to cover these buildings with a wireless network.  It doesn't make economical sense to replace all our existing network switches with the Ubiquiti switches to run the APs.  Is that required? or can we just drop in an AP on the existing wired network (using the included PoE adapters) and be able to add it to the wireless network?  Also, Is there some specific piece of hardware required for managing the various APs?

 

Thanks in advance!

pyromike25

[Altecice]

Yes you can mesh the AP's together. Ubiquiti use a software controller (program that you install) to manage your AP's. 

[rodrosenberg]

Unifi is amazing for multi WAP deployment the controller software is easy to use and the new controller key is fantastic

 

https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/

 

 

[brwainer]

you do not need to replace any of your switches, but trust me, you will find it much easier if you use a switch with builtin POE that can be remotely managed on a port by port basis. And since not all of the Ubiquiti APs support 802.3af/at (active POE), if you use these APs then your best bet for a compatible switch is one made by Ubiquit. Note that they do have another line of switches other than Unifi - technically they are the same hardware, you just have to choose between slightly more features at a cheaper price, or having your switch managed in the same place as your APs and paying more for the privilege.

 

Ubiquiti APs are either set up through software that you run on one computer, or you can buy their "Unifi Cloud Key" that lets you have a controller on the network at all times. Note that even with this controller in place, roaming on the 802.11ac APs is purely handled by clients. Their "Zero Handoff Roaming" feature is only supported on the 802.11n APs and older. Regardless of the brand or the use of a controller, if the SSID and password are the same on two nearby APs, devices will move between them automatically - but some devices are very hesitant to give up one connection to form another, it just depends on how aggressive they were programmed to be.

[Doramius]

Are you choosing Ubiquiti for cost?  as stated by brwainer, you may want to check and see what compatibility in the switches you have.  I too recommend POE switches.  Most of our enterprise environment is Cisco.  We use the Cisco 2960+ SI 48-port POE switches and have the AIR-CAP 1702i-B Wireless APs dotted around our building.  They offer a seamless move from one location to another with great stability and speed.

[harry4742]

couple questions

1. how many users do you have in totall / per AP?

2. do you need a seamless transition from one ap to another? (relevant for VOIP)

3. what is your budget?

4. what does the rest of the network look like? (switches, routers)

5. do you have someone with kowledge in that area to mange it)

 

[pyromike25]

Doramius - Cost is a factor and I've heard of only a couple different names in this field (Aruba & Ubiquiti).  We're a Non-Profit so less cost = Best.

 

harry4742 - 

1. Property wide I would say we could come close to around 100 Wireless clients at any given time during the week (this includes laptops, iPads, cellphones). Per AP I'm not really sure...probably the most concentrated area may cover 12 to 25 wireless devices.

2. NEED seamless...no.  We don't utilize VOIP.  The main thing I want for "seamless" switching is to give out the wireless Name & Password to the employees for "THE Wireless" and they enter it once on property and they're connected no matter where they roam on property.

3. Still in research phase...no budget set.  I want to find the hardware to meet our need and then probably piece it together over time.  Purchasing an AP here and there to eventually cover our buildings.

4.  Mix of Cat5 & Cat6 Cabling in buildings, Fiber running underground between buildings, Gigabit switches everywhere (Netgears & D-Links mostly), Apple Airport Wireless routers currently in place.  NO PoE anywhere currently.

5. Not sure what "in that area" you are referring to, but I'm the sole guy tasked with managing our computer systems and network.  I've got enough of a working knowledge of general networking to keep the network going and replace any hardware or run new cabling etc.  If you are referring to "unified wireless" systems (Ubiquiti or otherwise) then no.  I'm just trying to get myself that knowledge so we can have a more reliable and user friendly wireless on our property.

[pyromike25]

Any more helpful advice?

[harry4742]

On 27.2.2017 at 10:27 PM, pyromike25 said:

Doramius - Cost is a factor and I've heard of only a couple different names in this field (Aruba & Ubiquiti).  We're a Non-Profit so less cost = Best.

 

harry4742 - 

1. Property wide I would say we could come close to around 100 Wireless clients at any given time during the week (this includes laptops, iPads, cellphones). Per AP I'm not really sure...probably the most concentrated area may cover 12 to 25 wireless devices.

2. NEED seamless...no.  We don't utilize VOIP.  The main thing I want for "seamless" switching is to give out the wireless Name & Password to the employees for "THE Wireless" and they enter it once on property and they're connected no matter where they roam on property.

3. Still in research phase...no budget set.  I want to find the hardware to meet our need and then probably piece it together over time.  Purchasing an AP here and there to eventually cover our buildings.

4.  Mix of Cat5 & Cat6 Cabling in buildings, Fiber running underground between buildings, Gigabit switches everywhere (Netgears & D-Links mostly), Apple Airport Wireless routers currently in place.  NO PoE anywhere currently.

5. Not sure what "in that area" you are referring to, but I'm the sole guy tasked with managing our computer systems and network.  I've got enough of a working knowledge of general networking to keep the network going and replace any hardware or run new cabling etc.  If you are referring to "unified wireless" systems (Ubiquiti or otherwise) then no.  I'm just trying to get myself that knowledge so we can have a more reliable and user friendly wireless on our property.

So you don't need 802.11r and have relativley few clients, I would recommend ubiquity (AP-AC/AP-AC-PRO) or you can go with Mikrotik (50$ per AP and 100 to 400$ for the router that can manage APs centrally (called CapsMan) and run your network firewall/routing

[sftgunner]

With regards POE, the Unifi APs come with a POE injector in the box (as OP mentioned in his post), so as long as there is a power socket near where you want to place the AP, you should be fine not upgrading any more of your network infrastructure. Obviously it would be easier to upgrade to POE switches, but if cost is a factor, then I would recommend making-do. Devices will roam between APs with no difficulty, as they are all managed centrally (as mentioned above) from a PC, or a Cloud Key. Again, for sake of cost, I would install the controller on a PC that is on most of the time (if there is one in your business), and access it via its IP address and port 8443 (configurable, but that is the default).

The management software is really easy to use, and I have yet to hit a hardware issue with the APs.

[brwainer]

Just now, Gunner23 said:

With regards POE, the Unifi APs come with a POE injector in the box (as OP mentioned in his post), so as long as there is a power socket near where you want to place the AP, you should be fine not upgrading any more of your network infrastructure. Obviously it would be easier to upgrade to POE switches, but if cost is a factor, then I would recommend making-do. Devices will roam between APs with no difficulty, as they are all managed centrally (as mentioned above) from a PC, or a Cloud Key. Again, for sake of cost, I would install the controller on a PC that is on most of the time (if there is one in your business), and access it via its IP address and port 8443 (configurable, but that is the default).

I want to make an important note here: Ubiquiti sells 5-packs of their APs. THE 5-PACKS DO NOT INCLUDE POE INJECTORS. Lots of people make that mistake. The individual APs do include POE injectors.

[sftgunner]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

I want to make an important note here: Ubiquiti sells 5-packs of their APs. THE 5-PACKS DO NOT INCLUDE POE INJECTORS. Lots of people make that mistake. The individual APs do include POE injectors.

Are you sure? Where did you get your APs from, and which ones were they (i.e. AP-PROs or AP-PRO-LR etc). I can't speak for 5 packs, but the 3 packs of the original AP-LRs I got from Amazon UK had injectors included. Good to know - as presuming you are correct, I would definitely have made that mistake down the line!

[brwainer]

44 minutes ago, Gunner23 said:

Are you sure? Where did you get your APs from, and which ones were they (i.e. AP-PROs or AP-PRO-LR etc). I can't speak for 5 packs, but the 3 packs of the original AP-LRs I got from Amazon UK had injectors included. Good to know - as presuming you are correct, I would definitely have made that mistake down the line!

I have never bought any Ubiquiti APs, but if you hang aroudn various forums long enough you hear about it. Here is a Ubiquiti employee confirming that 5 packs do not include injectors: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/UAP-AC-LITE-5-pack-comes-with-no-POE-injector-and-I-cant-find/td-p/1446623

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Gunner23 said:

Are you sure? Where did you get your APs from, and which ones were they (i.e. AP-PROs or AP-PRO-LR etc). I can't speak for 5 packs, but the 3 packs of the original AP-LRs I got from Amazon UK had injectors included. Good to know - as presuming you are correct, I would definitely have made that mistake down the line!

 

6 minutes ago, brwainer said:

I have never bought any Ubiquiti APs, but if you hang aroudn various forums long enough you hear about it. Here is a Ubiquiti employee confirming that 5 packs do not include injectors: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/UAP-AC-LITE-5-pack-comes-with-no-POE-injector-and-I-cant-find/td-p/1446623

Can confirm that the 5 packs DO NOT include the injectors - source: used to work for the largest Australian retailer of Ubiquiti hardware.

[oloap88]

On 28/02/2017 at 5:27 AM, pyromike25 said:

Doramius - Cost is a factor and I've heard of only a couple different names in this field (Aruba & Ubiquiti).  We're a Non-Profit so less cost = Best.

 

harry4742 - 

1. Property wide I would say we could come close to around 100 Wireless clients at any given time during the week (this includes laptops, iPads, cellphones). Per AP I'm not really sure...probably the most concentrated area may cover 12 to 25 wireless devices.

2. NEED seamless...no.  We don't utilize VOIP.  The main thing I want for "seamless" switching is to give out the wireless Name & Password to the employees for "THE Wireless" and they enter it once on property and they're connected no matter where they roam on property.

3. Still in research phase...no budget set.  I want to find the hardware to meet our need and then probably piece it together over time.  Purchasing an AP here and there to eventually cover our buildings.

4.  Mix of Cat5 & Cat6 Cabling in buildings, Fiber running underground between buildings, Gigabit switches everywhere (Netgears & D-Links mostly), Apple Airport Wireless routers currently in place.  NO PoE anywhere currently.

5. Not sure what "in that area" you are referring to, but I'm the sole guy tasked with managing our computer systems and network.  I've got enough of a working knowledge of general networking to keep the network going and replace any hardware or run new cabling etc.  If you are referring to "unified wireless" systems (Ubiquiti or otherwise) then no.  I'm just trying to get myself that knowledge so we can have a more reliable and user friendly wireless on our property.

 

1- 100 wireless clients is boatload. you'll need at least 5 AP to be safe but twice as much will not hurt. you need to tink this through, is there an area where is likely to have more than 25 clients? then you will need more than one AP there. even the most bad-ass AP tend to fail at 25/30 users mark, or slow down drastically. I.E. in an auditorium setup, they usually install directional antennas, so they can cover only a portion of the area.

 

2- more or less, seamless roaming is well supported by every vendor.

 

3-stop and plan. as a system designer the best advice i can give you is do it all at once, with the same tech, from the same vendor. the biggest disasters i've seen happened when different people designed different stuff and added stuff here and there.

 

4-cat 5 is bad news, you want at least cat 5e for gigabit. never forget about bottlenecks, is good to have 1700mbps wifi, but is no good if you have a 100mbps connection to the ap. if you look at ubiquity unifi AC HD APs, they have two gigabit lan to create a 2gbps LAG or for cascading.  that reflects to the trunk links between switches, 1gbps is not enough, either go LAG there too or 10gbps. Yes i'm implying i would change switches first. 

 

5-how important is wifi for your company? ubiquiti has 1 year warranty and close to no tech support. when the sh*t hits the fan, you want to be able to offload the responsability to the vendor trough support agreements. is gonna cost quite a bit more but do yourself a favour and consider the cisco aironet with WLC. Or meraki, or ruckus..

I'm in a very similar situation to yours, but even if i'm a network engineer by profession i totally refuse to sign on a project that involves "enterprise" hardware with 1 year warranty and support provided by a bunch of geek on a forum;)

[sftgunner]

12 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

 

Can confirm that the 5 packs DO NOT include the injectors - source: used to work for the largest Australian retailer of Ubiquiti hardware.

Good to know - thanks

[pyromike25]

Thanks everyone!  I think you have given me plenty of information to work with.  Seems like I need to sit down and really plan this out.  I will be looking at some of the other options mentioned too.  Once again...Thank You!

[harry4742]

11 hours ago, oloap88 said:

1- 100 wireless clients is boatload. you'll need at least 5 AP to be safe but twice as much will not hurt. you need to tink this through, is there an area where is likely to have more than 25 clients? then you will need more than one AP there. even the most bad-ass AP tend to fail at 25/30 users mark, or slow down drastically. I.E. in an auditorium setup, they usually install directional antennas, so they can cover only a portion of the area.

 

The most badass APs can handle up to 1900 devices, 25 users per AP is nothing for an enterprise grade AP

See page two:

https://www.xirrus.com/pdf/XR-High-Density-Access-Points-Tech-Brief.pdf