Hey Guys, Looking for some networking expertise. I currently have a Virgin SR3 in router AP mode. Obviously signal is pants, I managed to score some Cisco kit from work, a WLC and two AP's, which I have had running for some time. I know next to nothing on the Cisco side of things and followed a random guide on the internet to get it all up and running, I also noticed that the AP's are a little older and support a max connection of 150Mbps. Lately what I am noticing is that one of the AP's is playing up and whilst the client is still connected throughput drops. Its really noticeable on our phones as the phone automatically flips over to mobile data. In fact my wife managed to use up all of her data last month despite being at home. Given the age of the Cisco gear and my general lack of knowledge, I dont think its worth dropping £1,000+ on new AP's for it. Though if any of you Cisco guys have some suggestions on where I can acquire cheap controller based AP's that will work, I am all ears. I dont know what CiOS is running on the WLC (forgot the password I set!). But I would presume new AP's would also require newer firmware which I believe is sat behind a paywall. For Reference, I have a detached 1930's house, solid construction approximately 240m^2 across two floors, square house. Proposed Router Options: We all know the SR3 is pretty pants, planning to put it into modem modem. Option 1) White box Pfsense firewall I already have a Qootom fanless mini PC, 4 x LAN, 8GB Ram and disk. Pro's: I have all the hardware already Pfsense gives me a high level of control I can virtualize and run other services if I wanted to Cons: Its not an appliance and lots could go wrong Option 2) Dedicated Router Grab a Ubiquity USG, relatively cheap Pro's: Have the ability manage the device via their controller offerings Appliance so for the most part no maintenance Cons: It is another £100 spent I have read a lot of the advanced functionality requires CLI, so that means more learning Cant run other services from the unit. Wifi Options: Option 1) Grab a mesh system like google / tenda Pro's: Consumer friendly Cons: No dedicated backhaul I already have wiring for AP's bit of a mine field as to which is considered good. Option 2) Ubiquity AP's Pro's: People rave about them Relatively inexpensive Cons: Again a mine field on which to purchase A little tricky to setup (I had one previously), I also dont like the way the 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSID's are different, the Cisco I just have one and the device figures out what to connect at. I am not sure exactly which model to choose. Amazon listings appear to have the older slower models: https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/23765-ubiquiti-uap-ac-pro/ https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/32744-ubiquiti-uap-nanohd/ If anyone has some insight or suggestions I am all ears. Nims
On Unifi? I have 3x APs spanning six bands of 2.4 and 5ghz - one SSID to rule them all. I haven't thought about wifi once since they went in, which is the highest praise I can possibly give any bit of tech. I'm not sure the Nano HD is really worth much extra outlay over the AC Pro - it's a bit smaller, and its 4x4 and MU-MIMO... all nice to have in theory, but you're unlikely to have any devices that can use 4x4, and you're unlikely to have so many high traffic ones that with multiple APs MU-MIMO is going to make a big real-world difference. I'd get the AC-PRO (or even a couple of AC-Lites) and then be prepared to reach in your pocket again once Wifi-6 APs hit the market, which will last you for 10+ years. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably opt for the pfSense option since you already have the hardware, and then swap out for an appliance if/when it goes t*ts up. If USG can't do something you want to do out of the box using the controller, walk away. Saying you need CLI to perform more advanced config masks the true complexity of it - any changes you make get overwritten on the next provision, so you need to get down and dirty with config files if you want to make any persistent changes, and there's a very real possibility of properly breaking things the next time it provisions. Consider an ER if you like Ubiquiti's hardware but want to get more touchy-feely than Unifi allows. It's not terribly limiting, mind. The only thing that has impacted me in any way is the lack of multi-wan policy routing - for that reason I used a Draytek, until I no longer needed the feature (and now use a USG-Pro) Left-field Unifi suggestion - the UDM? Also bear in mind (except with the UDM), that you may want a standalone Unifi controller - Cloud Keys are nice, but you can run it on your own hardware as well (plug - I happen to have a s/h cloud key that I won't be after buckets of money for if that helps)
I’ve been known to harp on it before and I’m bringing it back around now. Get two Mikrotik hAP AC v2 devices. They are 3x3 2.4 and 5 ghz full routers and have five gigabit ports each. They are around £60-£65 on Amazon. Plug one into the super hub on modem mode. (Up until this point it matches my setup exactly - I have this exact device and configuration and I’m very happy with it). Grab a pair of at least 1000Mbps powerline bricks or ideally 2000Mbps. Use this as a backhaul to the second device. Follow the guide for a CAPSMAN master and slave setup from the Mikrotik wiki, disabling dhcp on the second device and choosing a different IP to manage the secondary device on and voila for £120 in routers and £40-£80 in power line Ethernet kit you have a high performance setup. This is a bit more techy manual setup than other solutions. However I don’t think you’re scared of that since you’ve been using a WLC lol and it’s certainly cheaper than the ubiquiti option for the same performance.
My vote is unifi all the way. Like tad said it just works. You can fiddle if needs be with CLI but I've never found the need. It does become a bit addictive however...
Use the VM router in modem mode, dedicated router with a wired AP - UniFi kit seems very popular if you can afford it. I personally use an Asus AC86U as the primary router & AP, an Asus N66U as a dedicated AP upstairs, all hanging off hardwired CAT6 throughout the house, a Netgear 16 port gigbit switch and a PiHole as the DNS server. Simple works well.
Another vote for Unifi here. I have a VM SH3 in modem mode connected to a USG. The USG feeds a US-8-60W with a Cloudkey controller and 1x UAP-AC-LR from PoE. I then use powerline to feed the second UAP-AC-Lite upstairs (although you can bridge the APs wirelessly). Also agree with George... Tweaking and monitoring the network via the controller is a little bit addictive...
Also remember that going wireless mesh means that the backhaul between your main router and the AP's is still wireless, IMHO hard wired backhaul is best.
I dunno... IMO it's nice to have the option, and you'll certainly tweak for the first few weeks just because you can, but it's also nice then to forget about it and leave it to just work. On the plus side you can do that with Unifi, and then come back to it having not logged in for ages and not have to re-school yourself. I'm going to guess I'm not the only one burned by learning something from scratch, tinkering and setting up, and then coming back to it 18 months later when I want to change something, or even worse something breaks, and have no idea what I'm doing.
Well, the first UAP needs to be wired... subsequent APs can be wirelessly connected if wired is not an option. It's worth noting that I've tried both and wirelessly connecting the second AP saw zero loss in bandwidth as the APs are WAY faster than my Virgin bband speed, although there was about 10-15ms more ping, which for the majority of wireless devices, is negligible.
I have to agree. Although Unifi is relatively easy to setup and use if you have moderate networking experience, leaving Unifi alone for a long time does leave you with a bit of skill fade. I didn't touch mine for a few months and noticed that the USG had a failed update and was no longer adopted, although still fully functional and still routing. It took me a few hours to complete the procedure to remove it from the site, reset and re-adopt and then cache the software to force the update through.
I'll add another vote for Unifi. The only time I've had a 'failure' it turned out someone had unplugged the far end of the cable.
Yup another UniFi user suggests it. I have a USG, cloudkey, 2x US-24's and 2x AP-AC-LR (1 up and 1 down stairs and give great coverage) I mess around with my stuff all the time, and the admin page is great, easy to use and stable. Only contacted Ubiquiti support once, when I forgot my cloud login, hardware wise it's good, but does cost a bit. As was said, you don't need the cloudkey, home host it, Raspberry Pi it or use one of the hosting sites that host it for free (if you trust them)
Ok thanks guys. Gives me plenty to think about. You guys are right I wouldn't need the cloudkey as I could run it from a pi or a docker image from my Nas. My current line of thinking is grab the AP's but leave the router as is and then later figure out what to do with routing. Luckily I have my AP's wired to the loft and a cable already run from the modem location up to the loft.
So yes, this is technically correct. But be careful. Make sure you think about the circumstances in which you will be wanting to access the controller, bearing in mind doing anything to the network needs to access it, and make sure you know you can access it in those circumstances, and weigh the potential to go wrong and cause pain at times when all you want to do it get things up and running again against the meagre cost of a cloud key. I ran mine on an ubuntu VM on a Hyper-V server until one day something happened to the server (and I can't recall specifics, but it was to do with the network team) that meant there was a catch 22 of needing to reconfigure the network to access the server to reconfigure the network. Today, in spite of now having an ESXi host, a physical windows server and and NAS that can all run the controller happily, I use a cloud key.
The controller can just be installed on any PC or laptop wired to the network and simply launched when it’s needed if that’s any help. I still like the Mikrotik option because it’s all self contained and they’re seriously powerful bits of kit. They are also a LOT cheaper than Ubiquiti.
On the flipside, you only need the controller when you're fiddling with the settings (unless you want fancy continuous monitoring graphs and the like). It's perfectly adequate to just launch the windows version of the controller on the computer you want to do any configuration from, then just close it again when you're done. ::EDIT:: Ninja'd by Zoon
Fair point and worth noting. I generally have anything infrastructure based or common access items running on manual ips.
Any real world differences between these two versions? https://www.amazon.co.uk/UBIQUITI-N...t&qid=1568106945&s=gateway&sprefix=ubi&sr=8-4 https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/23765-ubiquiti-uap-ac-pro/ The BBB one is 10 more, sure I get that given I'm only feeding it 1gb it can't give me higher speeds but just working with the assumption that when I'm further away, the higher rates one would give me a better transfer rate than the the Amazon one?
Looks like you've linked for the same UAP-AC-Pro w/injector from each? (note, you can usually save £15 by looking for the "E" suffix for the model without injector if you don't need it)
