Ubiquiti Sanity Check

[THUMPer]

I have to upgrade a network. 9k sqft "house" lots of stone and hard materials.

I need 3 AP's, a router, and a 24 port switch.

IDK if I should get an edge router with POE to power the AP's, then use an unmanaged switch for the other devices, or go with an EdgeRouterX and get a switch with POE. Or even get a regular wifi router (asus/dlink), disable wifi, and use a switch with POE for the AP's.

I don't want to do pfsense because I need LESS moving parts. What about ruckus?

 

[ochadd]

I'd go with HP\Aruba IAP POE access points and a HP/Aruba POE switch. No dedicated controller, reliable, easy to configure. Deploy an Asus wifi router with wifi disabled. If someone lives in a 9k sqft house they likely can afford and won't complain about nice equipment. I have 50ish APs deployed in office, warehouse, and manufacturing for nearly a decade and yet to have one fail.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

I need LESS moving parts

Unifi Dream Machine ("UDM", router, one acccess point, controller for other Unifi stuff, other advanced functions), a 24 port switch, may be Unifi, may be PoE, may be whatever, and as many UAP-AC-Pros as you need (probably two or three).

Should be <US$1000 total. Your big cost driver is going to be the switch; getting all the bells and whistles will cost, while dumb switches can be had for less. And if you only need to power a few PoE devices, you can just get PoE injectors instead. Non-PoE switches (Unifi or otherwise) will be cheaper while running cooler and quieter. PoE switches can be datacenter-loud.

Note on EdgeRouter / EdgeMax: I prefer these as an IT hobbit, they're more traditional with hosted interfaces and full-featured consoles and so on, and typically provide more 'infrastructure' options, but if you're already putting Unifi stuff in (the Access Points at least), they're hard to make an argument for unless you're budget limited. I'd look at an EdgeRouter 4 instead of the UDM if that's not your style and then just hook up a switch.

 

[THUMPer]

I'd go with HP\Aruba IAP POE access points and a HP/Aruba POE switch. No dedicated controller, reliable, easy to configure. Deploy an Asus wifi router with wifi disabled. If someone lives in a 9k sqft house they likely can afford and won't complain about nice equipment. I have 50ish APs deployed in office, warehouse, and manufacturing for nearly a decade and yet to have one fail.

I havent used these before. But what would model would you recommend? Who do I contact to buy them? Seems I can't really find anything but the 305 on amazon.

 

[ochadd]

I havent used these before. But what would model would you recommend? Who do I contact to buy them? Seems I can't really find anything but the 305 on amazon.

You can mix and match models depending on if you want external or internal antennas. Probably IAP-304 or IAP 305, the latter being internal antennas. I've bought all mine through CDW. Screenshot below is a list price quote for the last big deployment I did. Those 20 APs cover 76,800 square foot single level manufacturing facility with a metric ass load of stainless steel equipment.

• AP-304 (controller-managed) and IAP-304 (Instant):
  • 802.11ac – 5GHz 3x3 MIMO (1,300 Mbps max rate) and 2.4GHz 2x2 MIMO (300 Mbps max rate) radios, with a total of three dual-band RP-SMA connectors for external antennas
• AP-305 (controller-managed) and IAP-305 (Instant):
  • 802.11ac – 5GHz 3x3 MIMO (1,300 Mbps max rate) and 2.4GHz 2x2 MIMO (300 Mbps max rate) radios, with a total of three integrated omni-directional downtilt dualband antennas

Edit: Fundamentally when I have a new project and I haven't purchased a model recently, I just call up my CDW rep and ask her to put together some resources I can talk to. They will typically be happy to get a HP expert to recommend models for your deployment. Hell they've sent a team to my facility when I was only looking at a 6 AP deployment once. They did a walk through and made recommendations. Amazon is great but I still go to CDW often when I'm spending larger sums. You can't replace a human touch and a team of people who actually know stuff.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

That's going to be a real cost question; a bigger question is reflected from the move from 802.11ac to 802.11ax, and within ax the move from WiFi 6 to WiFi 6E, and the move from WPA2 to WPA3.

Essentially, in less than a year, all the standards will have been updated and products will have been refreshed to take advantage of them. This makes the decision to spend on potentially 'more reliable' equipment a bit harder. Every mid-range and higher phone ships with WiFi 6, as do many / most laptops, tablets, even the modules included on many / most motherboards.

6E is a whole nother ballgame. It adds a 6GHz channel, which by itself being unimpressive (it should have slightly less penetration than 5GHz), is attractive because the band will be relatively unpolluted by devices using a myriad of different standards as 2.4GHz and 5GHz currently are. Further, due to the decreased range, contention from neighboring networks will be lower.

The point: in a year or two, most of your devices will be on a new WiFi standard, from which their are very real benefits. Do you want to drop ~US$2000 just on access points that'll be replaced relatively soon?

 

[THUMPer]

Well, These guys cannot wait another year. I'm going to try 2 AP's, edge router x, and a netgear switch. The switch they have now is only 10/100. So overall this should help a ton. And give me a good starting point for the next wave of devices. It sucks, but they have an apple airport express or extreme and its not enough for all their devices.

 

[trick0502]

i would go with at least an erl if not an er4.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

i would go with at least an erl if not an er4.

To add support: the main issue with the ER-X is that it's a tad underpowered, which may or may not make a difference, but also that the built-in flash is literally so small that it can cause issues with upgrading firmware.

Comparison of EdgeRouters

The ER-10X is another option. You'd be paying for switch ports you don't need, but it's cheaper than an ER-4 which is the cheapest EdgeRouter with their 1Gbit hardware spec, and has double the memory and storage of an ER-X.

 

[THUMPer]

Their router options kinda suck. If I go erx, I gotta use Poe injectors. If I go er10x it has 1 Poe port and I gotta use an injector still.

I actually think they have a nighthawk router down there. I may just keep that, replace the old switch and hook up the new APs after taking out the apple airport shit. That way I don't have to deal with the devices with a static IP.

I can always return the erx and get the 10 though later. My main concern is making sure the mobile devices roam to the right APs.

 

[Nicklebon]

I'll throw a wildcard out and say Fortinet. Fortigate+Fortiap+Fortiswitch. Start with 2 AP and see how that goes. Manage everything through the controller built into the gate. One vendor and management interface with complete integration.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

I'll throw a wildcard out and say Fortinet. Fortigate+Fortiap+Fortiswitch. Start with 2 AP and see how that goes. Manage everything through the controller built into the gate. One vendor and management interface with complete integration.

Unifi does this too; that's actually the point. Granted I'd prefer Fortinet myself outside of the pricing, where Ubiquiti really cannot be beat.

Their router options kinda suck. If I go erx, I gotta use Poe injectors. If I go er10x it has 1 Poe port and I gotta use an injector still.

Generally, PoE from a router is an edge case. Usually you'd want PoE on the switch. The bigger issue is that Ubituiti doesn't have a 'between' EdgeRouter that say has enough performance for 1Gbps linespeed, switching, and PoE across just a few ports.

What they do have is the EdgeRouter 12P, which does what you want and more, at a price.

 

[Vengance_01]

I would have gone dream machine pro, unifi APs, and a separate switch for Poe and extra capacity... Not sure why your so stuck on edge routers. The dream machince pro can handle gigabit Ethernet with IDS/IPS and packet inspection as well

 

[iroc409]

I'll throw a wildcard out and say Fortinet. Fortigate+Fortiap+Fortiswitch. Start with 2 AP and see how that goes. Manage everything through the controller built into the gate. One vendor and management interface with complete integration.

I've always been Fortinet-curious and would like to check them out.

If we're tossing out wildcards you can try the Cisco RV345P with those Aruba Instant On APs. The Cisco has a built in 16 port switch, 8 of which are PoE, as an all-in-one type solution for SMB. Nobody will like that opinion because the old RV's seemed reliable but not performant, and often "rebranded Linsys" but the newer ones are different critters. TP Link EAP 245v3's are good APs as well, and you can manage multiple with their controller.

What you chose will probably work fine. I have beat on some old Netgear switches and was surprised how much they'd take.

 

[Deleted member 12106]

I wouldn't do the edge and instead to suggest 6x unit ac lites on low power. No reason to use a ubiquiti router unless you want to leverage their features. I use 5 waps behind a DIY openwrt router, piholes and windows domain controllers. IMO the ERX is not needed. If you want to stay ubiquiti then go USG for the edge. Add your fave switch/servers/etc. Unifi does waps well and NVR OK. This is where I would leave them.

 

[THUMPer]

Well, I totally ignored the fact that the Apple Airport Extreme is not hard wired POE already. it's just a sudo mesh, with base stations plopped around the house. 2 to be exact. Which sucks, because I have to figure out if running CAT5 for the AP's is going to be worth it time wise. The plus side, some TV's/cable box whatever, is already hard wired, so I may be able to run them up through there to some locations. The quickest way is to just get an eero pro system. lol.

 

[ThreeDee]

Just your average homebody with backyard networking knowledge .. my home is only a bit above 2k sq ft with a fairly decent in town front and back yard... I run the Edgerouter ER-X-SFP that powers 4 older UniFi AP's via POE and then connect to a GS748TV4 (overkill) via a passive DAC .. works great, hassle free,great coverage in and around my home .. I have my UniFi AP's to just auto update when new firmware is available and run the UniFi Controller software in a jail in my FreeNAS box .. EdgeOS via web gui ..only rebooting when I update the firmware.

I use a free OpenDNS account for category blocking and what not through the Edgerouter for a layer of protection .. just a no nonsense reliable setup that just works.

Like I said, I don't know much .. and my Ubiquiti products have served and continue to serve me well.

 

[AP514]

1st off Do Not run CAT5 anything now days...Go at least CAT6 or higher. If you Go Edge Router ER4/6 with a good POE Switch (I sniped this Netgear GS728TPPv2(380w) of ebay for $53)

 

[scrappymouse]

Another option(probably the cheapest option as well) is to get an ERPOE, use the POE ports on that for the AP's, create an uplink from a dumb 24 port switch to the ER-POE, probably going to be the most configuration, but cheapest overall. In addition, I think I remember that the switch-ports on the ERPOE share a single uplink internally meaning that all 3 can't push a gig at the same time. But just another option to think about.

 

[THUMPer]

Without going to in depth. This is what I was working with. A full rack of Control4 stuff. Matrix audio amps, and some other stuff. All with a 10/100 back-end and some apple airport extremes for the router.
I opted for an EERO Pro Mesh system. Why? Because the house is way to nice for me to cut holes into the walls and ceilings with my limited experience in that area. The good news is the EERO system works great, and I can add more for any dead spots.

Some of the keystone jacks are still only 10/100 though. I think not all wires are punched down, and I was pressed for time so I didn't take them apart. The basement is FULL of wires and tracing 1 bad cable with my wire tracer still took 30 mins. This customer is a "friend" I do IT for their business, so I will be upgrading things and changing things around in the future, once I get a hold of the Control4 software so fine tune some things.

EERO PRO, netgear 1gig switch, and a d-link router with wifi disabled. Dusty but trusty.