[itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

Fri Oct 14 14:42:26 EDT 2011

This is good info on the SonicPoints. We've got Linksys wrt54G v1
devices still trucking along. 2-3 year failure rate for a (roughly) $300
AP seems like a real negative. That's the first time I've heard about
this. Reports from forums and such all say the sonicpoint coverage is
really good. We're keeping our SonicWall contracts up so that take the
edge off a bit of the failure rate issue. 

Today we've decided to replace our point to point infrastructure with
Ubiquity equipment. The Unifi APs are cheap enough to try out. I may buy
2 and put them in place and see how the central management piece works
with the Unifis and the p2p stuff. I'll report my experience as soon as
I have one J. 

From: Lee, Jason [mailto:jason.lee at nwoods.org] 
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:56 AM
To: discuss at itdiscuss.org
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

Rob... is your NSA not under a support agreement?  All sonicpoints take
the warranty of the firewall they are connected to... so all our 13
sonicpoints are warrantied by the E5500 firewall... when we renew
support on the firewall all sonicpoints are covered.

You are correct, we are finding those that are about 2-3 yrs old are
failing.. but it's a pretty easy replacement RMA process.

We are finding that the capacity of the sonicpoints may not scale as
well as other solutions and may migrate or larger campus away from it..
(and down stream the sonicpoints to our other campus)  

-jason

From: Rob Shaw [mailto:RShaw at greenwoodchristian.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 10:27 AM
To: IT Discussion Forum
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

Dayron,

I'm kinda at that same crossroads, although am CURRENTLY a SonicPoint
and NSA3500 user.  The problem I have, is these SonicPoints seems to be
lasting only 2-3 years each and are VERY expensive to replace.

I am investigation the Ubiquity solution myself as the A.P.s are a
fraction of the cost of the SonicPoints.

Please let me know what you decide, as I may have some SonicPoints at a
fire-sale price soon.  ;-)

-- 

From: Dayron Daugherty <ddaugherty at precept.org>
Reply-To: IT Discussion Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:36:37 -0400
To: IT Discussion Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org>
Subject: [itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

Recently a discussion came up here regarding wireless and Ubiquity was
mentioned and raved about. We're in the process of planning out a new
wireless infrastructure. Currently for indoor APs we use are using
Linksys WRT54G's with DD-WRT. DD-WRT breathed new life into our AP's,
but as some of our older APs die we want to move towards a more
professional, centrally managed solution for our indoor APs. Our
SonicWall is an NSA 3500 which has a central management piece for
SonicPoint APs. So I'm exploring that route. But, needless to say
SonicPoints are a little pricey. The benefit is they (as said) are
centrally managed from the SonicWall and all security subscriptions and
access rules we have can be applied to the SonicPoints with much
granularity if desired.  

Our main campus buildings are all uplinked with fiber. However we have a
few smaller buildings that are connected with a Proxim 802.11A
basestation and omni antenna on our central building and Proxim
subscriber units and parabolic or yagi antenna at each of the outlying
buildings. We want to upgrade this equipment as well. I spoke to
SonicWall yesterday and I was told they do not have point-to-point
equipment built specifically for this kind of setup but it's "on their
roadmap...possibly".

We also want 2 SSID's (private and public) without having to have 2
physical APs physically connected to 2 different subnets (which we have
to do now). I've seen reference in the Unifi specs refereeing control of
a guest network. I'm assuming that is the public SSID I'm needing, but I
can't find a detailed description of how to configure that. I'd like to
know more about that if anyone is using a private\guest configuration on
the same AP.   

So, given that I'm going to have to manage 2 wireless networks anyway
(the APs and the p2p) if I go with SonicPoint I wanted to get your
thoughts and experience with the Ubiquity Unifi solution. It looks much
less expensive on the AP side of things. Does it also allow central
management of their p2p gear?  

Dayron Daugherty

Precept Ministries International

Senior Network Administrator

ddaugherty at precept.org

(423) 296-8777

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