[itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

Fri Oct 14 15:20:29 EDT 2011

I've setup/tested/used a couple different ubiquity P2P's … Most recently the awesome nanobridge dish units.  Amazing range and they were only $75/ea !!

The unifi controller ONLY works with unifi AP's currently.  They are working on bringing some of the other gear under the controller down the road.

Config the guest wifi on unifi system is pretty simple.  In a nutshell: Pick an SSID, enter VLAN, choose if you want an AUP page or not, done.

Jason Powell
Jason Powell
Tech Ops Director
Granger Community Church
630 E. University Drive
Granger, IN 46530
574.243.2022 • jpowell at gccwired.com<mailto:jpowell at gccwired.com> • GCCwired.com
jasonpowell.net<http://jasonpowell.net/> • twitter.com/jasonpowell<http://twitter.com/JasonPowell> • facebook.com/jasonpowell<http://facebook.com/jasonpowell>

From: Dayron Daugherty <ddaugherty at precept.org<mailto:ddaugherty at precept.org>>
Reply-To: IT Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org<mailto:discuss at itdiscuss.org>>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:42:26 -0400
To: IT Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org<mailto:discuss at itdiscuss.org>>
Subject: Re: [itdiscuss] Ubiquity Unifi and SonicPoint

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 :).

From: Lee, Jason [mailto:jason.lee at nwoods.org]
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:56 AM
To: discuss at itdiscuss.org<mailto: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]<mailto:[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.  ;-)

--
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From: Dayron Daugherty <ddaugherty at precept.org<mailto:ddaugherty at precept.org>>
Reply-To: IT Discussion Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org<mailto:discuss at itdiscuss.org>>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:36:37 -0400
To: IT Discussion Forum <discuss at itdiscuss.org<mailto: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<mailto:ddaugherty at precept.org>
(423) 296-8777

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