
Enterprise Wi-Fi at home: Reflecting on almost three years with pro gear - mikece
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/enterprise-wi-fi-at-home-part-two-reflecting-on-almost-three-years-with-pro-gear/
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samcheng
I've recommended Ubiquiti to a few friends and neighbors looking to extend
Wifi coverage to the back yard or outbuilding or garage. It works quite well,
particularly if you have a wired uplink and PoE switch.

I use it in a couple of offices as well, but it seems like the pros are
switching to Meraki due to the better (remote, cloud-based) configuration
tools... Do any IT professionals make the case for Ubiquiti over Meraki?

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msh
Meraki seems significantly more expensive than ubiquity.

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secabeen
Yep. Ubnt has no maintenance or licensing costs. I have myself and two
relatives on it, with no problems, and over 100 APs at work. They just work.

Only issue I've had is there is an emerging issue with the PoE negotiation
chip on some UAC-AC-PRO APs. We've worked around it with passive POE, which
just works, but it could become a bigger issue going forward.

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lsllc
I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti gear, I have set up a number of sites with Unifi,
very easy to set up & manage and performance is excellent.

Also impressed with airMAX, have used nanostation/nanobeam to build a number
of short-haul point-to-point links where trenching fiber was too expensive.

In general, I use EdgeMax for routing/switching rather than the Unifi branded
switches/routers, although the hardware is identical, EdgeMax is infinitely
more configurable. Although the single-pane-of-glass for Unifi is very nice,
UNMS is getting pretty good these days -- I just wish they'd merge UNMS with
the UniFi controller and _stop_ using Java for the UniFi backend (thankfully
they did not use Java for UNMS).

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2bluesc
I setup UniFi APs at a start-up. The APs worked great from 10 people to about
50 people on ~3x APs. The UniFi gear replaced 3-6 Eeros in the 10-15 person
days that really struggled, I was shocked that the Eero experience was so
rough. We've moved to a new office the new IT team has moved to Cisco.

In addition to the UniFi AP I had purchased 3 Ubiquiti EdgeSwitches: 2x 24
port, and a 16x POE. The first EdgeSwitch Lite-24 port switch died due to
hardware errors ('unit 0 MMU CBP packet header memory asserted') while causing
all kinds of chaos. And it appears the second EdgeSwitch Lite-24 took a dump
this week (similar amount of chaos), (un)fortunately I no longer babysit the
IT stuff so I haven't dug in to it.

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vlan3333
If you have budget, I would recommend trying an Aruba instant access point.

It supports local and remote management, clustering, poe, and can prioritize
traffic based on application or specifically voice traffic.

The local management also has a web gui.

Disclaimer: I work for Aruba.

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2bluesc
The UniFi products have QoS, POE, remote management, etc. Looks like Arbua is
a little simpler with the clustering and integrated local management (vs local
UniFi cloud key, UniFi hosted, or self-hosted controller). For the price of a
UniFi UAP AC-Lite it's hard to beat the price (~$80) for 2x2 MIMO dual band
(most cell phones and laptops aren't more then 2x2 these days, so 3x3 without
MU-MIMO seems like a waste IMHO).

What I'm really curious about is other then management features and adding
radios that follow the latest RF features (i.e. MU-MIMO) that are made
available by Qualcomm/Atheros and others, what really differentiates APs? Can
you speak to this about how Aruba (or others) differentiate itself in actual
RF performance?

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vlan3333
Aruba access points are built for higher density and longer range deployments.
One of the RF management features is called ClientMatch, which helps ensure
WLAN performance is not compromised in noisy or high density environments.

Most homes don't have more than 20-30 devices on the WiFi. Most Instant access
points can handle about 50-60 devices at a time. In my own home, the 5 Ghz
band is primarily used due to the open layout and there's a lot less
interference on that band in my neighborhood. I'm just using one Instant
access point (IAP-215) to cover about 2500 sq ft.

From a hand wavy and extremely generalized assessment, RF performance between
the major enterprise vendors (Cisco Meraki/Aerohive/Ruckus/Aruba) differs by
about 10%. If you design your network to the environment and devices used, you
can achieve a highly performing network with any of major vendor. The deciding
factor usually comes down to training personnel have with the equipment,
relationships, and budget. Most RF engineers will probably sneer at the above
statement, but there's some truth to it.

Other Useful Information

The Aruba Instant platform does not require a hardware controller - instead it
uses a virtual controller that's homed to a master Access Point with automatic
fail over to slave Access Points in the cluster.

You can also mix and match any Instant AP model within the same cluster. New
Aps should automatically join as soon as they are powered up and plugged into
the local network (on the same VLAN).

There's no additional licensing needed for local management.

Access points purchased through an official retailer come with a lifetime
warranty.

Application recognition and content filtering is not available with Ubiquity.
You can't prioritize traffic or restrict traffic on the WiFi based on specific
content – for example, prioritize traffic for voice over YouTube or Facebook.
In enterprise environments, WiFi calling has become important due to adopting
Skype.

Aruba also offers 3rd party support and integration via Airwave and ClearPass.
Overkill (IMO) for a home.

~~~
2bluesc
> Aruba access points are built for higher density and longer range
> deployments. One of the RF management features is called ClientMatch, which
> helps ensure WLAN performance is not compromised in noisy or high density
> environments.

This is the kind of stuff I'm curious about.

If the antenna is well designed (good radiation pattern) and the EIRP is
limited to FCC limits (100mW by default?) how will it achieve longer ranger?
The client device (laptop, cellphone) has a TX power as well that requires
some symmetry to achieve the range. I know APs can request clients lower their
TX power to reduce interference in high density environments, but I don't know
they'd raise it.

As for high density environments, this comes down to the management software
and not the features of WiFi chipset? Things like MU-MIMO certainly make sense
for high density environments (Ubiquiti sells a series of "HD" suffixed parts
that add MU-MIMO), but I'm curious if there are other things other then more
radios on more bands.

How many of the more advanced features of Enterprise APs at the mercy of the
client WiFi module, firmware, and driver for behaving optimally? I assume a
company like Aruba (or really any major player) has a full interoperability
test lab. Which client devices work best (Intel?)?

> Most homes don't have more than 20-30 devices on the WiFi. Most Instant
> access points can handle about 50-60 devices at a time. In my own home, the
> 5 Ghz band is primarily used due to the open layout and there's a lot less
> interference on that band in my neighborhood. I'm just using one Instant
> access point (IAP-215) to cover about 2500 sq ft.

2500 sq ft on one AP is pretty impressive, for the price though you could buy
several UniFi APs. I checked out the datasheet[0] for the AP 210 series and
was delighted to see some radiation plots at different frequencies.

[0]
[https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP210Series.pdf](https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP210Series.pdf)

