[Rack] ubiquiti wifi routers
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net
Wed Aug 6 18:09:33 UTC 2014
The UAP/UAP-PRO aren't routers for what it's worth. They're only a wifi
radio hooked up to an ethernet port, nothing more. You'll still need
something on the network to providing routing to the internet.
Their proprietary zero handoff works really great if you've running less
than 5 clients. I'm guessing the use case is something like inventory
laptops walking through a very large warehouse. With anything more than
5 clients the thing is total garbage and shouldn't be used.
As far as non proprietary client side roaming goes, in practice I've
found most Apple devices, many Androids, and my Linux laptop running
wpasupplicant 1.1 with an Intel wifi NIC, roaming fine. All devices are
happy to hop from AP to AP without much fuss or user intervention after
a minute or two of realizing it has less noise from another AP.
2.4/5gHz is a different story. In my humble opinion 2.4gHz coming off of
these devices is fucking good. I am now only recommending the
costs-4-times-more UAP-PROs only if what you need is massive bandwidth
beyond everyday internet access which you can get with 5gHz (and by
bandwidth I mean 100mbit and beyond). 2.4gHz alone is sufficient (with
the appropriate amount of radios in the space) for most use cases such
as fast internet browsing, and also way more affordable. I honestly
believe Noisebridge could get away with 3 2.4gHz UAPs installed for
about $160 than two UAP-PROs at $400.
The RSSI stuff is a nice option but it's still too finicky of a setting
for any sort of production use (requires a lot of testing and hand
holding), and the whole system right now works pretty well as is just as
long as your client isn't being super stupid.
There is also the annoyance of choosing a channel. Placing the choice on
users to pick what's best kinda sucks in reality, so I've started doing
this...
sitename - Attached to both 2.4 and 5gHz radios
sitename 5g - Attached to 5gHz radio only
Most users will connect to the first network as they will either not see
5g or honestly wont know what that means and not bother. If their
hardware only support 2.4gHz they'll connect to that. If both are
supported, the device will (hopefully) make the best decision on which
to initially connect to (almost always 2.4gHz first) then roam when it
feels like a different radio is a better choice. Apple hardware is
really good at this, my test Androids are so/so, wpasupplicant fucking
sucks and would much rather connect to a horse's ass before ever even
thinking of connecting to a better link.
With all that being said, when using a $60 UAP, 5gHz is really over
rated and not worth the money and hassle if all you're just going to
provide is speedy net access. In all honesty you should be able to
connect 50-60 clients to each radio without much noticeable degradation
in wifi performance. I believe 100-120 clients per radio is where they
start to actually crap out.
And for what it's worth, running the controller 24/7 doesn't actually
effect performance or load balancing or anything like that. All the
controller is good for is configuring and monitoring. The access points
are more than happy to talk to each other and help each other when
needed, but that too is fairly minimal. I also recommend running the
controller not in the space but somewhere else on the internet. It has
proven helpful in aiding friends with network woes remotely.
--
Rubin
rubin at starset.net
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