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How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

triplebyte.com

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Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#21

Post by basch »

sbradford26 wrote: post #19
basch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the FEW downsides for smaller installations, is them not selling a Cloud Key, Gateway, and Switch in a single box.

I agree. Right now I have the edge router lite. I have it setup so 4 ports are switched together and then I use poe pass-through to power my access point. Then I run the unifi software on a raspberry pi. I would love at least a gateway/cloud key combo to simplify things. The separate switch doesn't bother me as much though.

one more thing to go wrong in the field, one more cable to get unplugged. a key/gateway/24portPOEswitch would be a single device people can run ethernet to for APs, and plug their office pcs into. If you have a rack its irrelevant, but for some kind of trailer where its sitting on the floor... or mounted to a wall.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#22

Post by sbradford26 »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #11
compumike wrote: post #2

We had internal debates about different SSIDs for 2.4 vs 5 GHz, but in the end, this is the optimal configuration we landed on. I was also surprised by how slow S3 was with a single download connection, but really fast when using aria2 to parallelize the download.

Putting 2.4 and 5 onthe same SSID is a recipe for sadness. OSX does very poorly at deciding which band it should be on, and 2.4 is largely useless in most of SF. OSX also tends to be pretty sticky. The worst is that it uses RSSI as its metric rather than SNR.

I know that at least with my Ubiquiti access points I simply set them to prefer 5G and they will move clients over to that. I have had limited issues with roaming and such with that enabled.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#23

Post by basch »

sandGorgon wrote: post #16
basch wrote: post #6

>Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points? Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each…

Same as this , except with one change. For the router, use the (cheaper and more powerful) Mikrotik Routerboards. We don't use a Poe switch - we just use cheap Poe adapters and connect directly to the routerboard. For those who have never touched a Ubiquiti, configuring it could be a little iffy . I normally advise setting up DHCP 43 advertisement on the router before trying to setup the access points. But seriously,…

which router is iffy for you, Edge or Unifi? The Auto VPN tunnel being right in all my other network and wireless settings is nice. its fairly obvious from my posts im awarding a lot of value to consolidated management.

If you buy the APs individually, they come with power injectors, if you buy a 5 pack, they dont and its easier to home run back to a single switch. Less things to get unplugged.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#24

Post by tradertef »

Biggest issue I have with the solution proposed is the recommendation to avoid DFS channels. These channels are much more "cleaner" as adoption is less due to added cost caused by extra design and certification.

Radars are pretty static and does not come and go (especially weather radars), so the router does not need to move from channel pretty much. False alarm can be an issue but if one has a decent quality router, it should not be very often. Furthermore, after a radar detection (false alarm or actual), routers can switch to non-DFS channels and and start operating immediately.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#25

Post by akurilin »

If you're based in SF and want to have a high quality boutique IT shop work with you, without hiring IT staff yourself, then I can't recommend https://www.boxit.net/ enough.

I was managing consumer grade routers for the company since its inception until we switched to Aruba APs (which are awesome The one thing to watch out for is VoIP in SF office buildings. Our APs conflict with about 300 other APs in the area, so getting reliable VoIP for your sales people over WiFi is not even worth trying. We got lucky and inherited an office where the previous company learned that the hard way and wired every nook and cranny with ethernet.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#26

Post by basch »

sbradford26 wrote: post #22
brian-armstrong wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting 2.4 and 5 onthe same SSID is a recipe for sadness. OSX does very poorly at deciding which band it should be on, and 2.4 is largely useless in most of SF. OSX also tends to be pretty sticky. The worst is that it uses RSSI as its metric rather than SNR.

I know that at least with my Ubiquiti access points I simply set them to prefer 5G and they will move clients over to that. I have had limited issues with roaming and such with that enabled.

The recommended setting for Band Steering is Balanced I believe. Probably depends on how many clients are connecting.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#27

Post by walrus01 »

basch wrote: post #6

>Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points? Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each…

You can also 'cloud' host a unifi controller on a VM somewhere and set up the APs for "layer 3" management, where when you originally provision them you tell each AP to register to a specific hostname. It's all done over TLS. Each AP just needs to be able to get a DHCP lease, default route out to the internet, and to resolve hostnames. A small Unifi controller can run on a $10/month VM if you don't want the 'cloud key' device on premises.

Or if you happen to have your own hardware on premises a unifi controller on debian can be a really small Xen VM that runs at an average load of 0.02, your xen or KVM hypervisor can be as small as an Intel NUC stuck to a plywood board on the wall of a telecom room in the building.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#28

Post by fastbeef »

basch wrote: post #6

>Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points? Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each…

I have a full UniFi setup in my home office/house and it is glorious. It Just Works!

Well, with the one exception which is the Cloud Key. I’ve yet to see it run for more than 24 hours before soft rocking and requiring a total re-setup of the network.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#30

Post by sbradford26 »

fastbeef wrote: post #28
basch wrote: post #6

>Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points? Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each…

I have a full UniFi setup in my home office/house and it is glorious. It Just Works! Well, with the one exception which is the Cloud Key. I’ve yet to see it run for more than 24 hours before soft rocking and requiring a total re-setup of the network.

I have my unifi controller running on a raspberry pie and it has been very reliable. Might be worth a shot.
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