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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

#101

Post by mastax »

MBCook wrote: post #54
jonny_eh wrote: post #35

> Don’t put 5 GHz on its own band. Uhh, do they mean "don't put 5 GHz on its own SSID"?

I thought it was considered and GOOD idea to put the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz APs on different SSID is because some clients won’t connect to the faster one automatically. Or maybe it was because all traffic slow down to the lowest level. Is that no longer an issue? Or maybe these aren’t problems as long as the 2.4 and 5 access points are physically separate.

You're right that many devices don't choose bands very well, so you should use an access point that supports band steering if you want to do this. Pro APs will support this and Broadcom-based AC consumer routers do also - need to read a review to know if a specific model works well though.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#102

Post by kraftman »

MBCook wrote: post #56

It’s only sort of passively mentioned in the article but I am AMAZED at the number of people who don’t hardwire everything they can. Obviously phones are out, but why not hardwire every laptop when it’s at the desk? If someone’s using a actual desktop computer like an iMac then what’s the point of Wi-Fi? Clear up the signal space and get a 100% reliable and ultra fast connection.

You could say the opposite I guess.

I'm AMAZED at the number of people that bother hardwiring everything they can for no reason when they have no interference issues.

Why go to all the effort of hardwiring every laptop at every desk?

If someone's using a laptop and moving around the office, why cable every desk when you can have gigabit wifi wherever you are?

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#103

Post by inferiorhuman »

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…

Fine, I'll say it: Ubiquiti is not suitable for a business environment. They don't have a good track record of pushing out security fixes. They've blatantly violated the GPL (and introduced security vulns in the process). Their "enterprise" features don't work well (e.g. hardware acceleration, WPA+Radius). Depending on what you buy the PoE may be non-standard passive or it may not.

Unfortunately because they're primarily in the business of slapping a slick web interface on Vyatta they don't have the skill required to debug the hardware acceleration. They don't have a single clue how to get RADIUS to work with their fork of Vyatta. And their support is fine for a home lab situation.

And let's not speak of the chronically overheating stuff.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#104

Post by keeperofdakeys »

When you're deploying multiple APs you also want to turn down the broadcast power on them. If the signal of multiple APs overlap too much, clients won't roam onto the next AP in time.

Also don't be afraid to hire someone to do a wireless survey - or do it yourself. Someone will walk around with a laptop, and try to find wifi blackspots/hotspots, and can recommend adjustments to AP power and/or placement.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#105

Post by tareqak »

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'm curious: can the router you linked (https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-routing/usg/) run adaptive QoS with fq_codel on a 1Gbps/1Gbps connection?

I know it's not a common setup, but some of the ISPs that do fiber to high-rises offer that.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#106

Post by slantyyz »

swingline-747 wrote: post #86
linsomniac wrote: post #73

Generally pretty solid advice. I say that as someone who is known for solving tough wireless problems. :-) On the cable termination part: I've (mostly) stopped crimping cables because I've had too many go flaky and don't have 4-5 figure testing equipment. One thing I'll add is that there are ends for solid conductor and stranded, make SURE you have the right ones for the cable you are using. These days I always just…

Been There, Done That, Bought The T-Shirt. Solid core is generally for premise wiring (PVC jacketed in walls, PTFE-jacketed through ducts); stranded is typically for patch cables. If you try like the first place I worked at in the mid-90's trying to put stranded ends on solid-core wire, breaking of tools and unreliable cables will make. There's cheapo Chinese cable tester kits on eBay, AliBaba and Amazon that do a go…

It might be worth mentioning that CCA (copper clad aluminum) cable which is sometimes sold with misleading descriptions in places like eBay and Amazon, is not the same as solid copper and should be avoided for power over ethernet applications.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#107

Post by metildaa »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #103
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…

Fine, I'll say it: Ubiquiti is not suitable for a business environment. They don't have a good track record of pushing out security fixes. They've blatantly violated the GPL (and introduced security vulns in the process). Their "enterprise" features don't work well (e.g. hardware acceleration, WPA+Radius). Depending on what you buy the PoE may be non-standard passive or it may not. Unfortunately because they're prima…

Note that nearly all of Ubiquiti's offerings are running modified OpenWRT, with a handful running a fork of VyOS which happens to be Debian plus some packages.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#108

Post by maxyme »

kraftman wrote: post #102
MBCook wrote: post #56

It’s only sort of passively mentioned in the article but I am AMAZED at the number of people who don’t hardwire everything they can. Obviously phones are out, but why not hardwire every laptop when it’s at the desk? If someone’s using a actual desktop computer like an iMac then what’s the point of Wi-Fi? Clear up the signal space and get a 100% reliable and ultra fast connection.

You could say the opposite I guess. I'm AMAZED at the number of people that bother hardwiring everything they can for no reason when they have no interference issues. Why go to all the effort of hardwiring every laptop at every desk? If someone's using a laptop and moving around the office, why cable every desk when you can have gigabit wifi wherever you are?

Because gigabit wifi turns to 50mbps when the office gets big enough. There is only so much spectrum to use. Plus if you're already connecting monitors when you have your laptop at your desk the Ethernet adapter can be part of the dock.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#109

Post by dhess »

I've tried all kinds of WiFi gear over the past 5 years -- Apple, UniFi, Aruba Instant -- and all of them have been unsatisfactory in one way or another:

* Most of my client devices are from Apple, and I easily got the best WiFi performance overall with 802.11ac-capable Airport Extremes, which is impressive given how relatively cheap they are. However, I'd like multiple SSIDs, and Apple gear can't do that (the guest network support doesn't count). Regardless, Apple is out of the game, so this isn't a long-term solution.

* The UniFi gear had terrible 802.11ac performance, even when my devices were in the same room as the WAP. At the time, I was using first-gen 802.11ac hardware from UniFi, so it's somewhat understandable, but the poor performance combined with 2 of the units failing within the first 6 months didn't leave a good impression.

* The Aruba Instant WAPs were reliable and got good performance (though not as good as the Apple WAPs), but I'm not a fan of their licensing. Without a support contract, it was possible to hunt down the latest firmware updates, but they didn't make it easy.

I recently bought a PC Engines APU3C4 with a mini-PCIe WiFi card and a couple of Chaohang antennas [1], and I'm contemplating build my own WAP. This would give me all of the configurability and tweaking that I want, and I could deploy it as just another piece of my personal little devops pipeline.

However, I don't know much about the RF side of things. I'm aware there's a lot of black magic involved, but it's not clear to me how much performance and/or range I'm going to lose by piecing together COTS stuff versus a professionally-engineered solution from Ubiquiti et al. If anyone who's reading has built their own WAPs, I'd love to hear from you.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E29566W

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#110

Post by ISO-morphism »

aequitas wrote: post #32
sandGorgon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I'm currently using Mikrotik happily for AP and router needs, but considering switching to a Ubnt setup for ease of management that does not depend on Windows/Wine and without having to write my own configuration management tooling. As central management is somewhat lacking. What are your considerations for not choosing Ubnt for routing?

I'm not GP, but what drove me towards MT and away from Ubnt was Ubiquiti's history of violating the GPL [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9331512

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