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How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

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Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#181

Post by kalleboo »

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.

Yeah what I've done (at home) is use separate SSIDs, everything connects to 5 GHz, and 2.4 GHz is only for legacy devices without 5 GHz support.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#182

Post by bscphil »

scolby33 wrote: post #161
PascLeRasc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great if you're at home or there's no IT team like in the article (a dream come true!) but if you're in a more corporate network these kinds of tools will usually ping NSFW servers. I also prefer namebench ( https://github.com/google/namebench ) since it runs at the command line.

What sort of DNS server is NSFW? I can't imagine that any DNS benchmark would need to reach out to anything other than a DNS server. If I recall correctly, the GRC DNS benchmark uses a set of domains set up expressly for the benchmark itself.

Disclaimer, I haven't looked at GRC explicitly, but often tools like this will

* check whether a range of domains are censored by the DNS

* lookup a bunch of domains and ping them to check whether the DNS server is returning properly localized addresses using EDNS - Cloudflare DNS is a good example of one that was not (at least a few months ago)

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#183

Post by sandGorgon »

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?

the mikrotik cli is wonderful. you can script it all out. the UI is a little complicated, but oh well.

quick question - why do you need windows/wine for mikrotik ? we use the cli commands through the web console.

in fact we dont have windows in the office. granted you may be doing something more advanced than us, but curious to know.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#185

Post by Aloha »

mmt wrote: post #121
Aloha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a position where you have a small number of AP's (less than 5) the ubiquiti product may appear to be overkill.

I've found that the threshold depends not so much on number of APs but on number of simultaneously active users/devices (arguably the ratio of those per AP, rather than total). An office of 30 people sharing 3 APs will encounter problems even if those same APs would have worked just fine for a family of 4 living in the same space. I've even found this to be true in a residential setting with consumer APs, where reduc…

I sincerely question the value of a managed wifi system for less than 5 hotspots, I also am even more dubious of the need for a cloud service. wifi should function without the need to phone home.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#187

Post by Tharkun »

Shame that security wasn't really addressed, other than the brief mention of WPA2-PSK. I feel like PSK in general is a horrible idea in an office environment. Lots of people + lots of devices ≈ shitty password which never gets changed.

But then I still haven't had any luck setting up a WPA2 Enterprise config that works on all devices.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#188

Post by fifnir »

petecooper wrote: post #130
inferiorhuman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>And let's not speak of the chronically overheating stuff. Some-time wireless installer here, I bring a snippet of anecdata. A recent client had the full Unifi experience for an outdoor network, including 3x EdgeSwitch XP (formerly known as ToughSwitch) in a single IP65-rated, largely airtight enclosure. The network would go offline on summer afternoons. It was overheating, those models run hot and are not recommende…

Hey, just a little ysk: it's anecdote / anecdota from the greek word meaning "unpublished", nothing to do with data! :)

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#189

Post by kccqzy »

dhess wrote: post #109

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…

I've heard multiple people saying Apple wireless APs perform so much better than others. I really wish someone could do a technical deep-dive and explain how Apple did it.

Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems

#190

Post by shrikant »

fifnir wrote: post #188
petecooper wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And let's not speak of the chronically overheating stuff. Some-time wireless installer here, I bring a snippet of anecdata. A recent client had the full Unifi experience for an outdoor network, including 3x EdgeSwitch XP (formerly known as ToughSwitch) in a single IP65-rated, largely airtight enclosure. The network would go offline on summer afternoons. It was overheating, those models run hot and are not recommende…

Hey, just a little ysk: it's anecdote / anecdota from the greek word meaning "unpublished", nothing to do with data! :)

"Anecdata" is usually online shorthand these days for saying, "I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but fwiw here's my experience."
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