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Hi Spiceheads…

Im just picking your knowledge on wireless APs. We have about 40 buildings nation wide and each building with +-400 students using the internet. We recently upgraded one of our buildings with Unifi APs and it worked nicely until we had a power outage and 5 out of the 15 devices are now not working and when I spoke to the supplier he said that its a a common issue with them. We had Trendnet devices before and they were very reliable and rarely had to replace them. The reason we went with Unifi is that we installed POE switches and it is more manageable.

Any suggestions on what brand I should look at? We are aiming at 10 users per device.

Thank you in advance for the input.

@Cisco

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Aerohive makes some awesome devices that all use a central cloud management system. They would be a great fit for what you’re trying to do, especially if you’re worried about power cuts. Because they always ‘phone home’ for their config and to check for changes it will always be able to ‘fix itself’ if it ever did get messed up. I’ve put these in at multi site hotels before and had fantastic results.

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Wow! This could be the first ever post on SW with something bad about Unifi APs. The Ubiquity fans are not going to be happy, haha.

On a serious note, I have heard nothing but good things about Ruckus systems.

@Ruckus

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Open-Mesh using Cloudtrax, we push 4Gb of traffic per month over a 100 mb line to the www, if you want a budget AP 2.4 & 5Ghz with Cloud management and 2 SSIDs.

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We have been very happy with the ruckus wireless system that we installed a couple years ago.

We went from an unmanaged hp wireless aps system to a managed ruckus system. No problems and better\more reliable system. Our management system covers ap’s in 5 different buildings.

@Ruckus

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Are your poe switches on a UPS to protect them from power outages? If not I would start with that.

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Cisco’s Meraki line of AP are a good fit for wide spread deployment as well. Like JustRob mentioned with Aerohive Meraki can be configured and will “phone home” to received the settings or should you need to change settings.

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For quality of hardware and a real fire and forget system I’d recommend Motorola (now owned by Zebra Technologies) however they are not trivial devices to configure correctly, so some experienced consultancy would serve you well.

I have approx 20 of these across the UK and once put in (and configured correctly by someone who knew what they were doing) they’ve never needed to be touched again.

1 Motorola AP can act as a controller for 25 devices, but you will probably want to look at a centralised controller, they have these in both physical and virtual forms.

I’ve used a number of other APs (Cisco, Draytek, Netgear’s rebadged Aruba WIFI Controller), and the Motorola kit has been about the most stable.

Motorola also has great bandwidth for many concurrent users.

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I think any installation like the one you described would be looking at Meraki. It is tailor made for this exact kind of situation. It’s about the highest quality, reliable product out there right now.

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Thank you for all the input guys. I have 2 other pieces of information i need to mention is that i live in South Africa, 1. We have power outages that lasts for 4 hours and to get a UPS to last that long for 40 buildings will add to a big sum. 2. I like Aerohive very much! BUT i will have to import all devices and send them across the ocean if i want to return them for repairs. Making it not the nr1 scenario.

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I use a Cisco controller based solution and have been nothing but happy with it. I have a 2504 controller and am using 3702i APs. There are lots of different controller/AP combinations but these are the ones I am using for the size of district I am in.

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Yes John4120, I think Cisco is the best solution.

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I know there’s a lot of love for Meraki, but the freebie AP they chucked at me was pretty poor, I set it up at home and it was so bad I ended up putting it in a box and reverting back to a cheap plug style wifi extender with my draytek router.

Granted my house was built in the 1600’s and the internal structure causes significant issues with reflection but still, a ~£300 AP vs £15 shouldn’t end up with sacking off the more expensive component.

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Hello, Konrad88.

Thanks for considering Cisco! Meraki are well known for it’s straight forward management and a cloud based controller to manage your APs. If you are looking for a much business reliable (with hardware failover options), I highly suggest the Cisco Aironet Access Points with Wireless LAN controllers (the 2504 is a good entry level model).

Try out Meraki ( Cisco Meraki Forms | Meraki Demo Form | Meraki Trial Form ).

Please send me a message if you have additional concerns under Cisco or need more support. Kind regards.

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You don’t need the UPS to last the entire outage for an extended outage. A Proper UPS has other important functions besides keeping the power on. The most important of which is to condition the power to remove dips and surges in voltage that otherwise get passed along to your equipment. This is essential for protecting your equipment.

Power outages are almost always preceded and followed by a surge and a dip in the power and this is what causes damage to your devices. not the actual power outage.

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Konrad, ADTRAN is another great option you should check out. Their BlueSocket Access Points are ideal for distributed environments and its cloud architecture allows for easy installation and management. You can check these out here . You should also look at their ProCloud.EDU service, which integrates a managed Wi-Fi service with classroom control and content filtering capabilities. Let me know if I can be of further assistance!

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I think some UPSes (as Molan mentions - they don’t need to last 4 hours) and some spare Ubiquiti APs will wind up cheaper than a whole new solution.

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Meraki all the way.

Also, as mentioned, I would stick a small 2-5 minute battery on your switches. This prevents surges and brownouts.

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Cisco Aironet as per John4120. I use them everywhere and most of my sites perform “total power failure” tests, including running the UPS batteries until they too lose power. I have never had a power related issue with any of the AP’s (mix of 1142, 1602 and 2602) nor the controllers (all 2504 with 7.4.100 firmware and one with 7.6) or for that matter the switches (all Gigabit 2960S or X with PoE.

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Hi Konrad88,

I am also in South Africa and deal with a school environment as my day to day.
For this environment I would perhaps suggest you look towards a Mikrotik solution, you would be able to incorporate your UPS devices onto your appliance and could add a 3g dongle straight onto the device if needed.

They tolerate power fluctuations very well as I have installed some previously at other companies as high sites with Solar power.

They also introduced a “somewhat” cloud system where you can distribute APs and have them report back in to a central site