Looking for a great wifi solution that won't cost a fortune?

[EricE]

Ubiquti Unify: http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

I picked up a three pack from an online distributor for $260 edit: they were the long range version, the normal version is $100 less (for a three pack - remember, there are THREE access points (APs) in the box for greater coverage and capacity) - if you aren't building a wireless mesh network, there is no real advantage to the long range since even if the clients can hear your more powerful long range AP they may not have the power to talk back - so keep that in mind. The biggest problem is finding someone that has them in stock! If I had found the normal ones in stock, I would just gotten them and not the long rage.

I have a private, WPA2 network for the church staff. I have a second, open guest network that has a captured portal with a terms of service that users must accept before getting network access. By default the guest users do not have access to any other network resources but the Internet (nice!). However, it's not fool proof - since the system also supports VLANs I will be using a spare port on our pfSense firewall to set up a separate subnet on a VLAN for the guests to keep them isolated from the rest of our network resources.

I couldn't be more pleased! It took less than half an hour to get set up (once I kept it simple - more below) and the statistics, dual private/public networks, captured portal and other features are awesome at this price point.

More detailed review:

It took a few minutes to install the controller software on my Mac at home to test the system out and allow it to upgrade itself. I went kind of crazy turning options on, plugged in my first access point and whoops - stuck at the adopting phase Did some playing around, searching the excellent forums at Ubiquti's web site and after a few hours of banging my head against the wall, reverted back to troubleshooting 101 - Keep it Simple, Stupid (KISS)

I reset everything to defaults and Bam! All the access points adopted, upgraded and connected to the controller software. I started slowly turning on options and features and didn't have any further problems. I think I enabled the guest policies without configuring them first D'oh!

I exported the config from my Mac, installed the controller software on our Small Business Server 2011 box, configured it to run as a service and it's been running great for a month now. If you want to run a guest network with a captured portal, or want to collect usage statistics, you have to have the controller software running. They support Linux, Mac and Windows. There's a thread in the Ubiquiti forums about running the controller on pfSense - I may be moving it there!

Forget hacking about with consumer grade wifi equipment - the radios and controller software on this are top notch!

I'm about to give my sister my Airport Extreme, and I'm going to pick up one of their normal access points for my home network. A single unit goes for around $80 - a steal for this level hardware/software.

If you browse through their excellent forums, you can see people with very complicated setups with up to hundreds of access points, to people running wifi zones with vouchers in coffee shops to large secured networks powered by RADIUS authentication and WPA Enterprise.

Ubiquiti also has some great long-distance wimax based gear - if you need to connect two buildings (and some of the gear with the right antennas can go miles!) they have some great choices (how I found them initially).

They also have an IP video/camera system that's a little rough and has some significant issues right now, but if development for it mirrors their Unifi product line, will eventually be a formidable and affordable solution for Churches that need flexible and affordable security and monitoring capabilities.

Yup, you could say I'm a Raving Fan No financial interest in them other than being a very happy (and pleasantly shocked) customer. If you do decide to try them out (and I hope you do), be prepared to be persistent in checking multiple resellers to find their gear in stock. If you do land a unit and set it up, you will quickly discover why it's so hot and hard to find!

[Arlin]

Looks nice.
Does the control computer/software need to be running at all times, or is it just used to configure the devices and then can be disconnected/turned off?

[EricE]

Originally Posted by Arlin

Looks nice

It is, especially for the price!

Does the control computer/software need to be running at all times, or is it just used to configure the devices and then can be disconnected/turned off?

You only need to run the management software if you want usage statistics, or want to run a captive portal for your open network through their system. If you have another captive portal (say through a firewall like pfsense or sonicwall) then you don't have to run their management software other than when you make configuration changes.

The management software runs Windows, Mac or Linux and can be configured to run in the background or as a service under Windows. I just run it on our SBS server, but may be moving it to the little Windows Home Server we have for our client backups. The usage statistics are very cool and well worth finding a machine to run the management software on - at least for me I also am using their captive portal to present some simple terms of service and restrict access from the open wifi network to the Internet. Again if you had a firewall and vlans, you could have the same functionality without running the management software.