Ubiquiti Unifi/Untagled Upgrades

[cw4u]

I just placed an order to upgrade a lot of core services in our network.

Four major upgrades:

1. Switch out consumer Linksys/TP-Link routers running DD-WRT to Ubiquti Unifi APs
2. Replace Untangled Security Appliance running on older Dell Pentium D to a new rackmount Ivy Bridge Core i5 server
3. Make a final transition to a fully "VLAN Aware" wired/wireless network
4. Finally upgrade to a complete gigabit wired network.

Hopefully all that will happen by the end of this month.

If you guys want a review on Untangled, Ubiquiti Unifi, or other networking stuff, just let me know. I'd be glad to write something up or shoot a video and talk about how this gear works for our church.

[Gracetech]

Love the Untangle server. Been running it for almost 2 years now on an old Dell PE2850.

It's so nice to get everything up to gigabit speeds and to especially have Layer 2 or better switches.

What switches are you using? Do they have higher bit links? Our Switches have HDMI connections to get 10gigbit connections between the switches. We are using Fiber between the 4 different switch locations on campus. Only issue with our switches is that the SPF ports only support gigabit speed so we have to use 4 fibers just to get 2 gigabit speed.

Would like to hear more about your setup when it's all up and going.

...word to the wise set up your primary network on a VLan outside of the base VLan. I've run into a few pieces of hardware that don't like to use the base VLan. Altering it after the fact cause some down time.

crt

[cw4u]

Yeah, we've been mostly gigabit for the past two years. Just haven't gotten around to replacing a fiber link and subsequent switches to our student building expansion.

The switches are just gigabit only. We had thought about buying one with a few 10 gigabit links to connect to our media room but at this time, it's just not financially feasible.

Using HDMI to link your switches reminded me of when we used to use firewire cards in Cisco switches at school to link them up. 400mbps was so blazing fast back in the day!

The switches are primarily ZyXEL web managed. They're pretty nice for the price point. Haven't had any issues with them so far. I have two other D-Link web managed switches and those are a piece of junk. I've had them completely throw off the network because the IP address reset itself and took the place of the router. Those two switches will be discontinued next year.

Thanks for the heads up about the VLAN setup. I, too, thought about what issues might entail by doing that but didn't know exactly what would happen. I'll definitely make sure to do put the primary lan outside the base vlan.

[Gracetech]

We are using ZyXel APs and they are great.

crt