Ubiquiti question

[Rosco]

Setting up a small office maybe 25 connected devices include printers. Right now they have a customer grade tp link router with wifi. ALmost everything is hard wired though a patch panel. No of this i installed. There phone system is chanignig. The are going to need to upgrade router. I have been starting to use Ubiquiti access points. I have started at home and have loved them.

Here is my question would a Ubiquiti Edgerouter X SFP Router and Ubiquiti Unifi Ap-AC Long Range work well together? I can not imagine that a Ubiquiti AP would fair less than a tp link in the closet. THanks for the input.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

If you are going to go with Unifi AP's I would suggest using either the USG or USG Pro to keep everything in the same family and ease of management. As for the AP it depends on the environment. How big is the place? If a TP-Link router is doing fine it's likely that you don't need an LR model.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Do not, under any circumstances ever purchase an LR model WAP.

The AP will make it, but the device won't! It's a great way to frustrate your users when they see full signal and it doesn't work!

 

[marley1]

..... LR are fine. User the product as intended. Just like any other product.

Go the full unifi line

Routers are good

If doing VoIP if just meantM for the firewall

 

[Rosco]

If you are going to go with Unifi AP's I would suggest using either the USG or USG Pro to keep everything in the same family and ease of management. As for the AP it depends on the environment. How big is the place? If a TP-Link router is doing fine it's likely that you don't need an LR model.

I know the edge router doesnt use the controller but would that make a different. Would the AP and the router not play nice. I dont like the fact that the USG doesnt have as many ports. I dont mind have the router not being controiled the same way if it works well.

The only reason i picked the long range one is is only a few bucks more.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The Unifi APs can work with any switch or router...we have hundreds 'n hundreds out there at clients with HP ProCurve switches and Untangle firewalls.

However, for your ease of management, for small networks...why not use the entire Unifi technology stack. It makes things sooooo much easier for you to setup, configure, and down the road...manage. Putting throttles on, creating VLANs, studying traffic to find out who the culprits are, using DPI stats, changing DHCP or making reservations, port forwarding, and so much more! Having a Unifi gateway and a Unifi switch with Unifi APs just makes_it_so_nice and simple. And especially down the road when client calls and you have to do some change to the network.

Having an EdgeRouter there...do to anything, you have to remote into some PC on the clients LAN, and fire up a browser and log into the router old school way. Fine if you like doing things the old fashioned complicated way. But for the IT guy/MSP guy...having centralized multi-tenant cloud portals to fully manage your clients in one stop...it just soooo nice!

We also got a tonna networks out there with edge routers and edge switches and Unifi APs....but once the Unifi controller got matured about 2 years ago....we started using Unifi gateways and switches and things are just so much easier for us....no reason to go backwards.

Ubiquiti has been working on a multi tenant controller for edge* products...called UNMS. Still in BETA and has a loooong way to go. I spun one up last fall, got about 80 devices in there...we can monitor, and upgrade firmware. But no management yet...that's a ways off. And it will not manage Unifi products...just monitor. So still will need 2x different portals to do one thing on hybrid networks.