Hello, all. 1st post here… Need a recommendation on wireless gear.
I’ve just deployed a Unifi WiFi setup on a church campus. Now they’re telling me the power to the old Main Office is being cut Monday to begin the demo/remodel process. “Of course” it’s the MDF for most network wires. I already have Internet & on-prem Windows server moved to an alternate location (which will become the new MDF). One building with employees (max 3, just general office duties) nearby will need connectivity for up to a month until the eventual buried fiber lines are in place.
Question is can I get away with 2 access points (say, Flex HD) and create a unique SSID that is carried only on those 2, or do I need to step up to the Nano Bridge gear? It would be nice to have actual access points to redeploy after construction is finished as opposed to a WiFi bridge that we really won’t need anymore…
Thanks for any thoughts!
John
How “nearby” is your definition of “nearby”?
I use a pair of the UAP-AC-M-US to span my house (rental, long house, plaster walls) and get wifi out into my garage and backyard. The primary AP is in my office and the other is in the guest room only plugged into power. The remote AP uses 5ghz to bridge/mesh back to the main unit and broadcasts 2.4ghz for devices to use.
Thanks, Moe. I should have mentioned distance. It’s approximately 150 feet, pretty well “line of sight.”
After doing a bunch more reading on this last night I think my main question is will the wired PCs on the switch that is losing its wired uplink be able to pass traffic on the AP back to the main building. I might go out there today and experiment with a pair of U6-PROs.
This is only a temporary fix until the fiber line is in place and there will probably be only one PC needing daily office use during this time. So even if it is slow it will be acceptable. If the answer is “that definitely won’t work,” I’ll need another plan, like the “real” wireless bridges.
John
You can try a bridge you might be pushing it at that distance tho it may be iffy if you can get these so LOS is not broken these would do it Building-to-building Bridge – Ubiquiti Inc. they might have a slower cheaper option but these are in stock
Thanks to those who responded! I wanted to report back in case anyone was interested in how this turned out.
The distance between the buildings is approx 65 feet. At the building losing it’s wired uplink Monday, I hammer drilled through the concrete wall, then hung a U6-PRO with industrial velcro to the side of the building, and plugged its Cat 5 into the network switch that feeds the PCs.
In the main building I stood up (quite literally on-edge) another U6-PRO on a window sill that points pretty much right at the other one, and ran its Cat 5 to the MDF switch. This saved me from drilling through another wall…
Right now I’m watching the uplink on Unifi Controller: Tx rate is 413Mbps Rx rate is 516Mbps. So I must say I’m quite pleased with that.
Some little details: I created a unique SSID just for those 2 APs, and removed the other SSIDs from them as well. Also I turned on MAC filtering & included their 2 MACs (might not be necessary to call them out but I did).
I especially liked the adoption process: I went to a room with an AP nearby & simply powered up the AP without any cabled connection to a switch and the AP appeared on the Controller “pending adoption wireless” within 2 minutes. And the Controller is on my cloud. I mean, how cool is that?
John
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