My specific hardware recommendations are below:
I suspect Geoff's PoE switches did not meet the published requirement
for 802.3at (i.e. more than 15 watts of PoE) rather than being an
idiosyncratic incompatibility.
The irony is that the AVERAGE wattage for AP-AC is actually LESS THAN 15
watts, thus one might assume the AP-AC should be able to work. HOWEVER,
the power draw of the AC-AP is not uniform. Even though it draws ~11w
on average, when it needs 25w for a few fractions of a second, the
802.3af PoE PSE will not be able to keep up, and the AP will
malfunction. This is the same consideration FOR meeting the VA (vs
Wattage) requirement on your servers with a UPS.
My personal recommendation for Wi-Fi is for Ubiquiti UniFi. It's just a
great value, and it's simple to manage/administer remotely. pfSense
plays a role in our case with DNS forwarder responding to the default
"UniFi" with the routable IP address of the controller (physical, local
virtual, cloud etc). We've got dozens of APs in many locations across
the country, all managed from one VM, in our case, over VPN. In this
way, we can drop ship a brand new UniFi to a remote location and it will
"call home" for configuration
Within the UniFi family:
1. I recommend the AP-AC if at all possible. It's an absolute
requirement for congested areas, or installations where you would
actually benefit from lots of link bandwidth. Just do it if you can,
for the same reason a SSD is an obvious choice (unless you are
*severely* cost constrained or can explain in detail why its a bad fit
for your application). While Speedtest.net is a poor proxy for link
speed, as a point of reference we're getting 70+ mbs on my mobile phone
over Wi-Fi versus 11mbps with 802.11g (to a 100mbs backhaul).
2. I recommend UniFi AP-PRO too (What I still use at home), but only for
low-interference (low congestions) installations especially if you have
a budget constraints, and/or can not upgrade to bona-fide 802.3at power
sourcing equipment, and do not want a "Brick Farm" comprising a pile of
midspan power bricks and a rat's nest of cables. (I just thought of
that... Brick Farm)
3. We've had surprisingly good luck placing outdoor units indoors
(though our sample size is small. The outdoor AP's appear to work
unusually well for a given underlying technology (B, G, N, AC) etc.,
presumably because of their superior high-gain antenna design. They're
spendy, but they might be a good choice for an installation where you
are barely at the border of needing to install multiple units in a
single location.
Just now I was testing a spare unit we're turning up. It was still set
using the high power defaults. I wandered from the base and lost
connectivity. It was a practical reminder that unless you live on
Gilligan's island, or in a Faraday cage, cranking UP the power on an AP
almost always makes things worse (because you end up with asymmetry
between TX&RX, especially with mobile phone clients). In other words,
you are always harmed by having strong signal from AP's with which you
can not effectively communicate in 2 directions. Turning DOWN the
power usually makes things better (closer to parity between Tx & Rx).
If Alice and Bob need to talk, but they're out of earshot, it doesn't
help to give ONLY Alice a megaphone.
On 7/20/2015 5:57 PM, Geoff Nordli wrote:
On 15-07-20 01:19 PM, Vernon Fort wrote:
I have had several sites use the Ubiquiti Networks Unifi-ap-lr (long
range). Run the software as a service on a DC or standard 2008/2012
server or even a windows 7 machine. They work very well. I've had
zero issues with the 30 or so of these devices I have setup and
installed with the exception of some wifi printers and older
devices. But I think the latest software and firmware had solved
these issues.
Vernon
-----Original Message-----
From: List [mailto:list-boun...@lists.pfsense.org] On Behalf Of compdoc
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 2:00 PM
To: 'pfSense Support and Discussion Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [pfSense] Access Point Recommendations?
A lot of good info in these posts, but no real hardware
recommendations...
I have a site with the Unifi AP AC and it has been solid.
The only issue I had is the POE didn't work with our existing switches
and I needed to actually use the POE adaptors they provided.
Geoff
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