A very customizable Access Point. Was looking to establish a network in our church's newly remodeled facility. Access points available from many of the brands that focus on homes just didn't provide what we need. On the other hand, high end wi-fi systems (Cisco, Aruba, Meraki, etc.) intended for medium to large businesses were way too expensive for a relatively small church. In search I came upon two manufacturers that had solutions that caught my attention: Open Mesh and Ubiquiti. Both had features that could meet our needs to provide excellent coverage throughout our building.
Open Mesh as its name implies could allow you establish a network that was basically wireless even between many of its access points (a mesh network). This addresses the difficulty of establishing a network throughout an building or area where adding new wiring could prove difficult or more costly than you could afford. In our case since we were remodeling the building I had already designed the internal wiring so all points were I needed to establish an AP (access point) had the necessary wiring. So there was no need for the mesh capability of Open Mesh.
Even though I didn't need that feature Open Mesh provided, their system could work fairly well to meet our needs. Their system could fairly easily configure itself. Ubiquiti likewise could meet our needs. Both were priced about the same (at the time I was examining each system).
The main differences were: Ubiquiti was set up so you would manage and configure their devices using software running on your PC/laptop. You don't need the software running 24/7 if you used it mainly to configure the network. If you wanted to collect stats you would of course need to keep it running. Open Mesh on the other hand was managed via the Internet. It's management system/software was cloud based, residing on their servers, so no local pc/laptop/server or software was required.
Both allowed you to set up guest networks and to even have a guest portal. Both allowed you to set up multiple WiFi networks.
Bandwidth for each network could be managed (limits could be set for download and upload bandwidth).
What made Ubiquiti my choice: I could establish more WiFi networks (SSIDs) with Ubiquiti. Each could be useful as I needed to provide guest some 'basic bandwidth' but with various ministry groups I would provide a different WiFi with different bandwidth limitations and an unlimited one for the staff. It gave me more flexibility.
It should be noted that Ubiquiti is not as easy to set up as Open Mesh. My background is in networking and we have others in our church with IT background which helped.
On other thing that sold me on Ubiquiti was their were just about to come out with the new model (the one this review is one) which was its most powerful AP and they dropped the price. With all the other expenses in getting our newly remodeled building ready for use, this helped keep our cost even more reasonable.
I used the PoE+ (power over ethernet) feature of the AP's. When I set up the wired access point locations I had the electrician install power at all those locations because at that time I didn't know what products I would be using and in case any of the wire runs exceeded the max. distance. I purchased an HP Gigabit Switch that included PoE+ ports and they worked great. If an AP ever needed to be rebooted, now all I have to do is disconnect and reconnect the corresponding ethernet cable to the port on the switch. No need to get on a ladder to unplug the AP from a local AC outlet up in the ceiling.
The challenge for churches is to manage the "guest users" connecting to your network so that they don't overpower your network, bringing things to a standstill preventing the staff and ministry leaders from getting onto the network to do the necessary work needed. In our previous building we had two small home routers in our worship hall set up as AP's and both would be overwhelmed on Fridays (fellowship groups meeting) and Sundays as all the cellphones and tablets tried to connect. In many cases people's cellphone would be set up with WiFi always turned on whether they were actually using the connection or not. With these new AP's that allow you to specify bandwidth available (and the units hardware are designed to handle more connections) so we don't expect such problems. The congregation is just beginning to be aware of our new guest network so we'll see whether or not we have to add one or two more AP's to the existing two but at the price they are currently going for its a reasonable cost.
Note: the coverage is spherical. We are in a 3 story building (the 1st floor being the garage/storage) with two levels (2nd & 3rd floors) that include all our classrooms, conference rooms, worship hall and offices. We've place one AP on the west side of the 2nd floor in the middle of the floor (running north-south) and the other one on the east side of the 3rd floor in the middle of the floor (running north-south). We have excellent reception every where. We've set the AP's to automatically load balance the connections between them.
If you are looking for AP's that are highly configurable so you can set up multiple WiFi networks for different groups and you have some networking background the Ubiquiti product line could be the economical solution to meet your needs. If most of the locations you are considering putting an AP in are not wired (and adding wiring would be difficult) and networking background is limited, take a look at Open Mesh before deciding. They just might be the easier and more workable solution. Also remember one is managed locally while the other is cloud based.
| Wireless Type | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
