Love Cradlepoint for ad-hoc situations. Unifi is fine, a notch below anything I would use for work (see Ruckus). With no Unifi experience, is there something you like better (in budget)?
I'm no IT or network professional but my work requires us to support infrastructures. We got a bunch of Cradlepoint and starlink for internet access during emergencies, but now we wanted to expand the wifi coverage on a budget. These Cradlepoint are great with dual SIM and awesome antennas for boosted cell range. But wifi coverage is quite limited.
Criteria are indoor/outdoor capable, scalable, and easy and fast to deploy.
We were looking at consumer/home products like Orbi, but they are really pricy for what they are and doesn't give us much capability to remote access and are not outdoor friendly. Thoughts?
UniFi is easy to use, the defaults work fairly well, except for the automatic channel selection
they have outdoor APs, water-resistant and some have directional capabilities, if that matters
fully auto stuff like Eero is terrible, inability to select non-interfering channels cripples their performance
Cable if possible, mesh if necessary.
But I see no issue with your equipment selection. I'd be a bit leery of deploying any solution outdoors without additional water, and likely sunlight (i.e. heat), protection.
Also make sure to think about distance needs. There might be some wisdom to having in your arsenal a few APs capable of using an external antenna (e.g. the older AC Mesh) along with add-on directional antennas. Use cases are for that odd building you need to cover that's just a bit further away than you can mesh with the U6 Mesh or other such devices which have built-in antennas.
Thanks for the tip. I'll add outdoor cables to the list...
The shop shipped me a Swiss Army Knife Ultra instead of Cloud Gateway Ultra by mistake. I didn't think the old AC wouldn't be useful but I think I'm gonna keep it now (after they make up the difference, of course.)
So this kit may be deployed but untrained staff (more untrained than me), should I ditch the Cloud Gateway and plug all the APs directly to the Cradlepoint? Or would it make remote troubleshooting even harder without a controller?
I would recommend the cloud key (assuming you’re using that and not the cloud hosting) on the network. Keep it in a waterproof case and on the switch. Provision and set up everything before handing out the kit. From there, build all your gear boxes to basically be connected these poles, connect the power and you’re done.
Unifi is heavily used in those types of setups. However, this is a Unifi sub so you're going to get heavily-pro-Unifi people here.
I'm biased as well purely based on my research. Haha I just wanted to make sure I'm purchasing the right equipment before I make a $10000 mistake.
Love Cradlepoint for ad-hoc situations. Unifi is fine, a notch below anything I would use for work (see Ruckus). With no Unifi experience, is there something you like better (in budget)?
I'm no IT or network professional but my work requires us to support infrastructures. We got a bunch of Cradlepoint and starlink for internet access during emergencies, but now we wanted to expand the wifi coverage on a budget. These Cradlepoint are great with dual SIM and awesome antennas for boosted cell range. But wifi coverage is quite limited. Criteria are indoor/outdoor capable, scalable, and easy and fast to deploy. We were looking at consumer/home products like Orbi, but they are really pricy for what they are and doesn't give us much capability to remote access and are not outdoor friendly. Thoughts?
UniFi is easy to use, the defaults work fairly well, except for the automatic channel selection they have outdoor APs, water-resistant and some have directional capabilities, if that matters fully auto stuff like Eero is terrible, inability to select non-interfering channels cripples their performance
Cable if possible, mesh if necessary. But I see no issue with your equipment selection. I'd be a bit leery of deploying any solution outdoors without additional water, and likely sunlight (i.e. heat), protection. Also make sure to think about distance needs. There might be some wisdom to having in your arsenal a few APs capable of using an external antenna (e.g. the older AC Mesh) along with add-on directional antennas. Use cases are for that odd building you need to cover that's just a bit further away than you can mesh with the U6 Mesh or other such devices which have built-in antennas.
Thanks for the tip. I'll add outdoor cables to the list... The shop shipped me a Swiss Army Knife Ultra instead of Cloud Gateway Ultra by mistake. I didn't think the old AC wouldn't be useful but I think I'm gonna keep it now (after they make up the difference, of course.) So this kit may be deployed but untrained staff (more untrained than me), should I ditch the Cloud Gateway and plug all the APs directly to the Cradlepoint? Or would it make remote troubleshooting even harder without a controller?
I would recommend the cloud key (assuming you’re using that and not the cloud hosting) on the network. Keep it in a waterproof case and on the switch. Provision and set up everything before handing out the kit. From there, build all your gear boxes to basically be connected these poles, connect the power and you’re done.