So I need to get a few access points for my dad's church. I have been there to look at the network setup, and it's not that great. They have a decent partial POE managed Netgear switch, two mismatched access points, and the garbage ISP provided modem/router/firewall abomination.
One AP is an Engenius EAP350, and the other is an old Linksys WAP2000. They actually had two of the Linksys APs, but one physically died not long ago. Both current APs are POE, and the switch has 10 or so POE ports, so that's good. They need more than two APs to properly cover the building.
I think I have talked my dad into getting a pfsense box in there to manage and route everything. Right now, though, they really need to get the wireless situation under control. The APs are acting very, very flaky, and eventually stop working completely. I am not sure what would be causing that. It's possible that the horrible modem/router is just screwing everything up. It's also possible that the wifi password has been found out by the neighborhood and the network is being abused. Not sure.
I found a cheap lot of three Engenius EAP350 APs on ebay. Would those do OK for the situation?
What's the square footage that you're trying to cover? I've set these up before, so I strongly recommend them as they have great coverage and last a fairly long time.
I second @WolfTech716 's Ubiquiti AC Lite recommendation. You can do some fancy stuff with those AC Lite's, but you really would want to have the controller software running somewhere to facilitate it.
I'd love to get Ubiquiti APs, I have one myself. But they are a bit too expensive for this application. My dad would be footing the bill most likely, so we are trying to do this as cheaply as possible while still maintaining high quality. I am perfectly fine with getting used equipment as long as it is good quality.
Not sure about the actual square footage. I feel like to properly cover the entire building six APs would work great. But some of the building is hardly used right now, so four would be good enough for now.
If that's the case, then I would see about getting some wireless N Accesspoints used on ebay. You can get Cisco access points for not that much. Engenuis isn't even a company I've heard of, so just on brand I'd personally opt for another option.
Yeah, the only reason I mentioned the Engenius APs was because they already had one in the building. They seem popular on Amazon, too. It would make things easier. But since that one is acting flaky as it is now, I don't know if I trust it.
I would like to get Cisco APs, but the licensing thing bothers me. I'd need to find a dead simple model that doesn't rely on a specific (and expensive) license, and it would need to keep working essentially forever without the license. If anyone can point me in the direction of which model does that, please let me know.
Engenious APs aren't horrible. I used a pair of them for nearly ten years before finally replacing them with Ubiquiti APs. The ones that I had didn't do simultaneous b/g and n, so read the fine print before buying.
@marasm Since we're looking at a tight budget could you get us a price range (going from ideal, to optimal, to max)? Also, since you're wanting to get four of them, upgrading to 6 later on, ensure that the budget accounts for that, please and thank you.
Ideal and optimal would be between $50 and $100 for four units. Absolute max would be $150, but that's probably pushing it. I'm not worried about the last two units right now. We can do those down the road. The budget is just to get them up and running with reliable wifi.
Like I said, I found the lot of three EAP350s for $50 and free shipping.
@marasm I'm thinking maybe this will work out well for you, no AC, and three of them won't break the wallet. Dang that's a bummer about the listing, but check out the one I linked and let me know if it'll be good or not for your situation.
I'm thinking those won't work out well. PoE is pretty essential, as the two current APs are mounted either on or above a drop ceiling. There's no wall power available.
@marasmThese do seem to have good reviews, but I've never personally used them. Also, people say that it works with any PoE not just something from Ubiquiti so that is a postive, but YMMV.
That is so very close to what would work. Only problem is for some reason the PoE and LAN are separate. I saw another device with a similar setup, and I don't understand why it's like that. You need a PoE injector to power it, which means wall power nearby. So close.
I think I just figured something out about Cisco stuff. If the access point has the "autonomous" version of IOS installed it is standalone and doesn't need a controller. I will have to do some more research about the licensing part of it, but there are quite a few on ebay that say they are autonomous.
if you just need cheap and simple, you could get a few of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-390-Workstation-Core-2-Duo-6600-2-40GHz-4GB-no-vga-/201919647233?hash=item2f03594e01:g:74IAAOSw-K9ZENnK or similar cheap old pc's and install pfsense, throw in a wifi card and run cat5e to them. pfsense can be a wap and you only really need a cheap small usb for storing pfsense, a few gb of ram and a cheap cpu with a card that can do 100 megabytes per sec or so. im guessing your internet isnt good enough that you need gigabit or could afford it so this will be just fine. bigger then a lot of of wap's but you could probably get a few pc's like this free from the congregation. main point is cheap.
I'll probably have my dad get a few of the Cisco APs that have the autonomous firmware installed. I have a little Cisco experience, so I feel confident I can figure out how to set them up.
@marasm Sounds like you pretty much have this all figured out then for what you're going to do. Once you have your final decision, would you kindly update us all so we can hear about the setup process (another topic all together possibly). I'm interested in seeing someone perform @fredrich_nietze's idea too, I'm sure it's larger than what most people would want, but eh, if it gets the job done then why not?