PfSense network topology question
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Thank you for your information. If ac is not really worth is, does the 5 GHz ban worth it? And how long do you guys think N will hold on? couple of years? Will it be old in say 5 years. Because if I am not mistaken G was released in 2003 and N in 2009 and we are still supporting them. So yeah, meybe we should get a decent AP on the N channel. But 2.4 is getting crowded. At N rate in 2.4 or 5 GHz standard APs can do around 300 mbps. Some claim 450 mbps. They need AC in 5 GHz for 1300 mbps if I am not mistaken. We have a gigabit connection. My opinion now is that we should go for the 2.4 / 5 GHz N capable APs. Am I right? 5 GHz to get some stress of the 2.4 band with the clients supporting 5 GHz.
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Also, If money is not a question, then I would only gain with buying an AP supporting AC, or not?
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You are going to have to do 2.4 and 5 regardless. AC is 5 only. N is not going anywhere.
You have lots of decisions to make. Who cares if N or AC can to 1300Mbit/s if your internet pipe is only, say, 1000Mbits? Remember that everyone has to share that. A benefit to having faster wi-fi is reduced air time to get the same data onto the wire.
Are your clients going to be isolated from each other or be able to communicate? Do you want someone to be able to see everyone's network shares if they're both connected to the Wi-Fi or not?
And people aren't going to get that if they're not in the same room with the AP. And they won't get it anyway. It's marketing hype.
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WiFi is half duplex …. 1300mbit/s will "only" result in around 500-600mbit actual throughput in ideal circumstances.
also the 1300mbit/s will only be achieved by using 80Mhz channels.
in europe only 5 non-overlapping-80Mhz-channels are available for use on the 5ghz band .... Only 1 of those can be used all the time, the other 4 are DFS channels and have to make way for other radio/radar interferences when detected. (= loss of connection for clients, until the reconnect).imho the current 802.11ac is never gonna be a huge success in a corporate environment, when dealing with multiple AP's .... it might be OK if you just use one at home and don't have many neighbours.
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Yup. Build for N. 20Mhz channels on 2.4 and 40Mhz channels on 5. If you get that solid your users will be happy.
If you really want them to be happy, budget in a small, low-power ESXi or XenServer platform (C2758?) so you can host things like the Ubiquiti controller, an additional caching DNS server, maybe a documentation web site or wiki, a dorm forum, or whatever, and, of course, your pfSense (which pretty much eliminates XenServer at the moment).
Your biggest problem is going to be getting cat to where you should be mounting the APs.
Figure $1000 for the switch, $1000 for the C2758, and 10 UAP-Pro APs at $220 each. Assorted racks, jacks, cables, etc and you're looking at about $5k + labor to pull the cat.
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Also, If money is not a question, then I would only gain with buying an AP supporting AC, or not?
You will only get full AC speed in close proximity to the AP (5-10m) with free line-of-sight and no obstacles/walls in-between. It is more likely to end up with N speed for most of your users anyway.
And AC needs a hell lot of bandwidth in the pipeline - which is air. You cannot reserve it for you exclusively. So everything using these channels as well will have a negative effect on your throughput. And you will be amazed of what's in the air competing with you!
BTW, you would need to connect two 1Gb/s cables bonded to each AP to push the full 1300Mbit/s between switchports and AP.
Forget about AC, it's neither worth it nor doable in close density installs.Having said that, have a look at the Ruckus Wireless APs.
Their ZoneFlex series uses beam-forming extensively to "shoot" to hosts, not crowding unnecessary areas.
Look at the 7372 or R300 series devices.
Have a look and some good reading at their TechTalk and White/Black Paper sections. Lots of knowledge there!Finally, you will want to "look" into your wireless domain for planning and solving problems.
I found Metageek quite useful. If you cannot afford the Wi-spy spectrum analyzer then go with their WiFi-card only option, which is inSSIDer scan. -
7372s are amazing. But they're about double the cost and with 10 I'd suggest a ZD1100 to go along with it. Yes, it would work great. A little spendy for this install. The $5k quoted above will quickly become $10k plus annual maintenance.
I'm sort of surprised OP's school doesn't have an overall wireless policy to follow.
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Thank you for all the suggestions. I will reply to them as soon as i will have time. Probably sometime in the evening (in my time zone).
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7372s are amazing. But they're about double the cost …
That's why I mentioned the R300 as well. It is listed as 3/5 of the 7372 at my distributor (approx. net 300,- Eur vs. 500,- Eur ) which should put it in the ballpark.
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Dear friends!
Today was a sad day. They told me, that I have one hour to submit the list of required things for the network. I gathered all I learned from you and some pre-existing things and submitted the following list :
Server
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P
CPU - AMD FX-8320 3.5 GHz AM3+
Memory - 4 x 2 GB DDR3 1333-1600 MHz
NIC - PCIe Gigabit Ethernet NICCables - Cat6
Main switch - 1x D-Link DGS-1100-24
Spare switches - 8x D-Link GO-SW-8G
Wireless APs - 10x Unifi UAP-PROThis will be the setup if they accept the plan. We will see soon. I went with Unifi because they offer a great all-in-one package hardware and software wise. I ditched the AC standard, as you have said, not worth it.
I hope this thing won't be a complete failure, because my neck is on the line, kind of. Please leave your opinions below, thank you :) -
My motto is always ask for what you want and have them tell you no, if they didn't give you a budget to work with then you get the best of everything and let them tell you "NO". I try to have my boss tell me NO at least once a week, in other words if you don't ask, then you will never know what you could have gotten. I don't think your list is bad I probably would have gotten a core i processor but should be fine for what you want to do.
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Looks to me your building your own server? That might be fine in your house, but not in production setup. Why would you not buy an off the shelf server from a major player get support, and be done with it? Who you going to call if that DIY box crashes - how fast can you get a replacement on site?
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Yes I am building my own server. I chose this option because I don't need the things off-the-shelf products offer like virtualisation, ECC memory management and things like that. I chose AMD over Intel, because the socket types list was very long and confusing for me. Plus worse money/value ration imho. Also, I have always worked with AMD in the past, and no problems at all so far. Again, I don't need the fancy computational power Intel provides with his quality core i series and things like that. I did not choose the Xeon series, because again, don't need it. We are living in a dormitory, this is not a company. People don't really care about uptime, 24/7 availability. They don't mind to have even a couple of hours downtime sometimes, because what they use the internet for is mostly Facebook, Youtube and school. Also if we have a problem, we detach a few cables, if not solved, we do a restart, if still not good, we revert to a previous state. If we have a HW problem, then no worries, we will have the current server as backup server. Back to the processors. I like AMDs raw power. 8 core. I know Intel has 8 threads, but still, not the same thing. also we have 3.5 GHz and we are not calculating floating point numbers. Off-the-shelf products are expensive, and if I spent the money on the things I don't need I would not have money for the things I do. I live in the dorm where the server is, so maintenance is not a problem. Mikeisfly, I did exactly that. We will see if they say NO. Lets hope for the best. (For the record, sent this from a core i7 laptop xD)
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The biggest problem I see is that your processor is burning at 125w, which will make it HOT and quick to fail should you fail to clean it very regularly. Dust will be your enemy. To mitigate that, I'd put a huge heat sink on it the size of a boat anchor. That should make it reliable even with a bit of dust (There will be dust)
Other than that, should be fine assuming you don't run into any compatibility issues.
That being said, I'd have gone with a more purpose built server board. it wouldn't have really added much to the price.
However, you should do well with this if you take steps to keep that CPU frigid.
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We did order a huge ass fan and heat sink for the CPU-and also a few coolers for the box and finally, we will have cooling on the "tower" itself.
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And good quality thermal paste
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Sounds like you should be good to go for a few years.
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Take picture and post progress, enjoy. I can remember my first project almost 20 years ago know and remember thinking to myself someone is actually going to pay me to do what I love to do, this is what my dad was talking about! I guess he wasn't as dumb as I thought he was when I was in high school.
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"People don't really care about uptime, 24/7"
BS!!! Plain and simple, and if your telling yourself that now as you just enter the field your in for a HUGE freaking wake up call. IT is about UPTIME!! Is the system available, does it WORK.. Doesn't matter if you built the slickest system since slice bread or saved X $ doing it.. If it ain't up and working its useless..
You don't need xyz functionally?? Dude you don't need to pick up the highest end box.. Dell desktop could be used, the big thing you want is
3 Year ProSupport with Next Business Day Onsite Service [add $179.00]
Who is going to fix that box when it dies.. When are you going to refresh it? Your not there forever are you? So Next guy is going to come in and say who put together that POS?? Who's money do you think your saving??
I just priced a dell, with 4th Generation Intel
Core
i5-4460 processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz), 8GB of ram and 1TB disk – Your talking $678, when $180 of that was for 3 year support on site 24x7 is not expensive in such a project.. How much are you spending on parts?? From your MB and CPU I show you at $250 already.. Not counting case, memory, HDD, etc. How much are you saving??For under $1200 you can get a entry level server grade hardware with 3 year support... Why would you build your own?? I really just don't get - this is BIG mistake in any project, you have to think about business continuity and uptime.. If that server dies, there better be one on site next day at a min!!
In your order of AP, did you count for any on site spares? So if one dies you put in new one and get replacement?
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Dude, chill please! What is wrong with building my own server? This is NOT an enterprise, I do NOT need what you are saying. I do NOT need that Next business day thing. Trust me I do NOT need any of those. I am the warranty on that box. Me, and my knowledge and time spent with computers. And if someone comes after me, I will teach him the do's and don'ts of the system. I really don't understand you raging at me. Take mikeisfly for example. He only told me to not forget taking pictures. While he might not have the same view of things as me, he respected my idea. And believe me we DO NOT NEED 24/7. Just don't. We are not a bank. If something goes wrong, I disconnect the whole network, only keep the cables for the secretary office and that's it. I usually set up an AP on the main line itself right after the server and if someone needs the internet, they come to that AP. If the server fails by any random offside chance, than we have a backup. Not at the next day, but right there, right then. Not some Next Business Day crap. Right there. So do you get it now? It is all about flexibility. Sorry that I wrote this post in an angry way, but you tried to fore your view of the world on me, and I had a different opinion. No hard feelings.
