how good is the unifi wireless backhaul?

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › how good is the unifi wireless backhaul?

richms

28172 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#129249 8-Sep-2013 20:13

I have tried with some cheap routers and WDS, but get no end of grief with turning one end of the bridge off at the power causing the AP at the other end to lock up or behave erratically. It seems putting in a mac address that it cant actually see at that time will cause the AP to die after about 2-3 mins and never come back.

One option is to change to something non WDS based like the unifi's, but there are other issues with them in this situation as far as powering them since they are more than 12 volts.

I need bridging so that I have all the things show on the network with the correct mac address as the bridge moves between the accesspoints on the wired network.

Richard rich.ms

theEd

341 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#891771 8-Sep-2013 21:05

NanoStations come with 15V power supplies but generally work fine on a 12V supply. Or, even better, you can use something like this to bump the 12V up to 18V and turn it into Passive PoE in the process.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#891915 9-Sep-2013 09:59

From reading stuff all over the UBNT forums my understanding is that Unifi wireless backhaul is just a repackaged version of WDS so there is still a 50% drop in throughput.
In saying that I have used it quite a bit in hotspot situations where throughput doesn't really matter as you are limiting guests to 1-3Mbps anyway.
So if you want the throughput a proper link (using NanoStations etc) would be the business.

Inphinity

2780 posts

Uber Geek

#891947 9-Sep-2013 10:45

The best (and presumably intended) implementation that I've used with Unifi APs is to have them all with gigabit backhaul and PoE. It works really well, far better than any of the WDS implementations I've tried, but I'm not sure I'd really want to rely solely on wireless mesh backhaul for the APs (plus that would mean having 24V or 48V transformers plugged in to them all, which isn't practical in some of our locations).

qyiet

454 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#891988 9-Sep-2013 11:26

I've been running a Unifi bridge for quite a while. If your concern is stability of the link it seems pretty good (although I had issues when the beta firmware first came out. UBNT *means* beta when they say beta, unlike Google).

It does take the 50% performance hit similar to WDS, but I really don't care as it's just supplying internet, and that's still way slower than wifi in my area. My link is fairly short, but has to punch through a few walls with re-enforcing in them.

Another option with better performance would be to use a point to point bridge. I've not done this, so this is 'in theory' from my PoV. That said: you could do this with a couple of dedicated unifi radios and then have an internal Access Point on the far side of the bridge. UBNT have a cheap clip on one for their power injectors for just that.

Warning: reality may differ from above post

raytaylor

4014 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#893002 10-Sep-2013 23:52

I have a motto
Friends dont let friends use WDS repeating.

I advise that WDS is only to bridge only. If you want to repeat, then you use two radios to bridge, and then a third to act as an AP.

The proper way to extend wifi coverage is
1) Use two AP's/radios with the same Network Name/SSID, security settings and different channels
2) The secondary AP is backhauled to the primary AP source such as a common switch, or perhaps the switch is built into the primary AP as in the case of a common 4 port router, by either
- Ethernet Cable
- Homeplug/HomePNA/Ethernet over Powerline
- Two more radios acting solely as a bridge.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here