5 ms·

The Java stuff caused problems at our office because the installer (on OS X) didn't even run. Not on any computer. It got stuck trying to discover the device,

The Java stuff caused problems at our office because the installer (on OS X) didn't even run. Not on any computer. It got stuck trying to discover the device, when in fact it was the Java app that didn't work properly. We had start that web server thing from the shell and then point a browser to it. Even then we (one of whom is a former Cisco engineer) had to struggle several hours just getting it to start a working wifi network. The box is Apple-pretty, but it's probably the least smooth network device I've had the misfortune to set up, and it's scared me off Ubiquity a bit. It's not just us, either. Forums found plenty of people with similar issues, but no solutions.

Ambroos 10y ago
I think the OS X thing is just offered to be nice, but their controller is effortless to install on Debian, even remotely. I put our controller on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet with Debian 8. Took 10 minutes to set up back in January, has been working faultlessly ever since (even through automated updates).
- teilo 10y ago
  Even better, get their CloudKey. It's a fully embedded controller, POE, and is only about $70. Painless.
devonkim 10y ago
I went in blind and set everything up within 30 min easily running the Unifi controller that needs a properly setup Java runtime environment on OS X El Capitan. I'm going to put the controller on a Raspberry Pi soon as well to move infrastructure software off my work environments. It's kind of cludgey to setup Java still in 2016 but if that wasn't your issue I'm not sure how you expected to install everything. It seemed fairly clear from the quick install guide that you need the controller daemon / web server running first and that it will discover the AP you need to provision. I'll take an awkward, consistent Java runtime setup over random solutions for, say, Python web servers using all sorts of configs.
danudey 10y ago
As someone who's had to deal with Cisco WLCs/APs, I can't imagine anything more complicated and frustrating to set up and use. Can't download or upload configuration backups without a TFTP or FTP server, the interface is a mess to try to navigate, there's a lot of Cisco-specific terminology that isn't explained so you end up spending a lot of time googling terms to find out that they're things you knew about already. Then there's running the things. Switching to 40Hz channels screwed up our wireless network until I discovered that iOS devices have problems with bonded channels with upper control. An easy fix usually, but the WLC doesn't give you the option to prefer one or the other; it just randomly picks a channel and then pairs it with the associated channel however. Now I have a dozen APs and I have to manually assign the channels on each one because if I set it to auto it chooses an upper channel 50% of the time. I had an issue for a while where the APs weren't passing broadcast traffic on my LAN. After a long search, I found tons of documentation on enabling multicast (didn't help), Bonjour caching (wasn't relevant), and so on. What actually fixed it was enabling HREAP on my WLAN, for some reason. Cisco stuff is probably great if you're spending tens of thousands of dollars and you're a Cisco-certified engineer, or if you're the kind of person to plug everything in and not change any checkboxes you don't have to, but for managing it in an office it's been a frustrating disaster.

Ambroos 10y ago

I think the OS X thing is just offered to be nice, but their controller is effortless to install on Debian, even remotely. I put our controller on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet with Debian 8. Took 10 minutes to set up back in January, has been working faultlessly ever since (even through automated updates).

teilo 10y ago
Even better, get their CloudKey. It's a fully embedded controller, POE, and is only about $70. Painless.

devonkim 10y ago

I went in blind and set everything up within 30 min easily running the Unifi controller that needs a properly setup Java runtime environment on OS X El Capitan. I'm going to put the controller on a Raspberry Pi soon as well to move infrastructure software off my work environments. It's kind of cludgey to setup Java still in 2016 but if that wasn't your issue I'm not sure how you expected to install everything. It seemed fairly clear from the quick install guide that you need the controller daemon / web server running first and that it will discover the AP you need to provision. I'll take an awkward, consistent Java runtime setup over random solutions for, say, Python web servers using all sorts of configs.

danudey 10y ago

As someone who's had to deal with Cisco WLCs/APs, I can't imagine anything more complicated and frustrating to set up and use. Can't download or upload configuration backups without a TFTP or FTP server, the interface is a mess to try to navigate, there's a lot of Cisco-specific terminology that isn't explained so you end up spending a lot of time googling terms to find out that they're things you knew about already. Then there's running the things. Switching to 40Hz channels screwed up our wireless network until I discovered that iOS devices have problems with bonded channels with upper control. An easy fix usually, but the WLC doesn't give you the option to prefer one or the other; it just randomly picks a channel and then pairs it with the associated channel however. Now I have a dozen APs and I have to manually assign the channels on each one because if I set it to auto it chooses an upper channel 50% of the time. I had an issue for a while where the APs weren't passing broadcast traffic on my LAN. After a long search, I found tons of documentation on enabling multicast (didn't help), Bonjour caching (wasn't relevant), and so on. What actually fixed it was enabling HREAP on my WLAN, for some reason. Cisco stuff is probably great if you're spending tens of thousands of dollars and you're a Cisco-certified engineer, or if you're the kind of person to plug everything in and not change any checkboxes you don't have to, but for managing it in an office it's been a frustrating disaster.