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I wonder how difficult it would be to implement a rudimentary controller for their APs. The WLAN configurations are just text files in the /etc directory. Getti

I wonder how difficult it would be to implement a rudimentary controller for their APs. The WLAN configurations are just text files in the /etc directory. Getting feature parity would be a lot of work, but I bet the bar isn't too high for simple functionality. Most of the "magic" is happening in hostapd on the APs anyway.

nemesisdesign 6y ago
I think you are wrong. I have been working on https://openwisp.org https://openwisp.org for some time and implementing a controller which is robust and can handle many different corner cases and offer good functionality and also ease of use is a challenge and requires several people working full time on it. Even simple functionality it's a lot of work, unless for simple you mean really trivial. If it wasn't hard, there would be many alternatives but as far as I know there aren't many.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  I was definitely shooting my mouth off to some extent. I'd defer to your experience for sure. I took a look at your project pages briefly and I'm going to spend more time looking them later. It definitely looks neat, and much more "feature-ful" than I'd be looking for. I'm particularly interested in looking at your modular configuration system. My needs definitely don't exercise corner cases. Most of the UniFi gear I've got out there is just running a single SSID w/ WPA-RADIUS and a RADIUS-assigned VLAN. Here or there I've got an SSID w/ a PSK and a hard-set VLAN. Nothing too fancy. Adopting new APs quickly and easily based on a "magic" DNS name, alerting when an AP disappears, and syslog to show association/roaming/disassociation events is about all I want. I'm putting Customer-owned gear in small offices w/ under 10 APs, rather than being a service provider.
  - nemesisdesign 6y ago
    Interesting information, thanks for sharing. Definitely doable by adding also the monitoring module, which would show you associated clients in a chart. But it's not as easy to set up as Ubiquiti though. I hope in the future it will be.

nemesisdesign 6y ago

I think you are wrong. I have been working on https://openwisp.org https://openwisp.org for some time and implementing a controller which is robust and can handle many different corner cases and offer good functionality and also ease of use is a challenge and requires several people working full time on it. Even simple functionality it's a lot of work, unless for simple you mean really trivial. If it wasn't hard, there would be many alternatives but as far as I know there aren't many.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
I was definitely shooting my mouth off to some extent. I'd defer to your experience for sure. I took a look at your project pages briefly and I'm going to spend more time looking them later. It definitely looks neat, and much more "feature-ful" than I'd be looking for. I'm particularly interested in looking at your modular configuration system. My needs definitely don't exercise corner cases. Most of the UniFi gear I've got out there is just running a single SSID w/ WPA-RADIUS and a RADIUS-assigned VLAN. Here or there I've got an SSID w/ a PSK and a hard-set VLAN. Nothing too fancy. Adopting new APs quickly and easily based on a "magic" DNS name, alerting when an AP disappears, and syslog to show association/roaming/disassociation events is about all I want. I'm putting Customer-owned gear in small offices w/ under 10 APs, rather than being a service provider.
- nemesisdesign 6y ago
  Interesting information, thanks for sharing. Definitely doable by adding also the monitoring module, which would show you associated clients in a chart. But it's not as easy to set up as Ubiquiti though. I hope in the future it will be.