wifi-U Breaks into Churches

Recently, we got a chance to attend a Church IT Network Conference as vendors. This was our first real conference, and we had a great time at the conference. Ryan and I thought it might be worthwhile to attend this conference as one of Ryan’s students recommended it after Ryan had told some stories related to some of the churches he supports. So we set up a table and brought a bunch of Ubiquiti equipment and let people touch stuff.

We weren’t very well prepared for running a both.  As you can see we didn’t have any banners showing who we are.  I had ordered the banners and thought we were in good shape but they got held up due to hurricane Helene and so they got to the office after I left for the conference.

Oh well, we will be ready for the next show.

Ryan held a talk he entitled “Holy Wi-Fi”. There were 50 people that attended, and he captivated them with stories about Ubiquiti installs and the capabilities of the UniFi devices.

We got lots of good feedback from the talk and then about 20 people followed us back to our “unmarked” booth where we continued the conversation.

Author: Eric Weber

So yes, WiFi-U has broken into the Church IT support market.  We love churches and we want them to be responsible with their parishioners money.  That makes Ubiquiti a great solution and we want to make sure they take advantage of all the new technology available to them!

Oh, and if you get a chance and want to attend the CITN next year you can access them here: https://churchitnetwork.com/national

And if you know of a great IT conference that you would recommend, we attend please let us know.  We’ll be sure to bring are banners next time!

Ubiquiti now supporting ONVIF capable 3rd party cameras

Train the Trainer

Recently all the wifi-U instructors went out to Salt Lake City for the Ubiquiti Train the Trainer Event.  It was an intense 3 days of going through all the slides and labs for four classes that we will be teaching for Ubiquiti. Of special interest was the Routing Switching Cybersecurity Administrator class. It’s their new class and it has a lot of great labs and heavy instruction on routing protocols. It’s a tough class and I don’t recommend it for beginners.  If you’re looking to get started in Networking take our Network Routing and Switching class before taking on that class.

We all felt like we were in an intense pressure cooker for three days, but we learned a lot, and a lot from each other.  I must admit I passed the test for the URSCA but not with a high enough score to teach it, so you may see me in the back of one of your classes, trying to prep for the test!

Author: Eric Weber

A Week In The Life Of A Trainer

This month I made it up to Augusta, Maine. It’s the one state I hadn’t traveled to and it’s a bit of an ordeal to get to Augusta. I had to fly from Boston on this 7-passenger plane.

Once I got there, I met the team from Aroostook Technologies https://aroostooktechnologies.com . They operate a WISP that goes all the way to the Canadian border and they have a specific set of challenges. There are lot lot of small communities they are trying to support but they have to be careful not to cross the Canadian border with their Wi-Fi signals because it’s against Canadian regulations to be operating in their space.

We had fun looking at the outdoor equipment and how to best deploy it using the UISP design tool during the UBWA course. This course is still very popular as Ubiquiti continues to deliver good products at a very reasonable price especially compared to running fiber in a rural area.

I also had a great Full Stack and UWA class in Richmond Virginia. So three capitals in one trip… Augusta, Richmond, and Boston.

Author: Eric Weber

Ubiquiti out in the wild

Recently, I got to take a trip to beautiful Scotland. I was travelling with family, and we took some amazing hikes to see the countryside.  One day we went way out to the Isle of Skye. It’s an amazing place and we happened to get fairly good weather. We made it out to see the epic Old Man of Storr

We hiked up and around it and when we got back to the Ranger Station, low and behold, we found some Ubiquiti Access Points!

The kids wanted to know why in the world I was taking pictures of the side of a building J

But you know!

It’s always fun to see how Ubiquiti is being deployed out in the wild.

Author: Eric Weber

Ubiquiti is now a true enterprise solution

The iconic Ubiquiti circular access point, now known as the Flagship access point, now graces the ceilings of multiple homes, small businesses and churches. Ubiquiti has been slowly expanding into increasingly bigger and bigger markets, and its no longer uncommon to see their WiFi, cameras and even phones out in the wild. But critics will tell you that while Ubiquiti is nice for these small applications, the company’s products are simply not ready for a truly enterprise environment.

Someone should tell that to the Lakeland School District in LaGrange, Indiana. The network administrator there, along with his small staff of IT and database professionals, now maintains 5 schools in the county completely on Ubiquiti products. Over the past five years, they have slowly replaced the network switches, Wi-Fi, security cameras and door access systems at each school with Ubiquiti hardware. This has significantly reduced their year over year costs by eliminating the expensive hardware licensing fees, known as “Hardware as a Service,” that other companies charge for the privilege of using their hardware that was already purchased. Lakeland IT personnel jokingly refer to this as “Hostage as a Service,” noting that if you stop paying the expensive fees (in the thousands of dollars per year), your fancy hardware turns into a nice looking brick.

The setup at Lakeland is impressive. The schools are connected either via fiber or through UISP wireless links, including the Wave and AirFiber systems. Lakeland uses Unifi Identity Enterprise so that employees can access different buildings using the same credentials. Most schools have WiFi-7 access points or are scheduled for a refresh in the near future. The Protect cameras can now view multiple buildings in a consolidated fashion using the new Vantage Point system.

Lakeland is now partnering with wifi-U to try and host a Ubiquiti training class at least once a year, if not more, to ensure it keeps its employees fully trained on the latest technology that Ubiquiti offers. wifi-U sent its most handsome and dashing instructor, Ryan Haag, out recently to provide full stack training on both Unifi Wireless and Ubiquiti Broadband equipment lines.

If a large school district, spanning multiple buildings and hundreds of employees, can use Ubiquiti for all its needs, why can’t you?

If you’re interested in replacing your existing hardware an no longer being a hostage to greedy equipment manufacturers that charge you licensing fees every year, but need help getting started, give us a call here at wifi-U!

Author: Ryan Haag

UMR to the Rescue

When you travel, Unifi Mobile Router is the best gift you can give yourself. Small but mighty covers you, no matter if you are by the beach, on the road or in the mountains of Alaska, (if AT&T covers the area).

Thanks to my new UMR I can say goodbye to slow Wi-Fi in hotel rooms, connection drop in the middle of a project, and enjoy a movie after I’m done working.

But that’s not all, you can use it in your car and enjoy good quality Wi-Fi for your laptop, tablet, etc. As long as you are not the driver!

Unexpectedly easy to install, UMR is the perfect addition to my “must have” for travel around America.

Author: Cora Martin

Passive Aggressive PoE

There I was, troubleshooting a non-working Ubiquiti G3 Flex camera at a warehouse. It was frustrating. I pulled the camera out and plugged it directly into the switch, and the camera powered on with no issue. I then put a pin tester on the wire, which tested OK as well. I plugged the camera back in, and it powered up with no issue…but I had done this last week as well, and I didn’t want the camera to fail after a week.

Then I put my Fluke Ethernet tester on the wire, and it came up with “Passive PoE.”

Well well well.

Most people are familiar with Power over Ethernet (PoE), which allows you to power devices using an ethernet cable directly from a network switch. PoE has been around for a while, with the 802.3af arriving as early as 2003, and the 802.3at (called PoE+) in 2009 and 802.3bt (called PoE++) in 2018. Ethernet power makes installing security cameras, wireless access points and even larger displays easy, with no need to hire an electrician. But before these standards existed, there were non-standard PoE switches that provided Passive PoE. Passive PoE provided either 24V or 48V across 4 or 8 wires, and is still used on the UISP hardware line. It’s easy and cheap to run, because it provides the voltage without regard to the downstream equipment.

So how did Passive PoE wind up on my ethernet? Clearly I didn’t want it there, and it was causing the camera to trip off.

The problem comes from physics, specifically from electromagnetic induction. As an electrical signal moves in a wire, it induces a magnetic field. That magnetic field can induce an electric field in a nearby wire, causing interference. Normally this isn’t an issue, since the wires in CAT-6 cabling have a small plastic divider called a spline that prevents alien crosstalk. But when cables are bundled close to each other, the magnetic field from one cable can affect nearby cables. This is made worse when you have multiple PoE devices that are pulling more electricity.

My cable, bundled next to others, was getting an induced voltage that my Fluke detected as passive PoE, which was causing the camera to eventually shut down.

The solution is to use shielded cable. Shielded cables can be STP, where the foil is shielding the entire cable, or FTP, where the foil shields each pair. This metal shielding makes the cable larger, but it eliminates the crosstalk and induction problems in large cable bundles. Even better, this shielding helps dissipate heat when the cables are running large loads. While your average WAP won’t likely heat up a cable too much, the PoE++ standard allows up to 90 watts of power, and can send up to 1.25 amps down a line. That amperage is above the let-go level, meaning if you grasped a wire with that much amperage your muscles might not be able to release it. Thankfully the switch would like shutdown quickly, but it would not be a fun experience!

If you’ve got large cable bundles with lots of PoE devices, its best to start using CAT-6A shielded cable to prevent the induction problems in your wiring.

Author: Ryan Haag

New Care Packages

We made sure our hard-working students have some fun and healthy snacks, hand selected by our team. Happy training!

At wifi-U, we love our WISPs and our Church IT volunteers!