I have a friend that is deploying a WiFi network in a fairly heavy treed campground.
Trying to select the best equipment. If anyone has experience to share on what equipment to use and if you tested / deployed any of the follow. Ruckus, cnPilot, Ubiquiti or any other radios a person should consider.
Budget is somewhat flexible but want to keep it within reason. Suggestion on backhaul links would be greatly apperciated as well. Who has the best management software or 3rd party options?
Hi,
cnPilot E500 is recommended and it can be managed with cloud hosted cnMaestro controller.
I use an E400 (indoor Cambium AC dual-band) and a Ubiquiti LR2.4 and a 5.8 outdoor APs on my home network. I prefer the Cambium for actually connecting to the network, I'm ambivalent regarding the management.
I like that the Ubiquiti management (Unifi) can be run locally on a low-resource machine, whereas CNMaestro is either Cloud or requires a fairly robust system running virtualization for the 'on-premises' approach. But I prefer the CNMaestro UI and features, all in all, and (importantly to me) the Cambium gear can be run solely with local login-and-configure, whereas the Unifi radios REQUIRE their management system to configure.
And Cambium wins hands-down with regard to responsiveness to problems or suggestions.
I've deployed a few client networks using Unifi and 2-3 Ubiquiti APs, still haven't done one (other than my own home) with the Cambium wifi but will lean that way when next we're asked to set up multi-AP client network.
As far as backhaul, it would help to know a bit more about your intended use - short range, several miles, 50ft through trees, etc. I tend to prefer ePMP 5ghz for client-side BH installations, though we've done several using UBNT NBE-m5-16, the little 6" diameter integrated Ubiquiti units. (more often of late we sell a customer two ePMP Force180 radios if the endpoints are LoS)
j
While you have many excellent choices among Wi-Fi vendors, i have to admint, we here are a "little biased" (of course) towards the E500 ;) It is lower priced than Ubiquiti 802.11ac Outdoor Wi-Fi! and IP67 as well and comes with a feature to power on the ePMP backhaul directly from teh E500 (daisy chained power). We hope you try it out