If you were deploying all new APs today, N or AC?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Why is PoE needed? Is it a business need or just a tech want? What's the financial driver there?
To deploy VOIP phones. If I don't use POE I have to either use a power injector or power bricks at the endpoint, assuming the phones support power bricks.
In some cases I need to ensure the phones say working even in a power outage, so those will need to be on UPS either through the switch or one near the phone.
That's a generic overview. But how does that apply to you specifically? Where are your UPS located?
Power Injectors ARE PoE, not an alternative.
You state that you might need bricks, but you don't state if that is a positive, a negative or a draw.
You haven't mentioned (that I noticed) what phones you are considering. All 100Mb/s phones that I know come with bricks for free, so PoE is extra money, not less.
Have you done a cost comparison to see which is financially best?
Building 1 - already has POE and APs and can probably stay as status quo
Building 2 - has 12 POE ports to run the APs (no ceiling power)
_______12 of the phones hang from the wall where power is not easily accessible.
_______There is currently a APC Smart-UPS 1500 in that closet, during last outage lasted about _______1 hour, probably needs to be upgraded
Building 3 - new construction, we need to purchase everythingWe need to have at least 3 phones in each building be available during power outages. This means that the switch must remain operational, so a UPS needs to be there, probably meaning that using POE is better than maintaining 9 different UPSs to control local power bricks.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's more than just the equipment though. In a straight swap from one piece of gear to the same gear, there is little to no setup needed, just import the old config on the new box, and you're back in business.
Sure, but we are talking trivial effort, right? How much effort does installing APs take? How many do you have? Doesn't replacing them constitute that same effort anyway?
Yes the configuration is probably pretty trivial, and while the effort of replacing an AP now versus replacing them during a crisis would be the same, doing a controlled cut is significantly less stressful and can be done gradually.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's more than just the equipment though. In a straight swap from one piece of gear to the same gear, there is little to no setup needed, just import the old config on the new box, and you're back in business.
Sure, but we are talking trivial effort, right? How much effort does installing APs take? How many do you have? Doesn't replacing them constitute that same effort anyway?
Yes the configuration is probably pretty trivial, and while the effort of replacing an AP now versus replacing them during a crisis would be the same, doing a controlled cut is significantly less stressful and can be done gradually.
Yes, very true, but it comes with a financial cost, possibly a large one. What matters more, inducing pain and wasting money, or accepting the risk of pain and saving money?
Honest question, this is truly an organizational question to ask. How important is money versus luxury?
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Or, you can read it as: which is more important, profits and at work comfort?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's more than just the equipment though. In a straight swap from one piece of gear to the same gear, there is little to no setup needed, just import the old config on the new box, and you're back in business.
Sure, but we are talking trivial effort, right? How much effort does installing APs take? How many do you have? Doesn't replacing them constitute that same effort anyway?
Yes the configuration is probably pretty trivial, and while the effort of replacing an AP now versus replacing them during a crisis would be the same, doing a controlled cut is significantly less stressful and can be done gradually.
Yes, very true, but it comes with a financial cost, possibly a large one. What matters more, inducing pain and wasting money, or accepting the risk of pain and saving money?
Honest question, this is truly an organizational question to ask. How important is money versus luxury?
yeah - that would be a BOD question - and if asked separately of the 12 of them 6 would probably say one way, and the other 6 the other way.. though get them in a room, and most would cave and it would boil down to 2-3 verbally duking it out.
I can tell you that currently, when computers are unavailable operations pretty much stop until they are restored. While this often leads to very little in lost revenue (I'm told we have a very high return rate) it does lead to a frustrated BOD asking what they can do in the future to prevent this and is often implemented at that time.
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@Dashrender said:
Yes the configuration is probably pretty trivial, and while the effort of replacing an AP now versus replacing them during a crisis would be the same, doing a controlled cut is significantly less stressful and can be done gradually.
Then, to me, this would come down to an analysis of the chosen AP solution to be the replacement.
Does a direct swap of all gear provide same coverage? Will units need to be moved to provide better coverage, that kind of thing.
Using Ubiquiti hardware as an example:
Maybe you can buy the UAP Pro model and use half as many, or the UAP Long Range.
If you do that, you may look instead at the UAP AC because now the price difference is much less when comparing against the Pro or LR.
All things to consider. There is certainly not a simple right answer. You have new construction, new SIP phones, EOL hardware, and DR recovery all needing to be weighed in on this.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Or, you can read it as: which is more important, profits and at work comfort?
If the dollar amount is a few thousand a year - They'll take the comfort. If it's 10K+, then they will seriously consider profit vs comfort.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Or, you can read it as: which is more important, profits and at work comfort?
If the dollar amount is a few thousand a year - They'll take the comfort. If it's 10K+, then they will seriously consider profit vs comfort.
How do you quantify that comfort? I mean these decisions have to be made over and over again. APs can't be the only item. So do you say "all IT needs like this" add up to $1k? Or "all APs" add up to $1k? Or "each AP" is $1K?
To have this make sense, you need to somehow quantify the comfort amounts from different activities and put a dollar value on that comfort indicator. Does that make sense? Otherwise I could manipulate any discussion to be too costly for comfort or not just by how it is presented.
How much comfort does this provide for how much money? How many APs are we talking? What is the actual risk of the controller failing and needing to do an update each year? Not only might this hold off investment, it might reduce an entire buying cycle or two!
If this is only twenty APs, and the only question of comfort is your own (who else is impacted?) how many thousands of dollars are they willing to spend to keep you from having one busy night of plugging in APs?
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@scottalanmiller said:
If this is only twenty APs, and the only question of comfort is your own (who else is impacted?) how many thousands of dollars are they willing to spend to keep you from having one busy night of plugging in APs?
A couple specific points of note:
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It is certainly not as simple as plugging in new APs. New hardware will have their own mounting brackets. Depending on the architecture, this may or may not be simple to switch.
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It is not a busy night. It will be a busy late afternoon assuming that overnight shipping was ordered. The stated acceptable downtime was 24 hours.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
If this is only twenty APs, and the only question of comfort is your own (who else is impacted?) how many thousands of dollars are they willing to spend to keep you from having one busy night of plugging in APs?
A couple specific points of note:
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It is certainly not as simple as plugging in new APs. New hardware will have their own mounting brackets. Depending on the architecture, this may or may not be simple to switch.
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It is not a busy night. It will be a busy late afternoon assuming that overnight shipping was ordered. The stated acceptable downtime was 24 hours.
True. Good points. Although I assume that IT has nothing to do with mounting them, nor even plugging them in, only in prepping them and doing the IT stuff. Building maintenance, whoever hangs the fixtures and does the electrical and wiring, I would assume would do the the non-IT tasks. In theory, IT might only need to verify things, not even fix them.
So it would be discomfort for someone, but just people who presumably are there to do those tasks. And hopefully wiring is already in place. So it is just the mounting and plugging in, not running new wires. That would add complication.
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It's fly by the seat of the pants - like most SMBs. If the owners have a bad itch - it just gets scratched nearly no matter the cost. By the same token, if they don't see the value in something, they completely ignore it.
Telling them that in our current situation if the controller dies we're down for at least 24 hours and that it costs (Building 1 APs = 7, Building 2 = 11, total 18 * $229 (assuming we went with the AP-Pro that is compatible with our current POE switches) = $4122 They'd seriously consider it, but I can't frankly tell you which way they would lean. Frustrated owners and customers are highly undesirable to the BOD (of course like they would be in any business - but especially so here).
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@Dashrender said:
Telling them that in our current situation if the controller dies we're down for at least 24 hours and that it costs (Building 1 APs = 7, Building 2 = 11, total 18 * $229 (assuming we went with the AP-Pro that is compatible with our current POE switches) = $4122 They'd seriously consider it, but I can't frankly tell you which way they would lean. Frustrated owners and customers are highly undesirable to the BOD (of course like they would be in any business - but especially so here).
The $65 APs won't work with your existing wiring?
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@scottalanmiller said:
The $65 APs won't work with your existing wiring?
The standard Ubiquiti UAP is not on the standard PoE specification.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The $65 APs won't work with your existing wiring?
The standard Ubiquiti UAP is not on the standard PoE specification.
I know, it sucks. But didn't know if it would work work in this case, even as a non-standard.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The $65 APs won't work with your existing wiring?
The standard Ubiquiti UAP is not on the standard PoE specification.
I know, it sucks. But didn't know if it would work work in this case, even as a non-standard.
I did try one of these AP's with a different POE switch and it did not work, but I haven't tried it with the switches we specifically have - I suppose I could bring mine in from home and try.
But @JaredBusch suggestion is why I didn't pick the cheaper UAP.
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@Dashrender said:
I did try one of these AP's with a different POE switch and it did not work, but I haven't tried it with the switches we specifically have - I suppose I could bring mine in from home and try.
Oh, that sucks.
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One of our owners wondered by, so I asked him buy now or buy in failure? He agreed that while we don't often loose much if any revenue from reschedules, the massive inconvenience of double booking a day to make for a lost one and delayed payments would make the $4100 fairly easy to spend. But he himself would not want to make a decision, he would definitely encourage discussion from the BOD.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I did try one of these AP's with a different POE switch and it did not work, but I haven't tried it with the switches we specifically have - I suppose I could bring mine in from home and try.
Oh, that sucks.
It won't work. Passive PoE 24v is way different from true 802.3af PoE (48v). There's a transformer directly on two data lines to take the power and still get gigabit througput passive does not negotiate power in anyway, it's just always on. Therefore a PoE switch will never known to turn on the PoE.
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OK AP-Pro with POE is the choice.
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After talking to @Hubtech this morning, he brought up a good point.
Maintaining two separate systems (in my case an old Cisco wireless, and a new Unifi wireless) definitely adds to complications - are those complications worth it?
In my case - after much deliberation - I think they are. Maintaining two systems that once in place barely require any maintenance isn't going to cause me a lot of burden.
BUT, what about companies like NTG (or Hubtech's MSP)? In an MSP setup, it can definitely be worth moving as many client as possible to the same solution to reduce maintenance overhead.
