Regulations are forcing my client to update their firewall and access points.
Regulation call for 802.11ac or 802.11ax
They currently have about 15 802.11g APs and no more than 120 concurrent wifi users.
What equipment would work nicely with OPNSense for such a scenario?
At 15 APs you want something with centralised provisioning, IMHO. That calls for "devil you know" - Ubiquiti/Unifi, or possibly Mikrotik with Capsman.
Ubiquiti is more and more aggressively pushing towards management in the cloud, they display advertisements in their management software, no idea what the server phones home.
Mikrotik is much less intrusive, if you are EU based, that might be a plus, that they are located in Latvia. The management/provisioning is not quite as polished as Unifi. But in my experience they work reliably.
The firewall does not influence the AP choice since they connect over ethernet. Cisco or Unifi are common commercial choices.
In case you need to handle a lot of WiFi AP, you migt want to have a look at https://github.com/openwisp. For a very compact WiFi AP supporting AX, you could check out the Banana PI R3 mini. Runs OpenWRT and is fairly compact.
Quote from: Patrick M. Hausen on October 07, 2024, 09:05:28 PM
At 15 APs you want something with centralised provisioning, IMHO...
Agree!
I'm new here but thought I would share my experience using Ruckus. Ran two schools starting with about 15 APs and grew to about 60. The 700 series APs had fantastic client density. Management was a virtual Smart Zone VM. UI is a little wonky but once you get used to it, it's not bad.
I have two Ubiquiti at home and they're simpler to manage. But I cannot compare/offer advise on Ubiquiti WRT to client density. I still think Ruckus is probably the best in this area. IHMO.
Curious if others can compare Ruckus and Ubiquiti client density.
Also take a look at the Grandstream GWN7660.
The WLAN controller is inkluded for up to 50 access points.
2 access points can be configured as controllers. The price is great. I switched to these access points with 5 SSIDs and have had very good experiences with them so far. Has been running for 2 months now.
regards
Markus