Subscriber Discussion
Engenius Or Ubiquiti?
Hello,
I have been considering trying out the Ubiquiti product line for camera connectivity. So far I have used Engenius because that's what I first used 4 years ago and I have had pretty good success with their outdoor APs and Client Bridges. We have installed close to 100 units or so so I'm fairly familiar with them. I see that Ubiquit is a common choice amongst wireless installers. In all my installations I only installed one Ubiquiti product..i think it was the pico station or something like that because we need to fit something very small in an enclosure, but that's it.
We have had pretty good success with the Engenius, but maybe the Ubiquiti is superior to it? Anyone have experience with both of these products?
03/29/14 11:29pm
Mark,
Is there something specific that you feel you are missing with Engenius? i.e. features that Ubiquiti might have that Engenius doesn't?
I'm curious because I'm a large fan of sticking with what works. :)
But I have extremely limited exposure to these things... what are some of the known differences/features in manufacturers besides cost?
About 6 years ago, Engenius owned that market of outdoor wisp equipment. Then they ran into some problems in high-traffic environments that would cause their throughput to bog down. That was right at the time Ubiquiti was launching, and there was a massive switch from Engenius to Ubiquiti. At the time, IIRC, Engenius was making other odd equipment like cordless phones.
Recently, they seem to have solved any old issues and focused more directly on wisp equipment. I haven't used any of their recent gear, but I've heard lots of good things about it. If it's working well for you and you're making decent margins, the reasons for switching seem minimal.
Any word on what Firetide is up to? They appeared to be the leading manufactuerer at least from a marketing standpoint, but I've heard nothing out of them for a few years now? I did one deployment with them which has had some minor issues, but Ubiquiti appears to be the leader now when you talk to guys doing that work every day.
03/30/14 08:37pm
Anyone use Amped Wireless? They seem to make a pretty solid product, plus US based tech support. I've sold a bunch of them with not much feedback, positive or negative.
NOTICE: This comment has been moved to its own discussion: Anyone Used Amped Wireless?
IPVMU Certified | 03/30/14 11:32pm
We used Engenius a couple times for single device point to point connections. Then we tried using a pair of Super G bridges for 4 cameras and they failed miserable on their promised spec's, then tech support verified their shortcomings. So we tried Ubiquiti and been using them ever since. But that was over 3 years ago.
More recently a little over a year ago we seemed to have a run of bad Ubiquiti units that were causing network problems until we installed some beta firmware. Took awhile for tech support to straighten it out.
Ubiquiti has a great built in throughput tester that tests between two units, paired wirelessly or across wired connections.
Those are our experiances, hope they help.
That is helpful info Luis. That's kinda what I'm looking for. Some feedback from folks actually using these on camera installations. It would definately be beneficial to have the feature of testing the throughput so that you can know what that link can actually handle, instead of loading it up with one or two too many cameras because you are guestimating it based on the specs. I don't even count on half of what the specs say. If it says it's 300 MBps, I'm guessing it might be a third of that in the real world. Again..just guessing unless I have some type of software or utility to test the actual throughput.
Thanks
IPVMU Certified | 03/31/14 12:47am
"If it says it's 300 MBps, I'm guessing it might be a third of that in the real world."
In the wireless world, just like in the wired world, there is what's called overhead. Bandwidth is your highest theroretical "pipe size" for pushing data through. Packet addressing and error correction takes a certain percenatge of of the bandwidth from actual data transfer. Throughput is your theoretical pipe size for actual data after the percentage of overhead is taken into account.
In wirless data, actual throughput is around 50% of bandwidth. So yes, 300mbs bandwidth means about 150mbs at most of actual throughput.
I installed Ubiquiti A/P recently. It worked fine and was quite feature rich as compared to an equivalent Engenius. There were a few wrinkles caused by the added complexity. For example, the unit "remembered" the WAN address of my office internet connection (where I did test and setup) and so would not work properly that the customer's location until this was reset. I had never seen that behavour before.
Luis, what are you using to power the ip camera and Ubiquiti radio at each location? Im guessing one switch for the camera’s and the radio’s cat wire, separate poe injectors for camera and the radio as the radio is not 802.3af compatible. For outdoor locations are the components in a weather proof enclosure?
IPVMU Certified | 03/31/14 12:54pm
Dwayne, Ubiquiti actually has adapters that convert 802.3af to the 16v PoE power required for the bridges, so we use regular PoE switches to power the bridges.
Ubiquiti - Democratizing Professional Network Technology
They have outdoor and indoor adapter versions, but we only use the outdoor versions. They also act surge supressors, and Ubiquiti actually told us not to connect surge suppressors inline with them which caused problems. Nice things also is they act as a repeater, so you can extend your run.
Funny you should ask about weatherproof since it also relates to Engenius: the units we mostly use are the Nanostations and Nanobridges and are outdoor rated, so we don't put them in an enclosure, and we haven't seen yet a device fail due to weather intrusion. However, I did get back an Engenius outdoor bridge that had been outside for just over a year and when I opened it up it looked like it had no weather protection at all with lots of water and mold damage inside. Another reason why I dropped the Engenius in favor of Ubiquiti.
Luis thank you for the information, I appreciate you taking the time to reply.
Again thanks
Dwayne
IPVMU Certified | | 04/01/14 02:24pm
I too wish Ubiquiti had live technical support and I've actually been looking around for other competitive products that can bring similar value along with more accessible support. However, some resellers offer themselves as tech suppport as a value added proposition, and I think that may be Ubiquiti's intention - save on costs by not offering live tech suppport and leave it to trained and certified resellers to be the tech suppport as a value add for buying the products from those resellers willing to do live tech support.
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