I volunteer for the Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery (FISH) and help out a lot with their technology including their computer network. Most of the equipment is by Unifi which I like. Unfortunately the vendor that put it in several years ago, keep themselves as the owner and then went out of business so there were several management functions that I could not do as an admin - you need to be owner.
I hired a different vendor who specializes in Unifi equipment to update the network and take over ownership so we would be owners and have access to all the functions. Well as they say, the best laid plans often go astray. After becoming owner, they upgraded out network OS from version 6 to 10 (which I could not do because I was not an owner). That is when things went south.
All of a sudden the AP's were dropping off the network, working for a bit, then disappearing again. We spent over 5 hours on 10/8 trying to figure out what was going on before calling it quits for the day. The main UDM router worked, but the AP's were very problematic.
On 10/9, the vendor suggested pulling down all the APs (most are mounted outside 20' feet high and it was pouring rain so this was a bit of work) and bring them into the office. In the office the AP's seem to work fine, but when we mounted them again, no go. The vendor then had me get the specs for the power supplies for the APs (up the 20' ladder in the rain again several times) and found the problem - actually two problems:
- The first vendor had severely under powered some of the APs (in one location they used a single injector that was barely adequate for 1 AP to power 2 APs). In addition, when I added APs, I made sure the power in watts was ok, but did not check on the voltage ranges. So many of the locations that I set up had issues.
- The reason why it worked before is that the Network OS 6 didn't really care about AP power and voltage while Network OS 10 is really picky.
- The ethernet cable to one of the APs runs outside, but it is not an outdoor cable and was not designed for the weather. It failed when we moved the AP inside for testing. So until I can get that replaced, the AP is meshing through a few others for connectivity. Sub optimal.
- Another AP just failed during the unmount-remount steps. Need to replace it. Found out that since we purchased it off Amazon, Unifi will not honor their 2 year warranty. Sigh!
- The location with 2 AP's, I had to add a second injector, but only had one power cord. Temporary fix was an inside power strip. That needs to be replaced with an outside power cord splitter.
- The APs and router put in by the original vendor are reaching their EOL so they should be replaced.
- We have non-Unifi switches so the Network OS cannot figure out the topology correctly. so anything going to a non-Unifi switch shows up as 'wired connection to Fish Ladder AP' which is funny as the Fish Ladder AP is meshed across a stream - no way to put in a wire to it.
I talked with the executive director and the plans are to do a full rebuild in February of 2027 when I am back in the US.
Lessons learned:
- Make sure you have an expert in the equipment to help. I would have never figured out the power issues without the second vendor.
- I should have not tried to get another year or so from the older, close to EOL equipment.
- Be careful about your assumptions. Both the second vendor and myself assumed since things were working pretty good, all we had to do was to take over ownership and upgrade the system. Boy was that a mistake.
