Best posts made by Markferron

Hey guys!
They recently finished a building on campus which has single mode fiber running to it. This will be the first building to have single mode running to it, as all the buildings on campus have multimode fiber. That being said, I've never even dealt fiber at all before so, for the past few days I've been reading up on everything I could get my hands on. I think I have a general idea of the equipment I need to finish this project, but if you guys wouldn't mind looking over this I would appreciate this!

Single mode fiber is running from building A to building B (newly constructed). In building A we have an HP J8706A 24p SFP zl Module in a 5412zl chassis. In building B they are purchasing a Meraki MS250-48 (Meraki link). I was going to see if we could get 10G uplink between the buildings but it looks like the HP module only supports up to 1Gb :(. So instead I was going to order some 1GbE SFP LX Fiber Transceivers (ebay link). Which actually brings up a question, do you have to have specific brand transceivers for specific switches? I can just use these HP transcievers on the Meraki, right?
Also, the company who ran the fiber also went ahead and installed the fiber on the patch panel (I want to say they ran 3 pairs) what kind of cable do I need to connect the patch to the transceiver? Some sort of 1m singlemode fiber :/?

Apologies on the long post. Just want to make sure people aren't waiting on me to get everything finished.

Thanks!
M

@jaredbusch Haha. That's nothing. We're working with an accreditation organization that named themselves Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or in other words SACSCOC. You know someone was trying for that.

@Mike-Davis Thanks Mike! I talked to Meraki support yesterday and that's exactly what the tech told me. I was just surprised that it was the basically the only solution.

Just talked to HPE support, unfortunately we don't have a module that supports 10Gb. If only we had 1600 lying around :(.
But at least our chassis supports it!

I'm looking to install around 140 total UniFi APs around our campus (or rather, make the argument for them). Probably around 45 SHDs, and the rest of them would be AC PROs, and a few AC LITEs. I still have around 8 months before the decision is made, and I want to make sure that I know how to administrate/manage them. I was thinking about just ordering myself one AC LITE for my home and installing a self hosted UniFi controller. Other than scale, would this be a comparable setup? I'm worried that the AC LITE and other APs would be somehow managed differently.

We're getting rid of our Meraki MX400 considering the cost is around $9920 for one year of Advanced Security. I'm going towards a UniFi gateway, but I need something that will do content filtering. I've read a few threads in ML and, in general, people in general don't like combining firewalls and UTM devices/applications. Why is that? Also, what would you recommend that I use for content filtering?

I read a few posts comparing Crashplan to Backblaze dated back in 2016 and it seemed that most people were leaning towards Crashplan due to its reliability. Has that opinion changed at all two years later? We currently have a very old installation of Crashplan on campus and I am looking towards upgrading. Personally I'm leaning towards Backblaze for our of our laptops that go off campus, but keeping Crashplan (the most updated version) on our file servers. The main reason is that our bandwidth is not that great and keeping a local backup would be much faster if we needed it. I don't know if this is a waste of money and time with me splitting up different backup services. What do you guys think?

@dafyre Yup you're right, we do have a few open modules with nothing in them. Yeah $1600 for something like this amazon.
You think if I donate something like that to the college I can get it engraved? "Graciously donated by Mark Ferron" -You're welcome.

@xByteSean How would you like for me to be eternally grateful?

@dafyre said in Suggestions for new APs and Firewall:

This is for a school, not an SMB. With out some form of traffic shaping somewhere, their bandwidth would be overrun with torrents.

@Markferron can correct me if I'm wrong, but right now, I think the Meraki APs are where the bandwidth shaping is being done now.

Yup I have rules on the APs and the MX400. They should all be the same as far as bandwidth limits, just in case.

One more question. I'm going to add multi-threading to make it run fast (/MT) and the machine I'm running this command on (which is the destination machine) is a virtual machine. Is there a correlation with number of threads to CPU core count or RAM?

I'm making a proposal for my boss to get us off of our Meraki equipment this November when out licenses expire. Currently, we have an MX400, 140 MR32 APs, and 1 MS220-8P (switch). The huge cost for renewing licenses, to me, justify just buying Ubiquity APs and keeping the MX400. Along with the cost of licenses I would also like to put in that requiring licences for APs and switches is not an industry standard, but I wasn't actually sure if that's the case. I don't have enough experience with equipment to make that claim. I'm I right? Would you use that in a point? What else would you add to a proposal?

@thwr That's actually another issue. I don't really know how the budget works here, and we don't really interact with our vendors. Just guestimation...Amazon has 3 year licences for the MR32 @ $208 each and $120 for the switch. So that's about $29,240 for a set of 3 year licenses.

@thwr said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@coliver said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@thwr said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@coliver said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

Make sure you include the labor in the comparison as well. Hanging new APs can get very costly.

I guess all the wires are already in place. Shouldn't be too hard to replace them

Still would be to get someone in a ladder or lift to do the replacement. I've done a 150 AP organization before that was a good week for two people.

The question is: Who should climb the ladder? Probably not someone who bills $150+ per hour.

That'll be me. They're cheap, but I know what I'm worth haha.

@thwr said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@markferron said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@thwr said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@coliver said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@thwr said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@coliver said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

Make sure you include the labor in the comparison as well. Hanging new APs can get very costly.

I guess all the wires are already in place. Shouldn't be too hard to replace them

Still would be to get someone in a ladder or lift to do the replacement. I've done a 150 AP organization before that was a good week for two people.

The question is: Who should climb the ladder? Probably not someone who bills $150+ per hour.

That'll be me. They're cheap, but I know what I'm worth haha.

One day I'll be worth that...one day...

@scottalanmiller said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@storageninja said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@dafyre said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

With that campus the size that it is, I would definitely recommend finding something to handle the Layer7 stuff.

I'm relatively certain you could drop in Ubiquiti APs, and possibly grab a Palo Alto that could work and still come out cheaper than doing the licenses for the Meraki gear.

Palo Alto does far better layer 7. If this is a school you need to meet CIPA compliance.

Private college, should be free to avoid CIPA.

Muhaha... Yes we are free to avoid CIPA, but it would still be nice to comply. It would look great on accreditation.

@scottalanmiller said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@storageninja said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@markferron said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@scottalanmiller said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@markferron said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@scottalanmiller said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@storageninja said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

@dafyre said in Licenses for APs and Switches:

With that campus the size that it is, I would definitely recommend finding something to handle the Layer7 stuff.

I'm relatively certain you could drop in Ubiquiti APs, and possibly grab a Palo Alto that could work and still come out cheaper than doing the licenses for the Meraki gear.

Palo Alto does far better layer 7. If this is a school you need to meet CIPA compliance.

Private college, should be free to avoid CIPA.

Muhaha... Yes we are free to avoid CIPA, but it would still be nice to comply. It would look great on accreditation.

To the accrediting board, you mean? I suppose that makes sense, with the things out there that they are willing to give accreditation to, clearly education isn't what they are focused on.

Yeah no kidding. I saw a few items on the list of of things they wanted to know about our college and it made me laugh. Wish I could remember what they were...

Do you offer dual credit classes to high school students? Curious if that trips the need for CIPA?

Only likely if they are on campus. My nieces do that but they don't go on campus, so while the classes are for high school students, they aren't on the campus networks (but that is Texas.)

Our school is close to a few high schools in the area so professors actually will go to their school and teach in their classrooms.

I'm looking to replace three old wireless bridges we have on campus and also installing a new one. Site A is a distance of around 200ft and will only have around 8-10 students using the network.. Site B is a distance of 150ft and will have around 15 students on the network. However, this site will need to beam to another site (Site C). Site C will add around 10 students. Site D is 520ft away and has staff members so they will need a solid connection for the VOIP phones installed already.

I'm thinking of going with UniFi as I'm trying to push for UniFi access points around campus already.

Site A and B- NBE-5AC-Gen2
Cheap at only around $100 a piece and at 450+Mbps will be overkill, but I'm okay with that.

Site C- NS-5ACL
Cheap and the signal only needs to go across a small street.

Site D- airFiber5X+AF-5G23-S45
According to Ubiquiti this combination is ideal for 500Mbps connections, and is big step up from the HP MSM466 we have installed.

Let me know if you need any information from me. I've never installed bridges before so I'm just going off of what Ubiquiti is suggesting. Also, I'm not 100% set on UniFi equipment so if there's a better option feel free to suggest something completely different.

@travisdh1 I know right?

@black3dynamite Yikes that's embarrassing...thank you.

@dafyre Yup! This Feb we're going to finally get gig I believe. There's another ISP that's emerged that's threatening our current one :).