Just learned that my Uni got rid of Ethernet in our dorms in favor of only wifi, now I have to buy a PCI wireless card...

To be fair, if they invest in proper enterprise grade high density deployment access points, it should be fine.

MU-MIMO dual 5Ghz 4x4 + 4x4.

Cisco Aironet 3800p AP or similar.

>students complaining that they had to bring their own routers

What the fuck? Either way it sounds like it was terrible before and even worse now.

You only had ethernet in our rooms if you wanted to have wifi you had to bring our own wireless router

As others have said, research the spec. You'll want to buy the latest generation - 802.11AC or better yet AX and something with MU-MIMO 2x2 or better.

You can use USB ( 3.0 +) or PCI-E ( most cards are x1 ). Either way, consider that if you're putting it in a tower on the floor many may get better signal with an extender for the antenna receiver part - often included with the better hardware.

I would look at the chipset powering potential cards/USBs for compatibility, especially if you care about Linux or using this adapter for certain tasks - you don't want to get stuck with some proprietary piece of junk

I think you mean access point.

The router is on your school's side, assigning local IP addresses. You just connect an access point to give wifi, or you connect a router, then disable the routing functionality and use it as an access point.

You're not ACTUALLY setting up an IP distributing router in the room.

Imagine being this retarded

So they're double NATing?

I'll look into it, I believe they sent an email on it

Mine has Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Why would you get rid of an already existing infrastructure? It's so much faster than Wi-Fi.

Just going to copy and paste the important part

The access points being used utilize the newest 802.11ac technology.
• Students needing to purchase a wireless adapter to bring Wi-Fi capability to their devices should select a “Dual Band WiFi 6” card. A “Dual Band WiFi5” card will also provide connectivity.
• Ethernet ports will remain unavailable. This is to preserve the stability of the network and prevent rogue wireless signals which cause interference.

Wew, that doesn't really tell you anything.

I'd honestly reply to the email and ask for the specific model of access point they're using.

>prevent rogue wireless signals which cause interference

Translation: So many people set their own insecure and overlapping shitty routers up in their rooms that we've been forced to do this because you retards brought the network to its knees

>actually having a tower in a university dorm

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If you're in a university dorm and you're not getting pussy, it's not because you've got a desktop computer.

Maybe they got tired of retards with unsecured routers.

This story makes no sense. Cable? Where goes it?

There are their exact words
>The brand is Aruba but they're are multiple models in use so cannot be determined
I'd just settle with any safe bet card at this point, one that doesn't require nonfree firmware would be preferred

>Aruba
So they're probably not using the Aruba 550 access point (which is what they probably should be using).

I'd get a 3x3 wifi card to be safe, but it's likely they're only using 2x2 access points to save $$.

Something like Asus PCE-AC68

>even teenage me could tell the difference
Technology has improved leaps and bounds since a week ago.

I have a USB wifi dongle and it's complete dogshit. The range is complete ass and I get like ~2MB/s download speeds via that thing vs 15MB/s with ethernet. I wish I had instead bought a PCI wifi card.

Plus the USB dongles get hot as a motherfucker. Can't be good for longevity.

Keep an eye on wiki.debian.org/WiFi
I don't know about any such wireless cards.

Yes, most college kids would have no idea that they should set their wireless router into "bridge/ap" mode and thus would be farting out full power 2.4 GHz double NAT glory.

An AP in every other room, 5GHz, and low xmit power would avoid most of the overlap and be quite fast.

That would be even more expensive than expensive high density APs more than likely

A single $500-1000 AP built for that specific high density application would be cheaper than a half dozen $200-300 APs in every other room with low xmit power.

>Just learned that my Uni got rid of Ethernet in our dorms in favor of only wifi
Surely a group of idiots came to this decision. An ARP poisoning attack can bring down the entire network and its a couple of clicks to do.

Attached: kZ18l.png (630x681, 667K)

Just get an Alfa awus036nh from ebay

My first suggestion would be to talk to the IT department and see if they can patch in your room's ethernet port specifically.
My old college would do that, since only a few rooms in any given building are going to have the type of people who want wired networking.

My guess would be that they got rid of the old switches which were connected to every room's port, and replaced them with Aruba switches which connect to the APs. There's probably not enough ports on the switches to also connect the ethernet in every room. They also might have re-used some cabling for the access points.

If there was no WiFi before, I can totally see students going to wal-mart and getting a $25 shitty d-link, and using the out of box config so there was tons of double-NAT and channel crowding.

>My first suggestion would be to talk to the IT department and see if they can patch in your room's ethernet port specifically.
>My old college would do that, since only a few rooms in any given building are going to have the type of people who want wired networking.
I'd do this, say you'll even sign a contract saying you wont set up a wifi network with the ethernet access, it will only be used for hard-wired devices, like a desktop, game console, etc.

We were just looking at a small scale WiFi install at work and the lite Ubiquiti APs are like $80.

No wonder those kids in college are so stressed with so many wifi waves around their bodies.

I wouldn't use ubiquiti in a university deployment.

You want Cisco, Aruba, Ruckus, etc.

cAP lite is only 29$ and more than enough for the job.

no one actually uses mikrotik or ubiquiti in any real world scenarios, unless they want a mountain sized headache when shit inevitably hits the fan.

You're paying for enterprise grade support when you buy from a big name like cisco or aruba.

Don't buy the crappiest model? Order some Chinese 1200AC/ABG stick for $15. Works fine.

Someone will have to do it before they realize they are idiots - what else?

And they'll try entrprise Cisco routers next, not cables.

Right now it's a cost saving measure with no issues whatsoever.

Will call them to see if they can do that for me

Install OpenWrt on an AP and configure it as a network bridge

Get one of those pci adapter cards that let you use an intel laptop style wifi card. If you really want free firmware there are a few laptop cards that have support you will have to do research, probably none of the ones with open firmware support 2x2 or mimo.

this.
just use the router you already have as a bridge

I've never done "real" wireless before, so I was researching different products and such online. My networking experience is almost all in the service-provider routing realm, so this is new territory.
Luckily it's just a plain internet connection so some training devices can be used in this tiny building that gets no cell reception. Is ubiquiti really that bad?

FWIW, the guy in charge wanted to seriously know why we shouldn't just use some $40 store-bought home router (like the kind your home ISP gives you).
He was asking me if a ubiquiti basic router and 2 APs was overkill. Legit said:
>"my shitty router at home has lasted me a decade, why couldn't it work for this?"

For learning purposes, ubiquiti and mikrotik are great, if you know what you're doing, are willing to put in the work to hunt down how to do it right, then sure go right ahead.

I just would never deploy them for a client that isn't VERY experienced doing their own troubleshooting and configuration.

setup a spark gap generator to totally fuck the wifi until they reinstate wired ethernet

Is Ubiquiti gear that prone to falling apart, and that hard to configure?
I'm basically trying to find the most foolproof thing that I can set up and just leave.

The available start of Jow Forums

There is basically no support, and configuration is limited to what's available in the GUI, unless you want to dive into the CLI configurations, which are much more flexible, but require you to actually know how to SSH into the console and read up on all their configuration options.

Whereas with a big name enterprise grade company, you'll get hands on support tailored to your specific needs, recommended configurations can be suggested, etc. You get none of that with Ubiquiti.

With ubiquiti you get near enterprise grade hardware, without the support.

If you're comfortable BEING that support, then by all means, deploy it. It certainly saves a lot of money.

It's not that ubiquiti equipment fails, it's just that any configuration or change will require YOUR input, and it might not just be a simple GUI check box.

Ahhh gotcha. We do all our own support, and we've got a few guys on the team who have their CCNA or NP and should be able to learn.
My last position was a network engineer for Cisco Nexus 7ks and ASRs, so the command line is no problem.

I get what you're saying though. If this was a site-wide WiFi deployment with "corporate" and guest networks, mesh, etc, then we would certainly be looking at the whole package more. We have a massive contract with Cisco that gives us basically unlimited part exchange and TAC support. I'll give you 3 guesses who I work for...

>If there was no WiFi before, I can totally see students going to wal-mart and getting a $25 shitty d-link, and using the out of box config so there was tons of double-NAT and channel crowding.

That makes sense, but that is very much the uni's fault.

USB wifi + 10' long USB extension cord.

Stop buying dogshit $5 dongles then.

So much this. They must also think wireless is secure? Fucking hell.

These blow. Worse reception and half of them are dead in 6 months.

>he chooses to use a non-DMA device for his networking
>he wants increased latency and CPU overhead
Fucking neck yourself, PCI(e) based devices will always be superior

Buy a router that allows aftermarket firmware, and change the operating mode to wireless ethernet bridge. Connect to PC with ethernet cable.

Or buy a USB wireless adapter. Also buy USB extension cable to get a better signal.

Some of the Intel wireless cards for desktop are pure shite.