I am in need of a cheap, reliable switch with VLAN capabilities, that's hopefully easy to set up.
Here's the story of why I might need it, hopefully this helps you better answer this question and to tell me if there might be a better way. I am not very strong with networking, so I may misunderstand some of this, but here's what I think is happening.
I recently purchased a 3-pack of Unifi LR AP's, and in trying to set them up I found out how completely backwards and nonsensical our network is. I wasn't here when they set all of this up. We have a Cisco ASA 5505 series gateway (with VLAN) in the server room with all of our networking equipment. It is not set up for DHCP, as we assign a static IP to all of our machines. All machines are set up on the same subnet, between 3 buildings. As such, we can't set a DHCP IP range big enough to dedicate to our wifi as we have a constant flow of customers and would quickly run out of IP's to hand out. The most ideal solution then would be to dedicate ports on the ASA for VLAN, and direct those lines to the AP's which, if I'm understanding right, would give it it's own subnet, to theoretically hand out as many as 254 IP's, so more than enough.
The problem there, is that whatever moron ran the ethernet lines, never labeled a single thing, not outlets not cables not ports, nothing. So there's absolutely no way that I can see to find out which line goes to where I want the AP to be (which is downstairs and quite a distance from the switches).
Because of the way our network is set up, I can't plug the AP into a switch and assign it to DHCP. So if I give it a static IP, the only way for a wireless device to connect is to assign that device a static IP. However, as this is for customers, I can't make them stick in manual IP settings every time they wanted on the wifi, and even if I could we wouldn't have enough IP's to hand out.
So I thought hey, what if I get another switch with VLAN and just plug it in near where the AP will go, then assign a VLAN port there and plug the AP right into it?
So do you guys know of anything that would give me VLAN that I could easily set up and configure to give the AP it's own subnet? Also, I apologize for any misinformation I might have here, as I am still trying to make sense of all of this.
Thanks!