Thanks for joining me on this Tech Geeks
video. We're going to be asking the question
“What do I need to run TP-Link Omada?” Probably our first question is
“What is TP-Link Omada?” Well, TP-Link Omada is an ecosystem
made up of access points, routers and switches, probably like this one here, that all work together
using a central controller. This central controller is accessible
from wherever there is an internet access and means that you can centrally manage
and control the network. Maybe it be at home,
your small business or even an enterprise. It allows all of these devices
to work together as one single network. The setting that you make for one
can be spread across all of those devices. So if you were to
maybe have three access points in a property,
they can all be configured as one. It's a really simple solution. There are a number of vendors out there
that are doing something fairly similar. If you've been used to using their control
panels, this will probably be not that much different for you. The next question to ask is “What controller
do I want to use to manage all of this?” TP-Link has a number of ways
of managing Omada. The first one is software. This can be downloaded for free
and installed on your computer. Alternatively, you can use the app on your phone. This is a really great, easy,
simple way of getting your set up running. But do remember it's managed and controlled directly by the computer
that you've installed it on. If you want to make permanent updates
or want to be able to run some solutions like guest WiFi or hotspots
that maybe prompt or authenticate a user, then that software will need to be running
24 hours a day to make it work. So do make sure you install it on
a computer that can be run 24 hours a day if you want that type of functionality
or maybe on a server. Also, be aware
that the configuration is connected to that computer
or that install on your smartphone. That means if you lose that computer or damage it and you haven't got a
backup, then generally your only route is to factory
default all of the equipment and start again. So do make sure you make regular backups
if you're going to be using the software solution or if you're going to use it
on your mobile phone. The best way to use it on a smartphone
is really with your smartphone connected to a software or hardware install,
which we'll talk about in a moment. That means all your smartphone is doing
is giving you a simple, easy interface
to what's actually already happening. Then the next option is an actual
hardware controller, something like this. This is the OC200. This is the entry level controller. It's PoE powered,
which we'll talk about PoE Power a little bit later in this video. But this lives on your site. It can probably manage 100
devices, 50 to 100 devices quite happily of access points and switches, it's remotely manageable
as long as it's connected to the Internet. And this becomes
the heart of how your network works. This means it can run 24 hours a day. It can make sure everything is doing
what it needs to do. It can give you reporting and logging because it's collecting all of that
information over a period of time. So that is probably
one of the most common ways of making things work, which would be
to use the hardware controller. There are two of them, the OC200 and the OC300 currently
at the point of making this video. There is then a third option. Depends on which country you're in, which is a cloud manage
or a truly cloud manage, it's a subscription service that TP-Link run for Omada
where all of these devices can be managed on a software controller in the cloud that TP-Link provide as a subscription,
a monthly payment. So that's another option for you. If you've maybe got space
in a data center or you have a virtual server,
then you could also install the software that I've talked about in that environment
and create your own central solution. The great thing with TP-Link Omada is
you can have many sites it's called. Each site
could be a different wireless set up. Maybe you have one for a family’s house,
maybe you have one for a different business
or a shop and your office and you can manage them all together. So there are some advantages
of having an Internet accessible software controller
or even maybe a hardware controller. So that's probably the next question, “What controller do you want to choose?” So we've covered those, which is software
or running on your smartphone, the onsite one or subscription service. So probably our next question to ask is
“How are we going to power a bunch of the devices
that we've got on our network?” We're probably going
to be having wireless access points. If you're only just going to be having
really hard wired networking, then we'll talk about switching
and routing in a minute. But I just want to run ahead slightly to maybe what you're going
to be looking at wireless access points. If you're going to have wireless access
points, you're probably going to need to think about
how are you going to power these? Are you just going to have one
or two of them and you're going to run the cable out and you're going to maybe
power it with PoE? Or are you going to have a mains power connector near that device? So I just want to cover what is PoE. We've got some other videos on it,
but I'll just give you a brief overview of what is PoE.
So PoE stands for Power over Ethernet. The idea that we can mix data and power together
and send it over an Ethernet cable. Now, currently,
anything that cable can run up to about 100 meters
from the source of its first connection. So it gives us a lot of advantages
of not having to have a power point near
where we end up with the final device. So this is a TP-Link PoE injector. All right. Very simple. On this side, we have our mains in. So we would take our mains plug
and we're going to power, plug this in. All right. This is our Australian Power Connector. All right. So I'm just going to take the backplate off there
because how you can mount it on the wall. Then on this side here
we have a LAN and we have a PoE port. So I'm just going to demonstrate this
with two different coloured cables. This is my yellow cable, alright,
which I'm going to plug into my LAN, so this could be plugged
directly into your router because maybe you don't want a switch. You still want
some of the Omada functionality, but you don't want to buy a network switch
because you only want wireless access point. All right. One wireless access point. So this is going to plug into your router. All right. And then this cable here, this red cable
that I'm going to plug in, all right. Is going to go into our PoE port. So what we have now is we have our data
from our Internet connection, and we have power from our main socket
delivered in to this red cable. This red cable can now run up to 100
meters away from wherever we plug this in. And it will be giving power
and Ethernet connectivity to the device that's at the end of it. So maybe we've got something like this
TP-Link access point, here, a nice big wireless 6 access point and it's got a PoE in port here. So if we were to plug this in. All right. And everything was connected up,
this would now have power. This gives us this great option to be able
to get those cables out of the way, get them up into the ceiling,
get them into places where they're hidden away. And it gives us that great choice of not having to have that,
like I said, a power socket right by it. So probably the next choice
you're going to make is how am I going to power the wireless access points
that I'm going to have on my network and for most people
they’ll probably choose PoE. So you have the option here because a number of the TP-Link access points
have an option for a 12 volt power in, and they often come
with a power pack in the box. All right. You do have that option. So that would mean from your switch
or your router, you're still going to run an Ethernet cable out
to where you want to put them, but then you're going to power them
with a power pack like this. Well,
if you're already running the Ethernet cable out to them,
you probably might as well use PoE. So that brings you to the choice. Are you going to power it
with a PoE injector like this? So you need one of these for each access
point that you're going to power. So if you've got three,
you're going to need three power sockets, three of these, three of these. So
you’re going to end up with six cables. All right. And three of those are going to need
to be plugged in to your router. All right. And three of those are going to run out
to your different devices. Your other alternative
is to use something like a PoE switch. What’s our PoE switch do? Well, it has our mains input,
obviously, on this side. And then we have these switch ports. They are already giving data
and they're already giving power out. So now all I need to do
is run one cable from this port out to my device
and I've got power out to it. Each PoE switch has a power rating. Maybe it's around about 54 watts,
maybe it's 120 watts. Depending
on the specifications of the switch. You just need to make sure
if you're going to use a PoE switch that you have enough power
to power your devices. You might find that something like this
access point uses about eight watts. So if you have a switch that consumes
or can give out 54 watts, then obviously you've got the ability
to run five or six of these with very little problem at all,
and that gives you enough to handle. We also talked about the OC controller, the hardware controller. Well, this can be PoE powered or
it can have a micro USB mains connector. We’d suggest you PoE power this. So again, if you had a PoE switch,
all we'd need to do would be to connect these two together and it would receive
power and LAN at the same time. So that's probably the next big question
in this whole ecosystem. It's the same for many vendors. How are we going to power the access
points? You're
either going to choose a power injector or you're going to choose a switch. Have a think about that and that will
maybe guide you to this next section. So now we're going to talk about
what switches should we choose. We've probably covered
quite a lot of it in the previous section, and there are a lot of options
when it comes to TP-Link. We've got non-PoE
switches, we've got PoE switches where half of the ports
will give out power and half won’t, we've got larger switches, 24, 48 ports that have got what are called SFP ports,
which are fibre ports. So really when it comes down
to choosing a switch, you just need to think about how many physical wired connections have I got
maybe in my business or my home. Am I having data points in the home? Have I got ten data points coming back
and I want to put up maybe four
or five ceiling mounts of these. All right. So if I've got ten data points and four
or five of these, let's say we've got five,
we need 15 ports to start with. We're going to need a connection
out to our router. We're going to connect,
need a connection out to our controller. All right. So now we're up to 17 ports. Well, then it would be worthwhile
buying a 24 port switch. So we've got plenty of ports spare. You can probably never have enough ports. So I'd always make sure
when you're choosing a switch that you think about
how many PoE ports you need and how much power does
the switch need to give out. So we talked about in the previous segment that maybe something like this
might give out seven or eight, need seven or eight watts. Do look on the spec sheets. You then need to multiply that up
by how many of those different devices you're going to have. And you need then a switch
that's going to give out that correct or well above that amount of power. Then you just need to think about
how many physical ports do I need all together
because you don't want to end up. Having to buy another switch
just because you're one switch port short. So I'd always make sure you've got five,
six, seven ports spare. Why? Because you might get a VoIP phone,
you might get a computer that needs to be plugged in, You might get
a NAS drive, a Network Attached Storage drive,
so you suddenly might want extra ports. All right. Those are the key principles,
probably when it comes to choosing the network switch that you want
so that you get the right power. Now, some people ask the question, what if I've got a PoE switch
and I'm connecting a non-PoE device? Well, these are called auto sensing. These are 48 volt PoE ports,
which means that the device that connects to
it is the one that requests power. So if I was to plug a PC into a PoE port,
the PC isn't going to draw any power. It's not going to request any power. So the switch port won't send power. So it's quite okay to have PoE ports
with non-PoE devices plugged into it. So choose a switch that has many,
many ports than you actually need. Make sure that you have longevity in it. All right. And allow for all of your devices,
computers, access points, controllers. You've still got to be able
to plug your router into it. All of those bits and pieces will help you make the right choice for a switch. In this section I'm going to ask “Do I need a TP-Link Omada router?” This is completely optional. All right. This controller or your software
will run without a TP-Link Omada router. This could be plugged directly
in to a switch or your router as long as there are spare ports, you can have
wireless access points and switches running without the need for a TP-Link
Omada router. As long as these can see the internet,
this can manage all of your devices. If you want to complete the ecosystem up
and it does give you some advantages. It can be obviously again
centrally managed. You get all that remote reporting,
you do have some firewall, basic firewall bits of control on here
and obviously it's a neater way maybe to mop everything up, especially
if you're doing certain routing or VLANs, it's all in one place. So this is an ER605 I think it is. It's a little VPN router. You can do VPN connections in and outbound, so it has quite a lot of neat
little features. All right. This is not the controller for your network. This is the controller. All of your IP set ups
and everything are done from this. This will then hand out of those
like a normal router. This will do your DHCP and everything,
but the control and setup is managed on either your software or your hardware
TP-Link Omada controller. So do think about
do I want to complete my network off? You can buy this like neat little router it'll do PoE,
it's not got a DSL modem in it. All right. So this won't run on your VDSL
or your fibre to the node connection. This is for the fibre
to the property options. You could plug this in
if you've got StarLink, for instance, you could have the optional Ethernet
adapter from StarLink and plug this into the WAN port. It does multiple WAN,
so you could have your old NBN and StarLink on here together. You can put your StarLink router in bypass
mode or your current router in bypass mode and hand
over the control of your IP addressing and everything
in the network to this router. So like I said,
this is a completely optional part of the set up for TP-Link
Omada. The key and real thing you must have is the controller, either
software or hardware. This is completely optional,
but it can complete it off in a neat way that everything is centrally
managed and controlled. And then in this last section, our question is
“What wireless access points do we need?” We're presuming that you probably want to add wireless
access points for your indoor and your outdoor. So we have this
nice big outdoor access point. I think this is the AX3000, I think it's like the EAP615 Outdoor. All right. Great wireless six outdoor access point,
fully water tight obviously has the seals at the bottom
once you put your Ethernet cable. So your Ethernet cable
needs to run out to this. There are options to do these wirelessly to repeat each other
and in some instances that may work. I'm not going to cover that in this video. There are other videos
we've done on doing that type of thing, but I would recommend
if you're starting out that you really just consider
getting Ethernet cable out from your switch
or from your router out to these devices. So this would go on your outside wall. All right. Ethernet cable all the way back. And it's going to receive that PoE power
from your switch or your PoE injector. All right. And it's going to then be managed
by the controller. So what's the key that we do
with the wireless? Well,
the controller on our on our computer, if we install the software
or in this piece of hardware, it is
going to set up your wireless network. And that's going to generally
be a single SSID, that's our network name and password. So each one of these access points
that I add, it might even be an indoor, which we'll have a look at
in a moment, will get that same setting. So as I walk through my property,
if I've got indoor access points, outdoor access points,
they're all maybe have the same wireless name, might call it
TP-Link home or something like that. And your device as you go through
the property will jump from access point to access point. They will be in
what many people term as a mesh. So a mesh in this
definition is a single wireless name and password
that's shared across multiple devices. And this is a great way to make
a singular easy, accessible network. Another advantage of why
choosing TP-Link Omada could work for you. So we've got outdoor access points like this
and then we have indoor access points like this one. This is a wireless six. We've got faceplate ones that can go over
a normal data point and be rewired and give you Ethernet ports
and wireless in there. So this is a great option again across your property
to be able to have multiple access points. You do want to spread these out
really well. This is about getting the right density
in your property. We'd suggest putting a ceiling mounted
access point maybe every ten or 20 meters, maybe 15 to 20 meters in a standard house
with normal walls. Why? Because wireless is absorbed
by those walls and different properties,
and so the signal will be reduced. And what we want to try and do
is keep the strongest signal for all of our access points
and our devices connecting. Because if one device has a poor
connection, it will actually draw down the speed for all of the other devices
connected to that same access point. So we want to try and make sure that we spread out our density
as best as we can through the property. So like I said, this is about choosing
the right or the right combination of access points and
there are plenty of ones to choose from. So spread them out over your property. Make the best of all of these
different options that are on here and then you can use the controller
to centrally manage them. You can set up different SSIDs
if you want ones for guest and home. You can do other things like putting VLANs if you want to do
more advanced networking and different IP ranges, but it's all managed
and controlled by your software. So as you add one of these access points
to your network and it gets wired in, your log
in to your controller and your controller, and this is the same for the switches
and the routers and everything, the controller will spot it
and ask you to adopt it. Once it's adopted, it will be added
to that controller and pick up the central configuration
that you have given for everything. So that's probably hopefully a good little
look at what you might have with different access points
and how they might all fit together. Like I said, you can choose these to be
PoE powered or mains powered. There are some options
to do these wirelessly. Do look at some of our other videos
for options along to that. So hopefully that's giving you a good simple
starting overview. So what have we actually looked at?
We have looked at, to start with what controller are you going to go with
hardware or software. We have talked about PoE. How are you going to power your devices?
With a PoE injector or maybe with a PoE switch. Right. We’ve then gone on to talk about choosing the right switch,
getting the right number of PoE ports if you need it, the right amount of wattage that you need
to power all of your devices. All right.
And get the right choice for that. We've
then had a look at the optional router. Do you need to have a TP-Link
Omada router? And we've said
that's just a complete option to add it. And then we've moved on to the access
points. We've talked about they’re being outdoor access points, multiple options
for indoor, the circular ones, smaller ones, face plate ones, ones
that are physically wired together. We've talked about powering them
with 12 volts if they're near power point or actually
running an Ethernet cable out to them. All of it comes down to the fact that
you need to have a choice on the software. Are you going to use
the central controller or software installed on your computer? This might give you the best long
term solution. All right. But have a look at all of this
video again, hopefully it helps you. Do reach out to us
if you've got any questions. But that was
what do I need to run TP-Link Omada.
