AP Groups within UniFi are a good way to customise and control your UniFi APs, with what SSIDs are broadcasting where, set SSIDs to one AP for IoT purposes and much more.

AP Groups could be used for a large campus, with specific SSIDs for each building, as well as global SSIDs for the entire area. Making a group for building A and assigning an SSID to that group allows for easier customisation.

First go to your HostiFi UniFi Controller, or UniFi OS Console and click on 'Settings'

Next, go to 'WiFi' and select one of your SSIDs

Under the 'Broadcasting APs' section, in here, you can choose the APs to be part of the new group. Click on 'Create new group'

Another useful feature of using AP Groups is the ability to restrict one SSID to one or more APs. This can be useful in IoT deployments, where you need to have one SSID per AP to avoid IoT devices roaming, when they are not designed to do so.

To restrict one SSID to one AP. Simply make a new SSID by going to 'Settings'

Then, 'Create new'

Choose a new SSID and password, then click on 'Create new Group'

Recommendation is to choose the same group name as the SSID then choose which AP or APs need to be part of that group and click 'Save Changes'

Further customisation can be done to remove 5GHz support, if the IoT device is 2.4GHz only, which most are. For more advice and infomation on UniFi and IoT, see our best practices guide here.

HostiFi

HostiFi provides hosting for both Ubiquiti and TP-Link software-defined-networking (SDN) applications, with servers for UniFi, UISP and Omada. We also offer professional networking consulting, with HostiFi Pro.

If you run into any issues, send an email to support@hostifi.com or contact us via live chat.