Access point recommendations for laptop trollies

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Originally Posted by north-ict

The current 2 trolleys we have are lapsafe ones and have the wifi unit inside but £3000 for a unit roughly I am considering other laptop trolleys.

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Did you pay £3000 for a Lapsafe unit? The ones I mentioned are half that...

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Originally Posted by familiarrealms

Did you pay £3000 for a Lapsafe unit? The ones I mentioned are half that...

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Saying that the mentor range are around that did you get those ones.

We wheel our wireless around on the trolleys - we did have the APs in place in the department that owns the trolley but it limited the trolley to that area, and the laptops loved connecting to the AP with 1 bar of signal. We use a pair of Netgear Prosafe APs - WG102 - which are now years old but do the job fine. There's a small switch in the trolley so the teacher only has to plug in one cable. Seems to work okay, and fairly cheap. 802.11n would help I think, would need separate LAN connections really.

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Originally Posted by FragglePete

Tsk Tsk @Steve21, have you forgotten your glory days here pushing the trolley around and plugging in an Access Point!!! :P

Pete

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Never! :) Just was assuming it was in addition to site wide, just to ensure there's enough through-put for the whole trolley in an area without impacting others.

Did you ever get those handles replaced that Mr Gary and James killed? :)

Steve

The APs that are in the Lapsafe trolleys are usually Cisco. Seems counter productive mounting them inside a metal trolley though.

The Netgear mini switches they have in them occasionally need rebooting.

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Originally Posted by familiarrealms

Did you pay £3000 for a Lapsafe unit? The ones I mentioned are half that...

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Those lapsafe trolleys were here before i started so I do not know how much they were. But i got a rough ballpark figure and an estimate was £3000 each for a lapsafe for some additional ones.

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Originally Posted by 3s-gtech

We wheel our wireless around on the trolleys - we did have the APs in place in the department that owns the trolley but it limited the trolley to that area, and the laptops loved connecting to the AP with 1 bar of signal. We use a pair of Netgear Prosafe APs - WG102 - which are now years old but do the job fine. There's a small switch in the trolley so the teacher only has to plug in one cable. Seems to work okay, and fairly cheap. 802.11n would help I think, would need separate LAN connections really.

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We use HP they cost more but are much better at sharing the load, Meraki are very good too. They are not cheap but if they follow the trolley then it's far cheaper than whole school wireless.

Just set up 2 laptop trollies (30 laptops in each) - ClassBuddy from Lapsafe ClassBuddy | Laptop trolley | Lapsafe
Cheap but very big and heavy. Also took forever to deliver.
Products | EcoCarts are worth a look at esp as they can take laptops vertically.

One minor detail that makes life easier. Check to see where the charging led's are located on your laptops- if you can see them when the laptops are stacked in the trolley you know they are on charge. This was a problem with our old trolley and there was always a couple of laptops that had not been plugged in properly.

We are using Netgear WNDAP360 access points. Although we have whole site wifi, having a dedicated access point lowers the overhead for the rest of school. Still in testing stage but seems to work ok.

Just set up 2 laptop trollies (30 laptops in each) - ClassBuddy from Lapsafe ClassBuddy | Laptop trolley | Lapsafe
Cheap but very big and heavy. Also took forever to deliver.
Products | EcoCarts are worth a look at esp as they can take laptops vertically.

One minor detail that makes life easier. Check to see where the charging led's are located on your laptops- if you can see them when the laptops are stacked in the trolley you know they are on charge. This was a problem with our old trolley and there was always a couple of laptops that had not been plugged in properly.

We are using Netgear WNDAP360 access points. Although we have whole site wifi, having a dedicated access point lowers the overhead for the rest of school. Still in testing stage but seems to work ok.

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Originally Posted by PeteGeode

So you already have the trollies and your just looking to replace the actual AP's? I think Meraki would do the job well? Especially if you only need 4 or 5 as you don't need to bother with the controller and you still get a great easy to use management system in the cloud.

I could arrange a free demo for you if you like? where are you located in the UK? I have a MR12 demo AP which should be good for your 16 nodes. You could have it for a day or 2 to see if there would be any value in it for you.

pm me or email me at peter@geodenetworks.com if your interested.

Regards
Pete

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MR12 would be underpowered for what they want. MR16 at Least IMHO

And Another vote for Meraki, will be interesting to see how many people pay more attention to it now they have been bought by Cisco. I've been using them for the last 8 months and been flawless.

Well I had a few demonstrations from some laptop trolley companies and have opted for one company. So I will have 4 in total. Looking at how the current 2 lapsafe trolleys are setup is :

Cable from data point on wall>>>>Lapsafe data point on trolley >>>>netgear unmanaged switch >>>>> AP & Printer.

So for the new 2 trolleys I am buying I need to buy some unmanaged switches 4 x AP's (2 to replace the current ones in the lapsafe trolley)

Blanket wifi for now is a no Hopefully later down the line I can do something about that but for now its a no.

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Originally Posted by PeteGeode

Just spoke to one of our technicians and they said the MR12 should handle the traffic okay but agreed with Glennda that the MR16 would handle the load a lot better and future proof yourselves if the demands on the AP were increased. It also has dual radio 2.4ghz & 5ghz which the MR12 Doesn’t. Although your laptops may not have 5 GHz capability you will again be future proofing yourself.

Also spoke with our Operations Manager and it wouldn’t be a problem getting you a free demo on the MR16 either. You might want to demo an MR12 on one existing trolley and a MR16 on the other and if the MR12 cant handle the pace then switch back to your Legacy AP.


What model are the switches you currently use and are you looking for a similar model or an upgrade? I imagine the AP's are plugged directly into a power socket on the trolley rather than POE from the switch.


Regards

Pete

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An MR12 would handle normal web browsing but its single radio and limited to 300mbs, I've had an MR12 here against an MR16 (dual radio 600mbs) and the MR12 struggles if you have more then about 10 devices it struggles with domain logins and profiles.

Thanks Glennda,

It is always best to get feedback from the people who use these things day in day out so your input is helpful thanks. Looks like the MR16 would defiantly be the option then as our technician was strongly agreeing with Glennda's feedback. I'm still in training atm so it's a nice learning curve for myself.

Either way a demo on an MR16 would be no problem.

+1 for Ubiquity Unifi

Very reliable for very little money! A great step between random APs and a fully managed service.