Cheap "Proper" Wireless network

[SimpleSi]

At the Chorley (Lancs) ICT Exhibition we had yesterday, a local firm were advertising this system from Netgear (A six AP fully installed setup for about £2100).

It seems to be quite cheap for a "professional" wi-fi setup and maybe worth considering for those who just want to get a wi-fi system that works as the firm that was exhibiting it guarantee it works or the school gets their money back!

regards

Simon

[ricki]

yuck wifi

[Ste_Harve]

I'm running the Netgear WG102 access points which can be converted to the lite models to be used with this switch. The switch itself is about £950ish and each access point is about £70, then need converting to the lite model, which is a non reversible firmware flash.

I'm impressed with the access points, they have a good set of features, work well when put under load, and haven't fallen over yet!! I'm looking at upgrading to one of these switches but would need 3-4 to cover our entire site due to having seperate buildings. One thing I like about them is you can stack the switches so you have one master and all the other switches pull the config info from there. I've seen one in use and it was really simple how they set it up. (Then again anything is when you do it daily!!)

I'd have to compare this setup similar to the procurve zl wireless controller module. I run a procurve wired infrastructure and we we're given to netgear access points and after extensive testing they seem to function very well so decided to extend using netgear.

[SimpleSi]

yuck wifi

Is that

Wifi is yuck (agreed BTW ) ?

or

This particular wifi setup is yuck?

or

You object to my use of wifi without capitalisation ? :P

regards

Simon

[western]

We do the installed netgear system as si described, as a pointer if you have no more than 16 AP's then the one managed switch can be placed anywhere on the network and control access points anywhere on the network regardless of which building there in (if you want POE in the remote buildings then use the non-managed switches from netgear that will power your AP's). The managed switch creates a tunnel between itself and the ap's - that it how it works (you can stack the managed switches in one cabinet and this can control on a master/slave system up to 64 APs)

[Chris_Jones]

We are currently implementing this on our network with 3 of these switches and 40 APs.

This is essentially re-badged Aruba kit and is full of features, though the documentation for the more advanced functions seem lacking.

[dhicks]

At the Chorley (Lancs) ICT Exhibition we had yesterday, a local firm were advertising this system from Netgear (A six AP fully installed setup for about £2100).

Which local firm? I know I've looked around at managed wireless networks in the past and got figures nearer £20,000 rather than £2,000, so I'd love to know about a decent cheap one.

--
David Hicks

[plexer]

Well that switch is about £1000 and the ap's are around £80 - £90 each so that's not bad.

We use airwave which cost about £2,500 and supports 50 ap's and HP 420's which are about £120 each.

So if you get a firm that will come in and do a site survey possibly with the in built rf functions of that switch and set it all up wouldn't be too bad.

Ben

[Ric_]

@Si: That solution is going to be included in the wifi comparison guide... coming soon!

[Michael]

A few months ago I installed 10 x HP 10ag Wireless Access Points and 1 x HP2626-PWR which came to around £1600.