Aruba, Meru or Ruckus

[manick]

HI all,

I am after your thoughts. Our principal is pushing for a complete overall of our wireless network (installed on ad-hoc basis and not now fit for purpose). I am considering Meru (am impressed with what I've seen so far), Ruckus and Aruba.

We are a school with 1600 users total (staff and students).
We will be wanting to get to as close as 100% coverage as we can get (about 90 classrooms, coverage of sports field and courtyard), the builidng is around a courtyard (almost hexagonal shape).
We will be wanting to allow students to use their own handheld devices (netbooks, smartphones, laptops), we will want this to somehow be managed by the wireless so that it only allows them access to the internet and they won't be able to touch the network.
Also it will allow the schools own equipment, netbooks, laptops etc, to connect to the network (using the same access points).
We need the equipment to be able to deal with high user density.
We will be ensuring that all of our switches are 1gb to be able to cope with the traffic.

That's all I can think of at the moment, with this in mind, what are people's thoughts, what do people have installed (of these 3) at the moment and what are the pros and cons of each, what problems could you foresee with my requirements?

Cheers

Manick

[nephilim]

After upsetting Meru and Aruba...I say Ruckus. They did not like my report one bit, but it was as brutally honest as it could be!! Speak to Net Ctrl or CP-Ltd for ruckus quotes

[zag]

We had a complete new install of Aruba about a year and a half ago.

I can safely say it is by far the best investment we have made in school ICT.

I've literally not touched it since the install and it simply works, at full speed with no problems. Full N signal in every area of the school. Its awesome

I trialed Meru and Aruba but preferred the aruba interface and it had some great reviews on here.

As you have already mentioned make sure your switches are gigabit if you want "n" wireless.

Cost about 20k for 32 AP's installed and setup with all networking and POE included.

EDIT: yes you can setup Different rules for different devices.

[Domino]

Get loan equipment in and test it as much as possible.

If they won't give you loan equipment, they obviously don't have much faith in it ;-)

Personally I've found the Ruckus kit to provide unrivalled performance, at a great price. Install, configure and forget is probably the best endorsement I could give it.

[Aggy]

<post edited>

Please don't post commecially in another sponsors forum Aggy.

[AyatollahPies]

After upsetting Meru and Aruba...I say Ruckus. They did not like my report one bit, but it was as brutally honest as it could be!! Speak to Net Ctrl or CP-Ltd for ruckus quotes

+1 to what this man said.

[nephilim]

http://www.edugeek.net/attachments/f...-research.docx Took a while to find...read that before doing any decision!

[manick]

Made interesting reading Nephilim, is that your report?

[plexer]

Interesting to read and as I'm not sure of what HP kit you had I cannot be 100% but in my experience of HP wireless the statement about only one AP per switch is tosh.

Ben

[Theblacksheep]

Interesting to read and as I'm not sure of what HP kit you had I cannot be 100% but in my experience of HP wireless the statement about only one AP per switch is tosh.

Ben

We have HP, its managed by a central unit on a blade switch, more than one AP per switch and this can be linked to procurve manager (with wirelss add ons). Bit crappy tho.

[nicholab]

I believe to manage some system properly you need management system which can cost up to £7,000 on top of the hardware. That is the case with are £65,000 HP system which does not work a 100% due to not having this system.

[nephilim]

Yes that is my report, but bare in mind it is nearly 3 years old now!!!

Just remember that yes the technologies have advanced, however they have advanced the same for each company

[Domino]

I believe to manage some system properly you need management system which can cost up to £7,000 on top of the hardware.

buh? Like whose? Even a CIsco WCS licence for 50 units won't run you that much...

[nicholab]

I believe Ruckus is the best for one factor wireless connectivitiy not authentication, management system and being part of your enterprise strategy.

[localzuk]

I'm another advocate of Ruckus. We covered our entire site with 11 APs, when a site survey for Aruba recommended 20+. Speed is superb, manageability is excellent. It has the ability to have different SSIDs, each with different rules etc... So I think it is ideal for what you want really.