New WLAN system.

[petertec]

Hi all,

 

we are looking at replacing our old Wireless system, I was contacted recently by Enterasys, we are sitting down with them next week and just wanted to see if anyone had had any experience with them?

 

They look like they are pretty successfull in the US edu market so would be good to know people's opinions of them? Obviously we are sitting down with the usual suspects, Ruckus, Aerohive etc.

 

Thanks in advance.

[ass17]

Ask BT Business to quote you on Ruckus, supply, install, config & training, came out really really cheap for us!! I think it only cost 50k for controller & redundant controller, 95 APs.

[nelsons]

Wow that seems quite expensive, we have just deployed 88 Meraki AP's in a school for 39k

[mhowell]

Hi peter

Whereabouts is your school?

Happy to put you in touch with local schools running Meru and put you in touch with a qualified partner

Mark

[email protected]

07919057244

[snoerre]

Hi all,

we are looking at replacing our old Wireless system, I was contacted recently by Enterasys, we are sitting down with them next week and just wanted to see if anyone had had any experience with them?

 

Great, you´re sitting down with them. Could you please ask them when/if "IPv6 over CAPWAP protocol" will be supported? That´s what I am missing on the Enterasys Wifi solution.

(Perhaps it will help, if you give them that paper from Cisco http://d2zmdbbm9feqrf.cloudfront.net/2012/usa/pdf/BRKEWN-2010.pdf (page 79) )

Edited May 20, 2013 by snoerre

[petertec]

Great, you´re sitting down with them. Could you please ask them when/if "IPv6 over CAPWAP protocol" will be supported? That´s what I am missing on the Enterasys Wifi solution.

(Perhaps it will help, if you give them that paper from Cisco http://d2zmdbbm9feqrf.cloudfront.net/2012/usa/pdf/BRKEWN-2010.pdf (page 79) )

 

 

No problem @snoerre, will do! How have you found the Enterasys solution in general? Meeting them this week.

[snoerre]

Great, thanks.

Talking about the Enterasys, I haven´t had any clients complaining about "unstable" connectivity for some months. As long those don´t complain, I won´t either at the moment (Yes, there were bugs. Just log in to the enterasys support homepage and read the release notes). But they have been fixed.

 

If you go with Enterasys, you have to pay for the controller, the access points and licenses for the access points plus software support contract. Hardware warranty is nowadays a kind of limited lifetime for (some?) controllers, I think(, which wasn´t the case when I bought those:( ). Also, go for the smallest devices (AP3705) and put in more if needed.

Edited May 20, 2013 by snoerre

[petertec]

how did they compare in terms of price, @ass17 mentioned a Ruckus 95 AP solution for 50k and @nelsons a 88 AP meraki solution at 39k. I'm sure we will get some more info this week but I had never heard of them before and looking for a little background info. Appreciate the help!

[synaesthesia]

Also to add scale to that, for under 5 grand you could put in a basic Unifi system with 90 APs.

 

Upscale to the latest all singing all dancing AC access points, again 90, is around £13.5k.

Thats not including any cabling or extra switches though but that wouldnt add that much.. Worth considering!

[petertec]

@synaesthesia Unifi is Ubiquiti right? How can it be so much cheaper than other solutions? I have used 'non enterprise' solutions in the past like Netgear and don't really want to again. Meraki, Ruckus, Enterasys, from what I can gather seem to have similar pricing. For Ubiquiti to be so much lower rings alarm bells? I'm sure I have read on here somewhere that Unifi came bottom on performance tests?

[synaesthesia]

Yes, it's Ubiquiti. It'll piddle on any of those other non enterprise solutions and performance is hardly bad, especially when you look at the new AC models. (we're only going for the standards after a successful trial period of them). It depends on a lot including what you're doing with them, how many clients, what those clients are likely to be doing etc. Just want to make sure you're aware of other solutions other than the big managed setups. Regardless of "how badly they perform" or "how cheap they seem", you would be utterly daft to choose the likes of Ruckus, Meraki or Meru to name a few if you're only intending to provide basic guest wireless and serve a few teacher devices.

[petertec]

we are trying to 'future proof' in that we are looking at quite an extensive BYOD program for around 1000 students and teachers. Devices are only ever going to increase so we want a solution that will scale and be able to handle a high density of devices. Its not simply a case of guest access, we need it to be far more robust than that.

[synaesthesia]

Not a problem. We're using ours to do similar on a far tighter budget (hence using standards) - certainly can't even start to think about spending anywhere near £50k on managed systems. I love working with Ruckus in a small school (11 APs) but I certainly wouldn't have gone near it if at the time of install we knew about the Unifi setup.

 

// edit : btw if you have any links to said comparisons I'd be very interested to see them.

Edited May 20, 2013 by synaesthesia

[snoerre]

@synaesthesia Unifi is Ubiquiti right? How can it be so much cheaper than other solutions??

 

Well, Unifi is centrally managed, but the client traffic isn´t forwarded to the controller, where you can control what the users can do (That´s why I´m interested in "IPv6 over CAPWAP", as this is the "tunnel protocol" Enterasys uses between the access points an the controller). Instead it goes in the local subnet of the access point or another VLAN; no problem if e.g. you control all traffic there, use VRF,... But not that comfortable while setting it up.

 

If my current 802.11n access points get replaced (in 5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 12 years, depending on the given budget), I will definitely look at the Ubnt Unifi devices.

 

(PS.: I wouldn´t buy current Netgear business access points, as software support with Netgear´s switching/networking products isn´t that good at all)

Edited May 20, 2013 by snoerre

[petertec]

Well, Unifi is centrally managed, but the client traffic isn´t forwarded to the controller, where you can control what the users can do (That´s why I´m interested in "IPv6 over CAPWAP", as this is the "tunnel protocol" Enterasys uses between the access points an the controller). Instead it goes in the local subnet of the access point or another VLAN; no problem if e.g. you control all traffic there, use VRF,... But not that comfortable while setting it up.

 

I think in theory I am looking for the same thing, do we think that VLAN's are a suitable and sufficient way to control and prioritize traffic across the network. Vendors talk about policy and role based networkng that is applied dynamically across the infrastructure, VLAN's and subnets need constant attention, setting up etc. I want a logical infrastructure that can adapt and change as we add new user groups, devices etc.

[petertec]

Not a problem. We're using ours to do similar on a far tighter budget (hence using standards) - certainly can't even start to think about spending anywhere near £50k on managed systems.

 

 

Does Unifi allow you a great deal of control over BYOD devices?

[Achandler]

It depends entirely on how much you want to control them, it is more limited to blocking them or unblocking them. You have the standard guest portals and user codes for access for periods of time etc.

 

Guests can be isolated so that they can't access anything except the internet etc.

 

But the traffic control is all by VLAN, as for VLANs need constant attention, since when, sounds like someone is hyping up a product that stops the need for VLANs using some rules on the controller, since all traffic is routed there. Personally I prefer none school owned devices entirely separate from our network though, on its own VLAN.

 

Future proofing is always an issue, it is difficult to answer that. If in 5 years time there is a sudden increase in demand on the wireless, then unify would need replacing probably, but then if it cost you 5k now, then is that a massive problem? in 5 years time, there will likely be new wireless protocols, running at faster speeds, that none of today's access points can support. Your choice may well be you spend 5-10k every 5 years on a new wireless with decent technology (unify) but not the best, or you spend 50k every 10 years on the best now. The best now, will probably be better for the next 5 years, then it would become on par for the next couple and then probably worse for the final three. It also costs you 30k more over 10 years.

 

Its a budget and technology balancing act.

[synaesthesia]

Does Unifi allow you a great deal of control over BYOD devices?

 

Yes, it allows separation by vlan as mentioned above so we can use a separate vlan for guest devices. You can have them authenticate through a web portal (run by the controller software) if required.

[petertec]

It depends entirely on how much you want to control them, it is more limited to blocking them or unblocking them.

 

I think there are solutions out there that can do a lot more in terms of provisioning different user groups. Admittedly we are quite a forward thinking school but the way wireless is going we want to get this right first time. Some solutions allow different QoS and rate limiting, so allowing teachers more bandwidth than students etc, doing this without the need for VLANs to my understanding. Some vendors are even now doing this at the application layer ( meraki??). I know some schools are purely after connectivity but we are looking at a more BYOD friendly solution and something that gives us real specific control of users and devices etc. If Wi-fi adoption carries on the way its going then this would be sensible no?

 

I'm not completely sold on the inherent security of VLAN's either, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_white_paper09186a008013159f.shtml#wp39054, there are plenty of articles like this from vendors that maintain VLANs were never meant to be used for security purposes but simply as broadcast domains? Or is this all overkill?

Edited May 21, 2013 by petertec