New Wireless System/Infrastructure

[adamholt1]

Hi,

 

Looking at implementing a new wireless system at our school. We currently run a apple airport system (dont laugh!)

 

Have looked at a fair few options and spoken with quite a few resellers but can't seem to make a choice one way or another - options mainly considering are the high spec Rukus, Xirrus down to a more budget version of Netgear system.

 

From surveys we have had it has been suggested that 12 AP's along with some new switch replacements should do the job.

 

Could anyone recommend which avenue we should go down and what price we should be looking to pay for the whole hardware, config and installation as we are getting very different prices each time round!

 

 

help appreciated as always,

 

Thank you!

[bclarke]

The usual suspects can be a very expensive outlay such as Meraki, Ruckus or Aruba. AP's are usually expensive too and each usually has annual support costs too.

 

I am just looking at Open Mesh http://www.open-mesh.com (UK supplier http://www.openmesh-uk.com)

 

I am yet to buy an AP to test, but it looks like it is quite clever, cloud based and the only cost is the AP and various accessories you may need. It can cope with VLANS too by the looks of it.

[ZeroNeg]

Have a look at ubiquti unifi access points. About £160 for a pack of 3. Once setup through the software all you need to do is buy more and add them to the system. Nice and easy setup and can have a guest side also. Would defo have a look as they would save you money that you can then use to upgrade those switches you mentioned.

[buzzard]

+1 for Ubiquiti, especially if you use the Pro AP's it's all I use now, always used to use Ruckus previously but the cost saving made it a no brainer for our situation

[NotSoFast]

Unifi has been brilliant in our relatively small, non-byod school. As per lots of other threads, I think it probably depends on your needs.

[synaesthesia]

It (UniFi) works particularly well in our BYOD enabled large school so we're very happy. It's also working well in a dense primary with lots of mobile devices too with no issues. All are the standard AP's (cheap ones) but again I would recommend the Pros. Still always going to be a quarter the cost of the "big names" (enclosed in speech marks as really ubiquiti are likely bigger than Ruckus or Meru - won't count Meraki as that's Cisco)

[HTCPCP]

All depends on what you want to do with it really. We currently have a Meraki system which is brilliant for what we need it to do, but isn't cheap at all. The web based management is brilliant meaning you can easily see how many devices are connected to it, and are able to use multiple DHCP servers to enable transparent proxy system for the roll out of One Device Per Pupil and a 6th form BYOD.

We have previously had a Ruckus system which in our mind was a pain, but at the time did everything we needed it to do.

 

For smaller schools that the team i'm a member of manages, we have a mixture of Aruba managed systems which are brilliant for primary schools, albeit not really that effective at a secondary level. The other option is the unmanaged system which you can just set up and ignore until something goes wrong. One of the primary schools has an old D-Link one which works fine, albeit its rather slow now, although there are plans being made to replace that with another unmanaged system at the start of the next budget year! Just need to get approval from the head/Governors for it!

[IrritableTech]

It is going to entirely depend on your environment, your infrastructure and your level of expertise.

 

I've used Ruckus and Unifi extensively. Ruckus is a more rounded solution with pretty much everything working out of the box. Unifi is fantastic, but to do more advanced things you need to run radius. As others have said, if you go unifi, I'd get the pro APs.

 

Either system, get a managed gigabit PoE switch you're familiar with.

[chazzy2501]

+1 Unify, super cheap and no on going costs. Run the controller from one of your own servers. configure the network or networks, then adopt new APs, super easy. Not as full featured as Meraki but wayyy less money.

 

I purchased the Ubiquity AC points but I'm thinking its wasted and I should have gone just gone Pro. However it was the difference between 3.8k (pro) and 5.6k (new AC) , for a medium sized school using 27APs it was still a tiny amount.

 

Only downside is the controller software runs in Java and setting up the program to run as a service was fiddly but documented.

Edited October 24, 2014 by chazzy2501

[Net-Ctrl]

Ruckus have got some good offers running on their 11ac access points. If you're already engaged with a Ruckus partner make sure they're quoting you on these as they should work out cheaper than buying the older 11n Aps. If there's anything we could do to assist, please feel free to send me a PM

[Meldrew]

Again, +1 for unifi. I've tried openmesh, but getting firewall ports opened to allow it to access the cloud controller was a pain. Documentation was sketchy and in the end we gave up trying. Unifi is just brilliant and cheap - hard to understand how they can make such a good product for the price, when compared to other manufacturers.

 

Meldrew

[achedgy]

All depends on what you want to do with it really. We currently have a Meraki system which is brilliant for what we need it to do, but isn't cheap at all. The web based management is brilliant meaning you can easily see how many devices are connected to it, and are able to use multiple DHCP servers to enable transparent proxy system for the roll out of One Device Per Pupil and a 6th form BYOD.

We have previously had a Ruckus system which in our mind was a pain, but at the time did everything we needed it to do.

 

For smaller schools that the team i'm a member of manages, we have a mixture of Aruba managed systems which are brilliant for primary schools, albeit not really that effective at a secondary level. The other option is the unmanaged system which you can just set up and ignore until something goes wrong. One of the primary schools has an old D-Link one which works fine, albeit its rather slow now, although there are plans being made to replace that with another unmanaged system at the start of the next budget year! Just need to get approval from the head/Governors for it!

 

HTCPCP - in a primary where you're using an unmanaged system, please check out unify, you get a managed system for the price of an unmanaged and will give you load balancing, centralised control. Just no reason to go unmanaged these days...

[zag]

For smaller schools that the team i'm a member of manages, we have a mixture of Aruba managed systems which are brilliant for primary schools, albeit not really that effective at a secondary level.

 

Not sure about that. We are a large secondary who run Aruba.

 

We chose it because our local university used it and so did the Microsoft HQ campus just down the road.

 

If anything I would say its better for larger environments.

 

Total cost was about 20k for 40 access points, a controller and no on going costs

Edited October 24, 2014 by zag

[Haptic]

We have previously had a Ruckus system which in our mind was a pain, but at the time did everything we needed it to do!

 

Can you expand a little?

[HTCPCP]

Not sure about that. We are a large secondary who run Aruba.

 

We chose it because our local university used it and so did the Microsoft HQ campus just down the road.

 

If anything I would say its better for larger environments.

 

Total cost was about 20k for 40 access points, a controller and no on going costs

 

The LA when they were looking at our site, to get the coverage that we could get from the Meraki gear, we would need more than double the number of APs throughout the site and have to get the cabling done, whereas for the Meraki we could do a like for like with the old ruckus. We spent less on the Meraki, albeit we will need to buy new licenses in a few years, but even then, we worked out that it would take 6 years before we the Aruba would work out cheaper.

[KK20]

Another +1 for unifi here. In total we run a VLAN guest using vouchers, VLAN BYOD using a "known" code but heavy filtering and academic network SSID. No issues whatsoever with them. Had a couple of APs brick themselves after an update but they were RMA'd without issue. We use 37 APs covering 4 buildings including some external points covering the astroturf and rugby pitches; tablet registration by PE! BYOD is disabled on the external points but voucher system is enabled. We also run a point to point with directional antenna acting as a bridge.

 

All APs are LRs and were about £240 for 3 when we purchased them. We originally started with 9 and simply added on more as needed.

Edited October 24, 2014 by KK20

[HTCPCP]

When it was installed, it worked well, but not as well as the sales person said/showed it would (We are sure that he had an AP under his coat run off batteries so that when he showed us the coverage well away from the AP at high signal... The signal was never brilliant, even relatively near the AP, unless you had a direct line of sight to the AP which was annoying. (something that doesn't seem to be such a problem with the Meraki gear)

 

The kit was fine for what we wanted, until we wanted to set up the transparent proxy when we found out that it wouldn't allow us to use multiple DHCP servers, something later confirmed by the support provider when we asked. All in all it was just a bit of a let down, although with newer buildings I could imagine that Ruckus could be a great solution. Just wasn't the right one for us!

[goes4eyes]

We started using Xirrus at our College about 4 years ago. After a little tuning it turned out to be amazing and has never let us down. It's also still going strong. Since then we started helping other schools and now manage 1400 radios across multiple sites. I'd highly recommend it. We have tried the Ubiquiti offerings (UAP-Pro) and although it was very good for the money, it did struggle to perform when put under pressure. We've also looked at Aruba and although I'd go so far to say it performed the same as the like for like Xirrus offering in an education environment, the support costs are high.

 

We are now a Xirrus partner so if you need any further advice or some test kit, let me know.