AntiThesis Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 Hi guys, We're going to be putting in an "enterprise grade" (I use the quotations loosely because none of the people who keep using the phrase know what it actually means) wireless solution for e-learning. 1300 concurrent devices max (tablets/chromebooks) and we're currently being courted by both Ruckus and Fortigate. Fortigate say that they can give us something awesome, Ruckus say that comparing Ruckus to Fortigate is like comparing a scooter and a Ferrari. Any ideas on this? Anyone else that wants to give us a proposal by close of business Monday? Basically, we're doing this and we're doing it now (before end November the system will be in) because otherwise it'll never happen - who would you pick if money wasn't an object (to a point)
Net-Ctrl Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 I'm not just saying this because we're a Ruckus reseller..but Ruckus all day long, especially at that density. Ruckus is renowned for it's great wireless solution. We never come up against Fortinets wireless solution. The other players we come up against a lot are the likes of MERU, Aerohive, Aruba and Meraki. Are you already involved with a Ruckus reseller? If so they should be able to provide you with some free demo kit to use, so you can see how good it really is.
AntiThesis Posted October 30, 2014 Author Posted October 30, 2014 That's more or less the way that most people seem to be saying it as well - we've got one of the resellers here in SA talking to us and what's going to happen come Monday morning is each company will have a chance to look at the other proposal (prices omitted of course) so that they can give feedback. That way at least they have a chance to give an opinion. The situation is basically that we have the cash right now (as in, it will be gone by the end of the year) and so once we have a proposal that works, we'll go for it guns blazing. Once we've selected whoever it is, we'll get the demo stuff going and then make sure before paying. The only reason any of this is happening right now is that certain schools in the area made a very public thing about their "Going Google" (let's not talk about the fact that "Going Google" in their case means using GApps and delpoying 30 chromebooks) so now the other schools have the bit between their teeth and are riding as hard as they can. Bah. This is a race I was so not hoping to win.
Net-Ctrl Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 Sounds like a lot of fun for you If it's just between Ruckus and Fortinet, and budgets allow for Ruckus, then it should be an easy choice for everyone involved. Ruckus have made their name based on their wireless solutions and wireless technology, and they really are great at WiFi (again not just saying this as Ruckus reseller ) If you have any questions about Ruckus or anything i could do to help, please feel free to ask or PM me
synaesthesia Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 I've seen Fortigate wireless systems, I believe one of our academies uses them, and our ISP has certainly tried to punt them to us with a good pitch, however I would certainly be Ruckus over and above with no hesitation, out of those two.
nicholab Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 Ruckus is the best. I have had Ruckus kit on trial and is was great. But instead we spent £20K more on HP.
soveryapt Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 Ruckus is the best. I have had Ruckus kit on trial and is was great. But instead we spent £20K more on HP. I sense a slight sore point there .. To contribute though (and I realise the option was either or but...), Ubiquiti kit is already really good, but they're really stepping up to the mark at the moment with developments in their controller software and firmware upgrades as a low cost alternative that with the right distribution of points would also easily cope with that sort of wireless demands. Certainly worth a look into at least.
DMcCoy Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 I sense a slight sore point there .. To contribute though (and I realise the option was either or but...), Ubiquiti kit is already really good, but they're really stepping up to the mark at the moment with developments in their controller software and firmware upgrades as a low cost alternative that with the right distribution of points would also easily cope with that sort of wireless demands. Certainly worth a look into at least. FYI I work for a company that will supply Ruckus and Unifi (amongst other wireless products). I still wouldn't classify Unifi as an enterprise product. There are no support offerings, there is no advanced replacement. Version *2* is still the stable branch (and I mean unifi, not unifi-rapid). I might reconsider when the controller does the RADIUS auth over the APs and when it supports 802.1x assigned VLANs, in a *stable* release (not in any release yet however, and on the roadmap for over a year). Unifi has it's place, which at least imo is not an environment with 1300 clients.
localzuk Posted October 30, 2014 Posted October 30, 2014 Does the Unifi stuff adjust Tx power automatically yet?
AntiThesis Posted October 31, 2014 Author Posted October 31, 2014 Finally got both proposals in front of me so will be doing the big swap today and see what they say about each other. Should be quite interesting - I'm 99.9% sure we'll go with ruckus but at least this way I can say I've done my due diligence.
AntiThesis Posted November 4, 2014 Author Posted November 4, 2014 Well, so far it's Ruckus coming out ahead of the game. The nice Ruckus technical rep basically wrote a mini white paper on how Ruckus is better. I know he's biased but was still excellent to see and read. That and the Ruckus solution comes in at around £27k and supports a theoretical maximum of 3200 devices while the Fortigate solution comes in at £28.5k and supports a max of 800 so I'd effectively need to double that to cover the whole school.
xenonive Posted November 4, 2014 Posted November 4, 2014 You might want to consider that with tablets and chrome books they don't use anything in terms of wireless bandwidth unless they are all on media sites , I've had 65-70 iPads on on single HP wireless node and it was only using 10-15mb bandwidth as peak with all of them browsing for online research . If it was that many laptops logging on to a single node they would take a long time. Could be worth looking at scaling wireless back in terms of density if your going to lots of mobile devices and investing more in faster internet if you don't have so already .
AntiThesis Posted November 4, 2014 Author Posted November 4, 2014 Well, we have the fastest internet possible at the moment (4 x 4mb ADSL lines - oh yeaaaah ) but part of this whole deal is getting some fibre in in the coming year. The way these will be working is alongside a local content server sitting in my server room that will serve up multimedia, text books and so on. I expect the pull to be quite heavy (at least initially) so we'll see how it goes.
AntiThesis Posted November 5, 2014 Author Posted November 5, 2014 The grand saga continues Looks like the fortigate stuff is out of the running but we now need to get a quote for a Cisco system since that's what some of the other schools in our area are using. I almost wish we had LEAs that could just say "Use X system". Aah well
localzuk Posted November 5, 2014 Posted November 5, 2014 Eugh. Cisco. Had that in my last place. The control panel was indecipherable! Density was poor also, having more than a dozen clients on an AP would cause it to be an unending collection of collisions and low bandwidth.
Haptic Posted November 5, 2014 Posted November 5, 2014 Fortinet? Ruckus all the way on both cost and quality. Chris 1
AntiThesis Posted November 12, 2014 Author Posted November 12, 2014 It's down to Ruckus and Cisco now - the total cost of ownership over 36 months (how we're evaluating all of them) is pretty much on par. They're looking at the Cisco 700 series APs with a Cisco 2504 Controller. I'm still leaning heavily towards Ruckus because of comments here and the general awesomeness of their team here in SA. Aaargh.
nicholab Posted November 12, 2014 Posted November 12, 2014 Cisco will be a pain to manage and place have taken cisco out and put ruckus in.
SJA Posted November 18, 2014 Posted November 18, 2014 We have a Cisco system near end of life. No way will it be replaced with Cisco again! Given the choice of Cisco or Ruckus, I'd be choosing Ruckus.
LeMarchand Posted November 20, 2014 Posted November 20, 2014 Don't go Cisco. Had it in one school and it was a complete PITA. Plus getting anyone to look at it when it went wrong was nigh on impossible. IMHO, there's only one "Enterprise-grade" wireless solution worth having.
AntiThesis Posted January 29, 2015 Author Posted January 29, 2015 We ended up going with Ruckus and so far it's pretty awesome. We've yet to get very many devices on (2016 will be when we roll out en-masse) but everything is pretty simple and runs exceptionally well. Thanks for the advice 2
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