What wireless system are you using?

[Joanne]

Primary school - Ruckus - Delighted.

[m25man]

There are plenty of large campuses using Unifi to great success on here.

The fact is the larger schools and more to the point, complex setups have requirements that are beyond Unifi's product focus.

Only 4 SSIDs and VLANS per point are a limiting factor for some, intelligent on-boarding is becoming more important for larger organisations with BYOD which is proprietary to each manufacturer.

Unifi ticks the boxes for most requirements but if you really need some of the advanced features offered by the top tier vendors then you should be looking at those.

I really have no time for people that buy Unifi because it was all they could afford then complain about it because it doesn't have the functionality of a system 2 or 3 times the price!

 

You get what you pay for in any technology, if you need Ruckus or Meraki features then that's what you should be buying!

Unifi does a great job for a fair price but there is nobody on the end of a phone when your stuck unless your reseller is prepared to do it for free.

Everyone else charges for support and this is reflected in the TCO.

[jmak]

Anyone using Unifi in a fairly large secondary? Say 800+

 

Heard lots of good things about them for smaller schools but not sure if no-ones mentioning them for secondaries as they aren't working, or just no-ones bit the bullet yet

 

Steve

 

Our local secondary uses it - I went to see a demo there before I bought. PM if you want more details.

 

>1800 pupils

 

As @m25man says, I don't think numbers/scale are a problem. The management is excellent For The Price, but somewhat limited compared to the more expensive solutions. Get your statement of requirements together before making a decision - just like any other tech purchase.

 

Of course, you can buy a starter set for £60 and play to your heart's content

[foofighterjim]

Aerohive in a medium sized secondary here, installed last year and absolutely love it.

[Arreks]

Surprised Meraki isn't more popular tbh..

[Net-Ctrl]

It would be interesting to see how these results compare to previous wireless solution polls that were done say a year or so ago. I'm sure the biggest change will be the rise of Ubiquiti, we're certainly seeing it come up more and more in primary and smaller secondary schools. Not so much in larger or more complex sites that demand either additional features or functionality, or require a smart AP for their environment, as mentioned above.

 

Ruckus have recently released a new product aimed more at the primary and secondary school market called 'Unleashed', it's a controller-less solution where you have one master AP to control the rest. Gives us a cheaper alternative to put forward when budgets are tight

Edited November 4, 2015 by Net-Ctrl
Incorrect info as shown in post below

[foofighterjim]

Ruckus have recently released a new product aimed more at the primary and secondary school market called 'Unleashed', it's a controller-less solution, similar to that of Aerohive, where you have one master AP to control the rest. Gives us a cheaper alternative to put forward when budgets are tight

 

This isn't a technically accurate description of what Aerohive does. The only time you have a "master" AP with Aerohive is if you are binding PPSKs to a MAC address. Otherwise APs get their updates directly from Hive Manager.

[Net-Ctrl]

This isn't a technically accurate description of what Aerohive does. The only time you have a "master" AP with Aerohive is if you are binding PPSKs to a MAC address. Otherwise APs get their updates directly from Hive Manager.

 

Apologies, i thought the architecture was very similar.

[MalekoUK]

Using Cisco AP's with their POE switches, manually setup using their zone feature. Works a treat!

[CAWJames]

We have Sonicwall single band Sonipoints....

 

(Can't wait to get rid, tbh)

[mrbios]

I wish i could add sub poll options to the poll options Under each option i want to select "are you happy with your solution" with a yes or no option. Ruckus appear to be clear market leaders in education, but are all their customers happy? Everyone who's posted that they're using it appear to be.

 

For our wireless investigation i think I'm going to strike off ubiquiti, looks like a brilliant primary school solution but based on reading some other threads it probably isn't suitable for us. I think Ruckus and Meru are where we're going to focus our attention to begin with.

[Joanne]

My husband uses Meraki in his high school and seems to work well for their needs. They are possibly looking at going google schools with chromebooks for each child too... it has the expandability.

[gshaw]

Aruba here, currently evaluating whether to stick with them as our controller is getting to EOL and we're going to need 802.11ac APs soon if we go down the Chromebook route. Not sure where the merger with HP will take the Aruba kit, hopefully to a lower price point as it does seem to be very expensive for what you get.

 

If not Aruba then Extreme are our next port of call as our switches are from the same vendor and we can then use one management system to put policies across both wired and wireless networks.

 

In response to the above used to have Ruckus at my last place; was very happy with it.

[mikeyd101]

Xirrus here over 3 campus (37 arrays), Was originally speced for coverage and now after 5 years where starting to want to move to density, arrays are holding up well, we have had a few array failures due to I think our flakey west texas power grid which has blown a few of the POE. Apart from that there are great, there support is also great there always willing to help us out including replacing a couple of arrays out of warranty.

[mrbios]

The poll really shows who the standout options are for schools, but my question is why?

 

Is ruckus simply the best performer? Is it very price competitive compared to the likes of Meru?

For Meru customers what made you choose them over Ruckus?

What features does one have that the other does not that made you say "wow"?

Have you found one understands the needs of education better than the others?

 

Also site surveys questions:

Is it always worth getting a vendor specific surveyor to do a site survey specific to their APs or have you found suppliers who are completely vendor agnostic to be sufficient?

Do any of you know of any surveyors who will do the site survey for free? (An active survey rather than a passive one) or is there simply nothing out there that will go that far for free?

[Joanne]

well you will need to register with a supplier and they will then be able to get you the best prices. The supplier registers with the wifi provider and they get preferential pricing (or something). Then your chosen supplier will do the leg work and survey the place and give you options.

 

Then you can get your other quotes off other people based on that survey for the paperwork aspect.

[timbo343]

The poll really shows who the standout options are for schools, but my question is why?

 

Is ruckus simply the best performer? Is it very price competitive compared to the likes of Meru?

For Meru customers what made you choose them over Ruckus?

What features does one have that the other does not that made you say "wow"?

Have you found one understands the needs of education better than the others?

 

Also site surveys questions:

Is it always worth getting a vendor specific surveyor to do a site survey specific to their APs or have you found suppliers who are completely vendor agnostic to be sufficient?

Do any of you know of any surveyors who will do the site survey for free? (An active survey rather than a passive one) or is there simply nothing out there that will go that far for free?

 

Ruckus for us just works. I hardly have to login to the controller, i was very surprised how far the signal travels and actually works. Our Ruckus system was well priced and got 2 Zone Directors (controllers) (1100) for failover. I think a Zone Director 3000 and 25 APs (7363) cost about £11,000 i think, but this was a few years ago. I mapped out we needed about 14/15 Ruckus APs to give us coverage but i knew we wouldn't go down the 1:1 route or even classes with 30 laptops to one AP. For the coverage, Xirrus and Netgear needed twice as many APs and our building is built of metal with plasterboard, Concrete (the stuff on outside of buildings - i forget what its called), breeze blocks and brick.

[Sheridan]

Quite an old ruckus system here, works well and has done for years. Due for replacement and ruckus would be top of the list.

[m25man]

Also site surveys questions:

 

Do any of you know of any surveyors who will do the site survey for free? (An active survey rather than a passive one) or is there simply nothing out there that will go that far for free?

 

If I'm going out on site to use £3k's worth of equipment and a day's labour I'm certainly not going to part with my survey data for a potential client to use it so they cut a deal with the cheapest box shifter!

 

Predictive surveys are all you should expect to get for free without some kind commitment.

I certainly wouldn't part with "Real data" without first seeing a PO.

 

Would you expect to work for free?

[mrbios]

If I'm going out on site to use £3k's worth of equipment and a day's labour I'm certainly not going to part with my survey data for a potential client to use it so they cut a deal with the cheapest box shifter!

 

Predictive surveys are all you should expect to get for free without some kind commitment.

I certainly wouldn't part with "Real data" without first seeing a PO.

 

Would you expect to work for free?

 

It was only a question, no need to get tetchy.

 

I can understand where you're coming from, and i agree for the most part. Fortunately we've found one that will do it for us at no cost. Most likely because we've used them for our cabling and some projector installs a lot in the past, so they know we're a repeat customer that's often good for the business, not that the survey will guarantee them the work.....but that's their issue, not mine. End of the day, we're the customer with the money looking to make a purchase, we're in the stronger position, and I'm playing with tax payers money so I'm not going to let a business win me over....I'll do what i can to get whatever i can for free for the schools benefit, hence asking if anyone knew of anyone who did them for free.

[Sheridan]

I've had free and paid for surveys and they've all matched up with what I had previously planned out anyway so I personally wouldn't bother again. Knowledge of your schools buildings and how the wireless will be used is as important and measuring signal strengths and distances.

[DPrince]

Meraki here. About 60 units. They just work.

[Hogwarts-Techie]

We have just gone through a massive tender process with meru, Aruba, ruckus, meraki, HP, and Samsung. Yes I said Samsung. Deploying 147 access points and 2 physical controllers.

 

Meru very expensive, they wanted to put twice as many APs as everyone else. Was 100% sure about single cell architecture.

 

Meraki very feature rich product, all the bells and whistles. Price competitive external APs very ugly.

 

Samsung and HP just rubbish.

 

Aruba very feature rich, price competitive same amount of APs as Meraki and ruckus. However, when you start adding all of the licences together to get same feature set as Meraki become very expensive.

 

Ruckus offers AC 2. With the R710 feature rich little bit more expensive when you add all the features in. But we didn't need all of them. APs internal an external brilliant. Went with a really good company easy to install and expand.

 

After much arguing and discussions, we went with ruckus. Far better APs and with the new GUI coming out next year going to be easy to manage. As this is what I need as my techies aren't the quickest at picking things up.

[rich_tech]

Our LEA installed Aerohive wifi under the lidw grant this year, it replaced the Aruba gear we had which was very expensive when we purchased it initially.

 

Aerohive stuff is pretty flawless and works well, covered our site with 39 APs

[gshaw]

Aruba very feature rich, price competitive same amount of APs as Meraki and ruckus. However, when you start adding all of the licences together to get same feature set as Meraki become very expensive.

 

This is very much the problem with Aruba. To get the advanced management functionality you really need ClearPass, along with the cost of a new controller Aruba have come in at over half the cost of competitors to replace the whole setup (including APs). Can only hope the HP takeover will bring some price reductions to sit in line with the value-for-money ProCurve switch range.