What wireless system are you using?

[mrbios]

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.

 

We looked at clearpass once, looked like a fantastic technology, but the cost

[gshaw]

We looked at clearpass once, looked like a fantastic technology, but the cost

 

Indeed, we looked at it for automatic guest provisioning and suchlike. The license quote was painful, consultancy costs to install even worse. That said after being quoted 2 days to customise a captive portal login page it did inspire me to build my own on our current controller (with responsive design) for the princely sum of £0

[ITBadger]

Interested in Unifi fro a primary school that I am a governor at. Which resellers did people with this system use? Would you recommend them?

[LeMarchand]

Interested in Unifi fro a primary school that I am a governor at. Which resellers did people with this system use? Would you recommend them?

 

Used @Millgate the last few purchases and they were fine. Have used another well known Unifi stockist who wasn't so good, but they weren't happy about being named last time - and as others say they're fine I won't say who they are.

 

Last big deployment actually had the budget for installation(!) so we bought them from the installers.

Edited November 11, 2015 by LeMarchand

[dry]

Interested in Unifi fro a primary school that I am a governor at. Which resellers did people with this system use? Would you recommend them?

These are authorised distributors: MS (Distribution) UK Ltd. - Ubiquiti

 

Pricing looks competitive and they've got a very large range! We haven't actually used them as for some reason the decision makers at our school decided to go via a local (rubbish) IT consultancy who charged us about 4x the actual RRP per AP and bodged the whole job.

[Gaz]

Surprised Meraki isn't more popular tbh..

 

Use Meraki here too, its just awesome!

 

I'm guessing that Meraki appears to be less popular in this particular poll because Ruckus is pretty much spam advertised on this forum.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Gaz

[mrbios]

Use Meraki here too, its just awesome!

 

I'm guessing that Meraki appears to be less popular in this particular poll because Ruckus is pretty much spam advertised on this forum.

 

I've watched the meraki webinars and getting my free AP + Free switch soon to test out soon as well as some accurate pricing.

 

The biggest point that puts me off with meraki though is the fact that you're forced to pay a yearly license per device, if you don't pay that yearly fee it bricks it and it becomes totally unusable.....paying to keep your network running? Doesn't really appeal to me!

 

Aruba for example was £1500 roughly for the yearly support fee, and that has never changed, but take the meraki devices, which based purely on prices i've found online (so it won't be accurate i know!) you could be paying £3500-4000 a year for a setup of 50 access points for example. The other benefit is that with the aruba system i knew i was going to stop expanding and looking to replace it soon, so for the past 2 years ive not paid support because there's just been no point, it would have been a wasted expense. I couldn't choose to do that with meraki without the system completely shutting itself off on me.

 

Hopefully i'll have some accurate pricing soon though to judge better though.

[Gaz]

Meraki is a odd option for a single site as the cloud controller wins hands down if you have more than 1 site, which is why it seems more expensive for a single site. I've personally got 3 sites to manage and being able to manage those with a single browser window is a massive time saver. Everything is nice and fast but all laid out in easy to understand language not requiring a PhD to operate it, plus layer 7 built right into the AP.... I could go on as I'm a total meraki fanboy now and I'm not ashamed to admit it, but even I know they aren't the best solution to every situation.

 

We are only a small org but have a few small sites around Lancashire. We paid £3012 for 6AP's with 5 year licences for the price of 3 year licences.

[andyturpie]

Aruba controller-less system, works a treat.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Interested in Unifi fro a primary school that I am a governor at. Which resellers did people with this system use? Would you recommend them?

 

We've bought all our UniFi gear through @Millgate without any probs. Been running and expanding our Wireless network for the past couple of years now.

 

I was quite impressed how it performs considering it's so cheap. We have a couple of Avaya WiFi phones that link back to our PBX and we can walk from one end of the school to the other end of our field without quality issues in a call We've got standard UAPs deployed indoors and a couple of the Outdoor-AP+ things to cover our field with sector antennas.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Blue_Cookeh

[ITGURU]

Dlink - does what we need

 

D-Link here also. Still run some unmanaged APs on Wireless G, but all the new 'N' AP'S are managed by a wireless management switch.

[mrbios]

Well that's interesting, we had our wireless heatmap survey done yesterday. The guy said based off what he's seen he predicted a need for 60 or more access points. We were expecting more like 40-45!

 

They said it'll take a few days to actually put all the data in of course, but 60 or more access points is going to make it a lot more expensive than we were expecting. That said, i have informed the business manager that this is more likely to be a 3 year plan to do this, as we need to upgrade the infrastructure to suit a wireless network of that size first anyway.

[ITGURU]

Well that's interesting, we had our wireless heatmap survey done yesterday. The guy said based off what he's seen he predicted a need for 60 or more access points. We were expecting more like 40-45!

 

They said it'll take a few days to actually put all the data in of course, but 60 or more access points is going to make it a lot more expensive than we were expecting. That said, i have informed the business manager that this is more likely to be a 3 year plan to do this, as we need to upgrade the infrastructure to suit a wireless network of that size first anyway.

 

Depending on your site size 60 isn't excessive. We have 65 Access points to get decent coverage and speed across the whole site with the potential for any classroom, even 2 next door to have 30 wireless devices in each room.

 

Majority are still only un-managed G devices for ah-hoc areas but main teaching rooms have Wireless N managed APs. as and when we buy new wireless devices we buy the new APs to go with them to spread cost.

[nicklowe]

Aerohive for a public/independent, secondary school (boarding) with the whole campus covered with 213 APs. Very happy!

It was an ongoing project from mid-2011 to relatively recently, setup is comprised of about a 50/50 mix of AP330s (3x3:3 802.11n) and AP230s (3x3:3 802.11ac Wave 1).

Edited November 16, 2015 by nicklowe

[JRowley]

Unifi here, 21APs (looking to increase to 30/35 in the near future), it's more than suitable for our needs really and does everything we could possibly need.

[PotNoodleTech]

No Cisco option??!!!

 

Cisco here!

[Roberto]

Depending on your site size 60 isn't excessive.

 

Indeed, we have 142 access points, and 6 more about to go up.

[psydii]

Aruba controller-less system, works a treat.

 

How many AP's and simultaneous users? Do you run SIMS over it at all?

[psydii]

Well that's interesting, we had our wireless heatmap survey done yesterday. The guy said based off what he's seen he predicted a need for 60 or more access points. We were expecting more like 40-45!

 

They said it'll take a few days to actually put all the data in of course, but 60 or more access points is going to make it a lot more expensive than we were expecting. That said, i have informed the business manager that this is more likely to be a 3 year plan to do this, as we need to upgrade the infrastructure to suit a wireless network of that size first anyway.

 

5ghz doesn't propagate as well as 2.4ghz Also to get the impressive throughputs advertised you need a higher signal to noise ratio, both of which require increased density of APs over 11n

[Duke5A]

Cisco with 250 WAPs, three 4404 controllers and one totally useless install of Wireless Control Server.

[Sunny87]

I've used Ruckus in two schools now, and Dlink before that in another, must say I much prefer the Ruckus system, but I'm not sure what is going on at my new site as connections are slow so when I get an hour free this week I need to look into it more.

[mowgli82]

D-Link here also. Still run some unmanaged APs on Wireless G, but all the new 'N' AP'S are managed by a wireless management switch.

 

Have to say I think the functionality is limited on my switch/controller, no easy way to add a captive portal etc

[Alis_Klar]

Unmanaged Cisco Aironet 1130AG. Large Primary 2 floors.

 

UniFi have these wierd AP's with public address speakers built in. What we used to call Tannoy systems.

https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-edu/

Edited January 14, 2016 by Alis_Klar

[mrbios]

Revisiting this....

 

I've now had a ruckus, aerohive and meraki webinars, had an active 2 day wireless survey done, quotes for each system and trialled both a ruckus and meraki access point. Yet to get hold of my freebie aerohive.

 

All systems come in at a close enough cost for the cost to not be an issue.

 

So I'm trying to make a decision between the different technologies now. Ruckus seem to have the better access points, aerohive have a nicer solution in terms of the way SSIDs are setup, meraki is practically plug and play setup with their cloud management. Apart from that they all seem to be able to achieve the same things, so I'm guessing beyond that point it comes down to what each one can offer as their own bespoke solutions to things that i haven't learnt about yet.

 

Any comments on those 3?

[timbo343]

Ruckus - been using it for 4 years and never let me down. Its a case of configure and forget.