DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 Hi all, Just about to embark on a complete replacement of the wireless network here, the current one being an in-house b/g solution held together with string and good intentions! I'm going out to quote for someone to supply and fit the whole thing, as I'm not wireless savvy enough and would rather someone else take the responsibility. I'm currently looking at getting quotes from Atomwide (we're an LGfL school), Digital Air and maybe LG Networks, all of whom I saw at BETT. Just wondering if anyone had any recommended suppliers, or ones you would avoid? Ditto any recommended kit, or kit to avoid? We're not after anything fancy, just basic connectivity up to AC standard. Thanks!
eddyc Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 We have an Aruba wireless network here, supplied and supported by AT Technology Solutions. AT Technology Solutions | It was fitted back in October 2011. They get in touch once a year to complete firmware upgrades, etc. That aside, it just works! Brilliant system. 1
Meldrew Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 I'd recommend unifi every time. Really good kit at a good price. 2
NewFormz Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 I'll happily recommend Maraki. We've had it for just over a year and have been very impressed with it. We fitted everything ourselves but I'm sure there are companies you get to help with the install.
DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Author Posted June 9, 2016 I'd recommend unifi every time. Really good kit at a good price. Yeah, I've seen a lot of Unifi kit out there operating successfully and reliably in primary school environments. I think the quote I heard from one supplier was "the APs are so cheap, we can just use twice as many!" (As it happens that actually went spectacularly wrong for the school involved, but I digress). Ruckus were a good one too, but the Unifi kit has rather displaced them.
DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Author Posted June 9, 2016 I'll happily recommend Maraki. We've had it for just over a year and have been very impressed with it. We fitted everything ourselves but I'm sure there are companies you get to help with the install. Oh? Interesting. Are you using any of the advanced features or similar? I've got Meraki for my MDM, but as I'm not intending to do anything too advanced with the wireless, had assumed that their kit would be out of my price range.
Net-Ctrl Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 Hi @DaveAshworth if you've got room for one more we would really like to be involved in your project. We're a Ruckus reseller, lots of experience in the EDU market
bossman Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 @DaveAshworth We have Aerohive here for the past 3 years, never had to touch it, company called LAN3 Network Solutions installed and supports it, have only had to call them twice in all this time for technical guidance nothing to do with the kit, give them a call with a no obligation test of your schools environment. 1
simpsonj Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 Exact same as @bossman, highly recommend both Lan3 and Aerohive. 2
NewFormz Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 It is a little bit pricey but was not the most expensive quote I got when getting prices a year ago. We use some of the advanced features but the main thing I like is all of the information it gives you. I know it gives a lot more data than anything else we looked at and we have used this to help make decision about what to do one the network. A quick example is our Macbooks kept running really slow and we couldn't work out why. Meraki showed us that each one was downloading updates from Apple each time they were switched on (Even though this was meant to be disabled!) we then solved this issue and they started working properly again. Also, having recently setup BYOD it gives us lots of info on what is connected and where we might need to add extra AP's. Compared to our previous system it was also extremely easy to setup and install over 50 AP's around the school. 1
DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Author Posted June 9, 2016 (edited) @DaveAshworth We have Aerohive here for the past 3 years, never had to touch it, company called LAN3 Network Solutions installed and supports it, have only had to call them twice in all this time for technical guidance nothing to do with the kit, give them a call with a no obligation test of your schools environment. Aerohive were another technology I had dismissed as being out of my league tbh. I saw their (achingly long) sales demo at BETT and assumed that anything that feature-rich was going to be out of my price range. About how much were you paying per AP, out of interest? Regardless of the tech though, there's two votes for LAN3 from happy customers there! Edited June 9, 2016 by DavR
bossman Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 @DaveAshworth As they were installed 3 years ago it would be unfair of me to quote figures on a public site, let me put it a better way we got a certain company who came highly recommended by our county, as soon as they mentioned another vendors hardware I realised the price would be through the roof, with this in mind that is when I called Lan3 for a quote, when the first quote from this other company came in it was nearly 3 times that of Lan3's which for 20 APs across site configured to give maximum coverage all around the school and the a hardware controller with management license on top it became quite clear that it was a cloud based controller that we were looking at and the one that fulfilled that criterion was Aerohive which was installed and configured in just 2 days by excellent engineers. I have nothing but praise for LAN3, if it hadn't been Aerohive though it would have been Meraki as second choice. I hope this puts it into perspective and that what we paid for this was very minimum compared to all the hardware controller systems. Good Luck with whichever you choose. 1
zag Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 (edited) Aruba here with 3400 controller and 30 x 802.11ac transmitters, its rock solid and crazy fast Cost was about 20k from memory Edited June 9, 2016 by zag 1
DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Author Posted June 9, 2016 Unifi is good if you are on a budget. Another happy Unifi school here. Oh, so very much on a budget here. But this is a schools forum, I don't need to tell you that! Thanks for the recommendations guys. I'll be leaving it down to the supplier to offer me their choice of tech, but good to have a bit of a feel for what others are using.
Blue_Cookeh Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 Another vote for UniFi, we've had it in for threeish years now and we keep expanding it. Great hardware at a good price. Bear in mind Meraki is licensed yearly, if you don't pay the license the AP becomes a brick. Whichever eejit thought subscription/cloud based infrastructure was a good idea should be hung. Although, must keep the vendor in business good and proper! 1
DavR Posted June 9, 2016 Author Posted June 9, 2016 Another vote for UniFi, we've had it in for threeish years now and we keep expanding it. Great hardware at a good price. Bear in mind Meraki is licensed yearly, if you don't pay the license the AP becomes a brick. Whichever eejit thought subscription/cloud based infrastructure was a good idea should be hung. Although, must keep the vendor in business good and proper! Did not know that about Meraki kit! The subscription based "software as a service" model and the like is an insidious bunch of crap at the best of times. I'm resigned to some kind of ongoing cost with this, but was thinking more along the lines of a maintenance agreement. May well end up with a hosted controller if I go through our ISP (Atomwide), but will have to suck it in if it keeps the cost down. I assume you are using a software controller fro your UniFi, have you got that sat on any old server, or a dedicated machine?
Chris_ Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 We're using UniFi here and love it. Due to the large size of our school, quotes we had from the other big wireless providers were ridiculous! We run the controller on a Windows Server VM. I'd be tempted to use a dedicated UniFi Cloud Key controller that are now available. It's a little device (~£60) that plugs in to a POE switch and just runs the controller. 1
NotSoFast Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 The Unifi controller at ours was on a random PC, now on a vm.
mrbios Posted June 9, 2016 Posted June 9, 2016 Aerohive were another technology I had dismissed as being out of my league tbh. I saw their (achingly long) sales demo at BETT and assumed that anything that feature-rich was going to be out of my price range. About how much were you paying per AP, out of interest? Regardless of the tech though, there's two votes for LAN3 from happy customers there! We decided 6 months ago to replace our wireless infrastructure. Went through many many sales demos, trialed a few options and got lots of quotes. We've decided on Aerohive and will be installing it this summer. It also happened to be the cheapest when compared to ruckus, meraki and aruba. (unifi was considered not man enough for the job) I'd highly recommend it, and if you're interested i can point you to a company i'd recommend for quotes (not lan3 in this case) 1
DavR Posted June 10, 2016 Author Posted June 10, 2016 We decided 6 months ago to replace our wireless infrastructure. Went through many many sales demos, trialed a few options and got lots of quotes. We've decided on Aerohive and will be installing it this summer. It also happened to be the cheapest when compared to ruckus, meraki and aruba. (unifi was considered not man enough for the job) I'd highly recommend it, and if you're interested i can point you to a company i'd recommend for quotes (not lan3 in this case) Interesting - what size campus are you running to be considered beyond UniFi? We're a four form primary school currently running on about 18 APs.
Oaktech Posted June 10, 2016 Posted June 10, 2016 As for companies - I can see Digital Air from my house and they have always been brilliant for me. I've probably spent 20k with them over 3 schools and I've spent at least 10k with them personally doing side-project installs. 1
foofighterjim Posted June 10, 2016 Posted June 10, 2016 Same as @bossman and @simpsonj Aerohive and LAN 3, really can't fault it and PPSK is a fantastic alternative for devices that don't support 802.1x (which is a surprising number of devices for us like our franking machine and parts of our cashless catering). 2
mrbios Posted June 10, 2016 Posted June 10, 2016 Interesting - what size campus are you running to be considered beyond UniFi? We're a four form primary school currently running on about 18 APs. Secondary with 5 separate buildings, 50 APs. That's not coverage sufficient for 1:1 though, the school has stated no intention to go down that route, but if they did decide to we would probably need another 15-20.
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