wireless suggestion

[JoeBloggs]

Hi all,

 

We currently use WiFi in some of our offices (not Education). We are using Meraki. We have 5 APs at the moment.

 

I am looking at rolling this out to another 10 offices - but the price and on-going cost of Meraki is putting me off. Yes the management system is good, but once set up and very rarely login to it.

 

I have 3 x MR12's and 2 x MR18's and I'm told the MR18's are now end of life so I need MR33's. These are coming in at over £400 each plus the management fee.

 

Thoughts?

[JoeBloggs]

Requirements:

15 total offices based around the city.

Create different wireless networks to:

Allow our employees to be able to access our network

Be able to create a VLAN on the device to protect guests from accessing the network

Easy setup & management - with the Meraki's I've not had to do anything with them since set up.

Be most cost effective on hardware & on-going license.

[Michael]

Unifi definitely the way to go in my view.

[dry]

+1 for Ubiquiti Unifi. MS Dist are a UK-based distributor who have pricing on their website so you should be able to get a feel for what it's going to cost.

 

No ongoing license fee. The controller (you need to install it on a server on site, or buy their Cloud Key) is very well featured and regularly being updated.

[AlanD]

+1 ubiquity. Brilliant value for money. Think about what your internet bandwidth is...and if it's the only source of data...and if it's 100mb/s or less you probably have little to gain by using "ac" access points...may as well use "n" type of access points.

[Guest obsidianpillar]

Another vote for Ubiquiti. Use it here and have no problems. Literally the easiest WAP's I've ever used and deployed.

 

Tom

[Mark-wilde]

For home use, Ubnt AP is good. But you can compare the price and performances with other brand like Cisco, netgear and D-link.

[AlanD]

Aldi and Lidl crept into the UK market with what has proved to be a market disruptive model. At one time they were (probably unfairly) associated with "poor" food sold cheaply. But, come the financial crisis the middle class started looking at what they sold - and were pleasantly surprised. The food was good - really good. Sometimes off the same fields and farms but merely packaged cheaply and and sold not just for less - but for a lot less. At the same time the high end supermarkets either withdrew or raised the prices on the "basic" ranges. The result was the start of a mass movement of customers. Yes, if you want a microwave ready "Meal for One" you will get a nicely packaged product from M&S or Sainsburys. But if you are doing the family shopping for a week no one at the table will care or notice that the rice came from a brown paper bag. And now they have their foot through the door, these bargain basement supermarkets are supplying high range products too - and at half the cost. School don't need Rolls Royce solutions - they need the Ford Mondeo - and probably a low milage second hand mondeo.

 

Are Cisco, Meraki, Aerohive, Meru, Ruckus and Aruba more feature rich than Ubiquiti? Absolutely. And they also cost three times the price (or more) and have on going annual costs. But keep in mind that they have identical chipsets inside. And indeed - the underlying driver/firmware which is produced by the chip manufacturers is also the same. I've said this before - but I'll say it again anyhow. Meraki has a fantastic user interface - I still drool over it - its layer 7 visibility is fantastic. But in a school - you'd probably be better off with this visibility at the firewall/web filter. A Ruckus access point in a corridor outside a classroom will give twice the data rate on 5GHz as its competitors. But twice 2Mb/s is 4Mb/s - and that is pretty much unuseable for a class set of devices. You will need an AP in every classroom, and then you will get speeds of several hundred Mb/s with any of those access points - often more than your leased line or servers can provide. Meru will work better (slightly) with lots of devices, but you will need to contrive some pretty untypical tests to show this. Aerohive has a bespoke PPSK key system....but I for one can't see the point in it if users have AD logons its much easier to use a Radius server.

 

To classify Ubiquity as a "home use" access point would be like those customers who continue to buy their bags of rice in Morrisons. But don't take my word for it. Buy one. Put it in a classroom and see how it performs. Do the same with one of the costly branded devices (they are usually happy to lend you one on trial). I bet users will never be able to tell the difference.

 

(Sorry - just realised - you are not asking about a school deployment....but my advice would still stand. Get one and try it. You are the only one at the end of the day who has to take responsibility.

Edited April 11, 2017 by AlanD

[Net-Ctrl]

Hello, we will be able to put forward a Ruckus offering that ticks all the above. To keep costs lower, we would be looking at the R310. We could either go with an Unleashed deployment, where you dont need a controller to keep costs down, or we can look to host your Access Points for you. As part of this service, our engineering team would keep your network up and running, apply FW updates and support your network. You would also be given management access so you could see all 15 remote offices from a single point.

 

We have been putting the R310 in to a lot of SMB environments where density is lower. If you would like some more information, please let me know.

[kennysarmy]

 

Are Cisco, Meraki, Aerohive, Meru, Ruckus and Aruba more feature rich than Ubiquiti? Absolutely. And they also cost three times the price (or more) and have on going annual costs.

 

I've had a quote for an Aruba Instant rip and replace of our Meru and there is no ongoing annual costs....the AP's have a lifetime warranty.