Thinking of renewing WIFI

[XiJ]

Meraki here across our trust. Highly recommended!

 

I like meraki. But at just one school the annual meraki licence cost was more than installing a whole unifi AC lite in school.

 

We went from 12 meraki to 20 unifi it something like that.

[Norphy]

The licensing costs were one of the reasons why one of my schools didn’t choose Meraki networking stuff. It’s top notch kit and actually not that expensive to procure compared to similar solutions but the ongoing licensing costs after the initial term expired were prohibitive.

 

We have Aerohive. I realise I’m probably in the minority here but I hate their system. When our kit is out of support we’ll be going out to market.

[Zoom7000]

The licensing costs were one of the reasons why one of my schools didn’t choose Meraki networking stuff. It’s top notch kit and actually not that expensive to procure compared to similar solutions but the ongoing licensing costs after the initial term expired were prohibitive.

 

I'm surprised a lot of people have said the license cost was too high. I signed up all my kit for the 10 year educational license at the cost of 5 year and even then it came out similarly priced as other quotations that I had received (Ruckus, Aerohive, Atomwide etc). Hence why I decided to go ahead with it.

[mukz]

I'm surprised a lot of people have said the license cost was too high. I signed up all my kit for the 10 year educational license at the cost of 5 year and even then it came out similarly priced as other quotations that I had received (Ruckus, Aerohive, Atomwide etc). Hence why I decided to go ahead with it.

 

Hi Zoom, can i ask what hardware Atomwide quoted for you?

[Zoom7000]

Hi Zoom, can i ask what hardware Atomwide quoted for you?

 

It was ages ago now, but it was some Cisco Aironet access points. Can't remember the model number. The quote didn't even include any switches as we already had LGfL VoIP switches in place. By the time everything was said and done and I had the Meraki quote come through at a similar price (with 3 x layer 2 Meraki switches included!) I decided that the Meraki kit was a no brainer and that I'd rather have control over my WiFi than rely on Atomwide for ongoing support and configuration and annual support costs and not have access to the management backend.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Zoom7000

[mukz]

@Zoom7000 thanks for that.

We have a Director of Ops who just purchased a CCTV system from them. Likes Atomwide.

 

We are about to start our wifi procurement and for me it is either Unifi or Meraki. We have 4 schools to kit out which is why i am preferring Unifi as two of the schools already have fairly newish Ruckus Kit.

[Norphy]

I'm surprised a lot of people have said the license cost was too high. I signed up all my kit for the 10 year educational license at the cost of 5 year and even then it came out similarly priced as other quotations that I had received (Ruckus, Aerohive, Atomwide etc). Hence why I decided to go ahead with it.

 

This was for switches rather than wireless.

 

For this school, we had quotes with equipment from most of the main vendors, HP, Dell, Brocade, Meraki. Meraki were the only vendor who charge you to use their equipment as time goes on. Stop paying the license fee and oh look, you’ve got a £100k paperweight.

 

None of the other vendors did this. Yes, we were quoted eight years for the price of five but what happens after year 8? This is standard switching gear I’m talking about here, I’d expect it to last at least ten years. The initial procurement price was at a similar level to HP and Dell but ongoing costs were a lot more. I couldn’t justify the extra expense for the admittedly fantastic user interface.

[Zoom7000]

Stop paying the license fee and oh look, you’ve got a £100k paperweight.

 

That's not strictly true. All Meraki devices will continue to work with the last available configuration. You just won't be able to change that configuration until you renew the license.

[snagrat]

Anyone looked at Mojo Networks?

[Katy]

That's not strictly true. All Meraki devices will continue to work with the last available configuration. You just won't be able to change that configuration until you renew the license.

At least with the MX80 we have, if the licence isn't renewed we get this automated email:

 

If you wish to continue using your Meraki networks, you must renew your license immediately. If you choose not to renew, your Meraki systems will cease to provide network access on October 9, 2017. If you have recently made a Meraki purchase, please add your license key to your Dashboard account.

 

which implies it's expensive paperweight rather than "works but you can't change the config", perhaps it's just worded this way to scare you into paying them the money...

[Norphy]

That's not strictly true. All Meraki devices will continue to work with the last available configuration. You just won't be able to change that configuration until you renew the license.

 

Not according to the Cisco sales rep I spoke to about the issue.

[northeast_technician]

So, if i went down the Unifi route, do I need to buy a controller to go with the units or just the units

[Michael]

So, if i went down the Unifi route, do I need to buy a controller to go with the units or just the units

 

You have a choice - run the software controller (free) on a VM, buy a cloud key controller (supports around 20-25 APs), or subscribe to their cloud service (costs about £200 a year).

[DalekSec]

So, if i went down the Unifi route, do I need to buy a controller to go with the units or just the units

Controller is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE : https://www.ubnt.com/download/unifi/

 

Unless you buy the cloud key : https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/

 

Or the cloud one...

Edited October 16, 2017 by DalekSec

[Katy]

So, if i went down the Unifi route, do I need to buy a controller to go with the units or just the units

You need to either buy the "Cloud Key" (small controller hardware, the name is misleading) or install the free controller software on a spare server/virtual machine. As we've got a 3 node VMware cluster I just set up a new VM to run the controller here, nice and free.

[Wave9_Lee]

Just a quick note ref Meraki - In most cases we are currently able to offer the 10 year licence for the price of 5, which, considering this includes replacement warranty and support is pretty good value and pushes the 'brick' concern well into the long grass.

 

regards

 

Lee

[Norphy]

pushes the 'brick' concern well into the long grass.

 

With all due respect, I'm not convinced that it does. With budgets the way that they are at the moment and no prospect of things getting any better, it wouldn't surprise me if people are going to have to be using networking kit for more than ten years. At least with most other wireless solutions that don't have these licensing rules, you can still use the equipment even if it isn't supported.

 

This is still a huge negative for Meraki as far as I'm concerned, no matter what length of license you get.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi Norphy,

 

my personal view is that having updates and patches as well as hardware support for 10 years is worth serious consideration despite your reservations. Many issues we find in schools are caused (or contributed to) by poorly maintained and configured network infrastructure, so mitigating this for 10 years has a significant value in terms of resources and uptime. Additionally it's common for schools to not take any maintenance support at all (either wilfully or by budget constraints) so hardware replacements, even cheap ones, hit budgets unexpectedly. This will come off your available spend for whichever year it occurs in.

 

I appreciate your viewpoint, but i think when budgets are really tight, securing a predictable cost and guaranteeing availability is really important. We can spread the upfront costs too, which further improve the picture.

 

Just my view : )

[atcoates]

With all due respect, I'm not convinced that it does. With budgets the way that they are at the moment and no prospect of things getting any better, it wouldn't surprise me if people are going to have to be using networking kit for more than ten years. At least with most other wireless solutions that don't have these licensing rules, you can still use the equipment even if it isn't supported.

 

This is still a huge negative for Meraki as far as I'm concerned, no matter what length of license you get.

You can just renew the licence and carry on using as another option. We plan to just extend a few a few AP licences and then replace the oldest APs or buy new APs with new 10 year licences.

 

"Q: What happens when my license runs out?

A: You can purchase a renewal through an authorized Meraki partner. If you chose not to renew, you will no longer be able to manage your devices via the Meraki cloud, and your Meraki network devices will cease to function. This means that you will no longer be able to configure or make changes to your Meraki network equipment, and your Meraki network products will no longer allow traffic to pass to the Internet. With Systems Manager networks, you will no longer be able to enroll devices or change settings for currently enrolled devices.

[Norphy]

You can just renew the licence and carry on using as another option. We plan to just extend a few a few AP licences and then replace the oldest APs or buy new APs with new 10 year licences.

 

But that's the point though, isn't it? There is no "just". This will cost money whereas with my crappy Aerohive system, as much as I hate it, when my support contract runs out and it doesn't get renewed it's not going to suddenly stop working.

 

I can appreciate what @Wave9_Lee is saying and I can't even say I disagree with it particularly but it's not as simple as "Oh, just extend the contract then".

[atcoates]

For me we are paying to guarantee a reliable, up to date and secure Wi-Fi network with top notch support. It works out about £16 a year with a 10 year licence so needs to be considered. Also if you have a ten year licence and after seven years you want to replace with a newer 802.11 XXX or whatever is around then the remaining three years can move to the new AP. I can't see us having the same Wi-Fi network in 10 years, but if we do we may chose to continue with the same APs for 1,3,5,7 or 10 years. The build quality is second to none so I'm confident it will last and if it doesn't Meraki will ship me one which does, which more than likely would be a new model as well.

 

Just to add we also have Cisco Meraki Switches and Meraki MDM which we manage all through the same interface in the cloud.

Edited October 20, 2017 by atcoates

[AlanD]

Hi Norphy,

 

my personal view is that having updates and patches as well as hardware support for 10 years is worth serious consideration despite your reservations. Many issues we find in schools are caused (or contributed to) by poorly maintained and configured network infrastructure, so mitigating this for 10 years has a significant value in terms of resources and uptime. Additionally it's common for schools to not take any maintenance support at all (either wilfully or by budget constraints) so hardware replacements, even cheap ones, hit budgets unexpectedly. This will come off your available spend for whichever year it occurs in.

 

I appreciate your viewpoint, but i think when budgets are really tight, securing a predictable cost and guaranteeing availability is really important. We can spread the upfront costs too, which further improve the picture.

 

Just my view : )

 

I am with you as far as "serious consideration" is concerned....and I agree that wireless in schools is often poorly designed, poorly maintained - with no maintenance budget.

 

Often...wireless growth is organic - a single wireless access point to cover the odd room or two becomes stretched to cover a whole school by adding a few more - which can be fine for the odd staff laptop, but is then suddenly expected to support a classroom full of devices - because someone tested one device and said - look wireless works fine....which is true - for a single device!

 

But the point is not whether £25 (or £16) a year per access points is reasonable - its whether £0 a year even for what might be a slightly inferior product might not be a much better investment especially if you can deploy a few more access points to cover the school better. To start with the eye watering cost of 4x4 MU-MIMO access points from the likes of Meraki, Cisco, Ruckus etc is is likely to limit the density at which access points are deployed and all too often schools simply don't deploy enough of them to support classrooms full of devices.

 

And locking yourself into a 10 year contract is a luxury few state/academy schools could commit to. There is no guarantee that some of these wireless manufacturers will be around after 5 or even 3 years. You only have to look at the take overs in the last couple of years to see that.

 

My mantra and advice to everyone is not be lazy. Don't depend on any suppliers recommendation, don't go for whatever the school down the road has (although by all means get their views)...get some test kit in and try it out with a class set of devices. You can have a wireless survey done if you want - but if you are going to use class sets of devices you are probably going to need to go for something like an access point in the centre of every room - because 5GHz attenuates really quickly even through thin walls which makes the higher QAM rates impossible to achieve through a wall.

[JATSO]

Hi all I am thinking of renewing my wifi in school, currently i have 5 cisco access points around the building, its a few years old now so I know speeds etc will be quicker. Can anyone offer some recommendations for implementing a new wifi system in school (we have around 40 ipads in school and half a dozen laptops that use wifi)

Unifi here for all my 4 schools just works great way to setup and no rolling costs for managed service. I have used their support by way of chat but only to find out where the auto backup was installed because I was moving the controller to another workstation. They are helpful and informative.

[atcoates]

There is no guarantee that some of these wireless manufacturers will be around after 5 or even 3 years. You only have to look at the take overs in the last couple of years to see that.

Meraki are really CISCO and I'm confident they'll still be around in 10 years.

Edited October 21, 2017 by atcoates

[Net-Ctrl]

 

My mantra and advice to everyone is not be lazy. Don't depend on any suppliers recommendation, don't go for whatever the school down the road has (although by all means get their views)...get some test kit in and try it out with a class set of devices. You can have a wireless survey done if you want - but if you are going to use class sets of devices you are probably going to need to go for something like an access point in the centre of every room - because 5GHz attenuates really quickly even through thin walls which makes the higher QAM rates impossible to achieve through a wall.

 

Be cautious over doing one AP in every classroom. The biggest cause of RF interference is wireless itself, more APs will make your busy RF environment even busier and potentially cause a number of issues. Yes, 5GHz attenutates quicker, but we have seen in the recent report by Divergent Dynamics that the likes of Ruckus, Cisco etc are able to support multiple video clients (tests were performed with 30 and 60 video streaming clients) across two classrooms with a single AP. Not saying that Ubiq isnt also capable of this, just that 1 AP per classroom isnt the way to go, certainly not as a standard anyway.

 

There are some pretty thorough reports on it by WLAN pros, and GT Hill who used to work at Ruckus did a short video on it, links below:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SLZikADY2c

http://divdyn.com/docs/One_AP_Per_Classroom_v1.01.pdf

 

Testing solution in your environment is a must, and something we do recommend doing. If you have time run your own tests as well. Set-up classrooms with ipads/laptops streaming etc.

 

In addition, like others have mentioned. Wireless surveys are also key, most,if not all, wireless resellers will run free predictive reports, even if you're planning on using Ubiq there are companies that will run these for you. However there may be a charge. A worthwhile investment though. In addition, run active surveys in your live enviornmnet, and post installation surveys to check that you're getting what was expected.