New building wifi

[nicholab]

I have an issue on the Horizon we have a new building taking shape and I am not sure what to do about wireless. Currently we have a Netgear wireless system which I hate. I not sure the best way of sorting out the Wireless for this new area. I am not sure whether to look at deploying a new wireless system for the whole school or look at using Unifi AC wave 2 units as a stop gap with view to a possible to whole school roll out. Then there is always the option of wireless as a service on either Ruckus or Meraki.

[bossman]

We have been given no options at all by KIA, their IT consultants have already told us what we are to have, I wanted the new infrastructure to combine with the wireless and told them I would prefer Meraki switches and Wireless APs as then this would present in one window for administration only to be told you are to have HP switches and Ruckus wireless system......

 

I'm totally p*ss*d off with this as i see this as a backwards step for our school but the EFA don't see it this way as its all down to costs and as they are the clients they seem to be satisfied with this which is a nightmare....

 

So pleased I'm looking at early retirement for when the new school is finally built.....

[jthompson]

I have an issue on the Horizon we have a new building taking shape and I am not sure what to do about wireless. Currently we have a Netgear wireless system which I hate. I not sure the best way of sorting out the Wireless for this new area. I am not sure whether to look at deploying a new wireless system for the whole school or look at using Unifi AC wave 2 units as a stop gap with view to a possible to whole school roll out. Then there is always the option of wireless as a service on either Ruckus or Meraki.

 

I'd just put some UniFi APs in. There's not as much risk, cost-wise. If you decide you don't want to stick with them for you new build, then you'll still be able to make use of them elsewhere in place of some of your Netgear stuff without any ongoing costs.

[nicholab]

I'd just put some UniFi APs in. There's not as much risk, cost-wise. If you decide you don't want to stick with them for you new build, then you'll still be able to make use of them elsewhere in place of some of your Netgear stuff without any ongoing costs.

 

This is the route I am thinking of going stick some Unifi Ap in new build and then take time to consider what I do to the whole school. But I think that the a 1:1 replacement was looking at £15K for UAP-AC-HD site wide.

 

I am seeing a good question here what the difference between the UAP‑AC‑PRO and the UAP‑AC‑HD if I could go for the pro it makes the deployment only £8K.

Edited January 22, 2018 by nicholab

[bossman]

@nicholab

 

Why waste money when the Meraki units and software are so good.....are you changing your switches too with the new build?

 

If so then its a no brainer!.................Meraki all the way for me................such intuitive systems and software to match no wonder Cisco bought them out....

[jthompson]

This is the route I am thinking of going stick some Unifi Ap in new build and then take time to consider what I do to the whole school. But I think that the a 1:1 replacement was looking at £15K for UAP-AC-HD site wide.

 

I am seeing a good question here what the difference between the UAP‑AC‑PRO and the UAP‑AC‑HD if I could go for the pro it makes the deployment only £8K.

 

My understanding is that the HD is a Wave 2 device (and newer), whereas the Pro is not a Wave 2 device. The extra cost is probably because Wave 2 demands more computational power from the AP?

 

We bought Pros mainly in 5-unit multipacks. When bought as singles, they come boxed with a PoE injector, but you don't get any injectors in the multipacks.

[nicholab]

@nicholab

 

Why waste money when the Meraki units and software are so good.....are you changing your switches too with the new build?

 

If so then its a no brainer!.................Meraki all the way for me................such intuitive systems and software to match no wonder Cisco bought them out....

 

By new building I mean additional block not a total rebuild currently we have Netgear switches I can live with them.

[robjduk]

@nicholab

 

Why waste money when the Meraki units and software are so good.....are you changing your switches too with the new build?

 

If so then its a no brainer!.................Meraki all the way for me................such intuitive systems and software to match no wonder Cisco bought them out....

 

As he said.... you put Meraki in and never worry about wireless again.

[Blue_Cookeh]

As he said.... you put Meraki in and never worry about wireless again.

 

until your license expires and bricks the device

 

I must admit there seems to be a bit of fanboyism among this thread. "Wasting money"? We've had UniFi kit deployed in our school (with high density areas, and supporting our WiFi VoIP phones) for years at less than 10x the cost of Meraki. They don't rely on licensing or remote services, the hardware is cheap enough to keep a whole new system spare on a shelf if you so wish, and they've added features to even the oldest APs for the past 5 years.

Edited January 31, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[AlanD]

If it’s a new build ...I would want to certain that there are two cat6 ...or better...cables to the centre of every ceiling of every classroom....and if you are going to use 4x4 stream ac2 devices...and I can’t see why you wouldn’t remember that 802.11af POE isn’t going to allow the to fully work...you need swtiches that will deliver 802.11at.

[robjduk]

until your license expires and bricks the device

 

I must admit there seems to be a bit of fanboyism among this thread. "Wasting money"? We've had UniFi kit deployed in our school (with high density areas, and supporting our WiFi VoIP phones) for years at less than 10x the cost of Meraki. They don't rely on licensing or remote services, the hardware is cheap enough to keep a whole new system spare on a shelf if you so wish, and they've added features to even the oldest APs for the past 5 years.

 

Licenses expire but good wireless is forever. There’s a reason it costs 10x.

Edited February 1, 2018 by ZeroHour

[mjk]

Licenses expire but good wireless is forever. There’s a reason it costs 10x.

 

 

Good wireless is only as good as the latest ratified standard.

Edited February 1, 2018 by ZeroHour

[Norphy]

Licenses expire but good wireless is forever. There’s a reason it costs 10x.

 

In the case of Meraki, good wireless is only for as long as the licenses last. I appreciate the advantages that the Meraki environment brings but there is no getting away from the fact that it costs the same or more as an Aruba or Ruckus solution, isn’t appreciably better in terms of hardware and while you’d be sensible to buy a support contract for other wireless systems, most don’t stop working after x years if you decide not to pay.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Licenses expire but good wireless is forever. There’s a reason it costs 10x.

 

Good to see there are IT techs out there wasting today's diminishing school budgets on ridiculous solutions that provide the same service as something 10x less the cost. Ruckus, Aerohive, Cisco or any other central-controller based solution I could perhaps get on board with the pricing of, Meraki? You're paying $$$ for the badge, they're the Apple of the wireless world.

Edited February 1, 2018 by ZeroHour

[ZeroHour]

MOD NOTE: Please keep it polite, I have edited the posts for now. There is never a perfect solution for everyone which is why you ask what people have and what they like to scope out your own requirements. There is no right or wrong answer (well maybe Linksys )

 

---

 

Never had my hands on Meraki kit but I have had decent experiences with Ruckus although I have heard Meraki is great for a lot out there, I just have not used it. Likewise I have not tried Unfi wifi but I have used their EdgeRouters before which are good but being honest the firmware dev has not been quite as solid as I would like with quite a few bugs occuring in each version but considering the price that's what you get over much more pricey systems and they are developing quite quickly. I guess a lot of this will come down to budget and how much time you really have to handle any issues you may have instead of reporting it to support.

Edited February 1, 2018 by ZeroHour

[Kitkat]

Dear IT colleagues. Were a medium sized FE college. We are familiar with Cisco, Meraki(CiscoMeraki) and Aerohive.

 

Cisco is quite expensive, which is now out of our price bracket now, however Meraki has served us superbly well for almost six years. It will meet the needs of most WiFi needs in education, and with the great Meraki dashboard. Its finest attribute is that if you don't have the training and expertise of running wifi networks professionally, and the hours weekly to spend manually configuring it and maintaining it. Meraki and Aerohive are really good at self managing with very few issues, and almost no configuring. Reporting is very easy and maintenance almost none existent, really good for busy technicians. We have around 4000 mobile devices attached daily and around 200 Access Points, and a pile of excellent feedback from customers. We can reccommend. Good luck with your choices.

[chazzy2501]

I'd get the cheaper unify kit, you can always upgrade high density areas later. but think of your clients how many today could even take advantage of wave2 AC wifi. Most of my clients top out at 450 anyway. None have 1700AC I can't see that happening for a few years anyway. in low density areas you'd never see a practical gain.

 

Meraki is amazing but you pay for it, do you need your APs to have a built in spectrum analyser (sweet but OTT) Meraki were doing double licensing for education a while back and are always giving away free kit.

[denzal2k4]

Unifi all the way, cheap simple works, installed it at a new build primary 2 years ago, other than updating firmware a couple of times, I haven't needed to touch it. Super simple to setup and manage, no controller to worry about, no licenses, need another AP? just buy one from the many online retailers, no need for approved resellers or any of that poop.. At the end of the day the school cares that it has wifi and it works, how difficult it is for you to manage is irrelevant to other staff, but a 10k difference in price for some fancy new protocol, or snazzy interface....

[psydii]

HPE Aruba - when you write a spec and run a tender process they are extremely competitive with their 'controllerless' Instant (IAP) range. HPE list prices mean *nothing*.

 

The IAP 315 (Unifi equivelant: UAP-HD) is the sweet spot for single site indoor education scenarios at the moment, fantastic when you have a mix of 1:1 and 2x2 devices and absolutely rock solid.

 

I test a number of manufacturer devices recently. You will never see >500Mb/sec on the wire if you have more than a handful of devices with the current generation of the standard. Indeed once you have a couple of handfuls of busy devices, total throughput drops to 200Mb/s or less. By the time (if ever) we can push past that, multi-gig ethernet standards will be mainstream and the wired side will again outstrip the wireless data rates.

[Norphy]

Unifi all the way, cheap simple works, installed it at a new build primary 2 years ago, other than updating firmware a couple of times, I haven't needed to touch it. Super simple to setup and manage, no controller to worry about, no licenses, need another AP? just buy one from the many online retailers, no need for approved resellers or any of that poop.. At the end of the day the school cares that it has wifi and it works, how difficult it is for you to manage is irrelevant to other staff, but a 10k difference in price for some fancy new protocol, or snazzy interface....

 

As good as the Unifi stuff looks, I have to ask why are they so cheap? What aren't you getting? Is it something in the hardware? Some software features? Support? Warranty? Something else?

[denzal2k4]

It's WiFi, it is a wireless connection to a network at good speed, what more do you need? Software has Vlan's, Radius, Guest portal. I personally also think they are the nicest looking AP's.

[Norphy]

It's WiFi, it is a wireless connection to a network at good speed, what more do you need? Software has Vlan's, Radius, Guest portal. I personally also think they are the nicest looking AP's.

 

That’s the point though, isn’t it? What more do I need? Will these APs be adequate? Do they have good support? Can I pick up the phone and shout at someone when they go wrong? Can I get them easily replaced if and when they die?

 

There has to be a reason as to why they’re so much cheaper and I want to know what it is.

[Blue_Cookeh]

That’s the point though, isn’t it? What more do I need? Will these APs be adequate? Do they have good support? Can I pick up the phone and shout at someone when they go wrong? Can I get them easily replaced if and when they die?

 

There has to be a reason as to why they’re so much cheaper and I want to know what it is.

 

Meraki make you pay for their shiny management interface

 

Cisco use their name to buff their price up

 

Aruba have extra features like ClearPass

 

Ruckus is touting their centralised controller solution as being the best and being worth of $$$

 

UniFi is bare bones, limited support, yet the same hardware as everyone else.

 

Wireless networking is rarely about the hardware these days but more about the software features and underlying firmware implementation - most of them use the same Wireless hardware from the same first party manufacturers underneath. UniFi are cheap enough to keep a 5 pack of spares on the shelf and are a young enough company that they can rapidly develop their software unlike the other dinosaurs.

[Kitkat]

Meraki and the other flagship vendors, are at the leading edge of research and development. On the boards of the IEEE standards body. Their target markets are corporations, large retail, banking and so on. These customers are very concerned that their significant investment is robust, secure, reliable and has a rock solid wealth of technical backup, and is kept right up to date. They have the wealth to support their WiFi needs. Meraki's list of world wide customers is truly colossal, which allows them, like others, to afford a huge research and development division in California. They are GDPR and PCI compliant, and back it up with a wealth of granular reporting. In an an environment which promotes BYOD, the feature set allows a lot of device acceptance with a wealth of control for technicians.

 

We also have Meraki, which we were lucky enough to purchase on a good deal, (like everybody else on the forum, this has always the possibility to change due to funding and emerging competition), and it does a simply brilliant job. If you chose it, it would without any doubt, work well for you for may years to come.

 

Some of our colleagues are also very right in explaining to us that there are a wealth of other solutions which can provide a good quality service from manufacturers that although are not Tier1 vendors, are producing a good and honest product, often (as already described), are indeed based on the same or similar chip sets from the likes of Broadcom and Qualcom etc. inside the AP's. They don't have all the expensive software refinements that the Tier1 vendors have, and fancy offices in expensive central London, Paris and New York etc. However their core functionality will does the job.

 

If money is limited I know Rukus does the job well from what I have seen over the years, and their list of customers that are very happy. I am personally unfamiliar with Unifi. However my manager is familiar with it and explains that it is widely used in schools and is affordable, has less functionality, however represents good value for money, and is reliable as our colleagues on the forum have explained to us.

 

Good luck

[denzal2k4]

Perfectly timed one of the PSU's in our Meru controller failed yesterday, whole controller now making a horrible squealing noise, if the other PSU goes down we have no WiFi (no problem in a Ubiquiti environment), Sods law our warranty lapsed 4 days ago, so we now have to search out a replacement PSU. Also the Meru returns process is horrible, we have had about 7 AP failures (out of about 130) in the 4 years I have been here, they take about a month to get them returned to you, and they managed to lose one in the post and offered no refund or reimbursement. In my previous employment we used Ruckus, the firmware was outdated so we sought to update, the only way apparently was to pay Ruckus thousands in support to get an updated firmware.

 

I couldn't say what the Ubiquiti support is like as I have never needed it, worst case scenario 1 AP goes down and you buy another one for £150? I wouldn't even say I'm a fanboy its just so easy to use, cheap and has some nice features.