Wifi Solutions - Help Please

[berttie]

Hi All,

 

Very short story .. we have Aerohive wireless solution that is now 3-4 years old. Its must have been a 3 year deal as we now have been hit with an £8k bill for a 12 months license renewal for 56 APs. We are kicking back on this of course.

 

The question is what are you all using as its seems to us we could almost replace our whole AP network with another vendor and have reduced costs going forward.

 

Who are you using and what are you ongoing costs.

 

Thanks

[ess2k]

I highly recommend NETWORK IT | ICT Services for schools in West Midlands we have used them for Ruckus wifi in many of out Academies within our Trust. Fantastic price and great personal service. At one of our schools we have around 300 devices connected to wifi not had a single problem (ok, may be had to restart the odd AP). Give them a try.

[berttie]

Hi,

 

thanks for your reply ... are there any ongoing costs ? can you provide any details ?

[Mark182]

We've just gone with ubiquiti ac pro's and these guys. They did a heatmap and everything, really happy.

[christhetech]

We've just gone with ubiquiti ac pro's and these guys. They did a heatmap and everything, really happy.

 

If I could sweet talk the beancounters into letting me spend some money, I would seriously be looking at Ubiquiti. We have a Meraki set-up here at the moment and it's an absolute money pit with the licensing costs and support. I've tried and tried to convince the powers that be that they are burning money on the current wireless set-up, but there is no appetite there for them to change it! So bloody frustrating when there are much more cost effective solutions out there.

We could probably kit out the whole school in Ubiquiti kit for the cost of just one year's Meraki subscription. It's bloody ridiculous!

[Mark182]

The money you would pay over 3 years for license renewals would be less than 56 AP's and install. I'd put it to them that way, then after 3 years you are making an 8k saving year on year.

[berttie]

So I take it that there are no significant ongoing costs for UBI AP ....

[jslate1980]

So I take it that there are no significant ongoing costs for UBI AP ....

 

Depends on a support contract to replace the equipment after the 1 year warranty finishes. I am moving from Meraki to Unifi AC Pro’s over the summer. For under £5000 I have purchased 50 access points.

 

 

Jon

[synaesthesia]

Well I'd hardly call that an outgoing; if you're competent there's no reason to have such a contract in place. Get the AP's in, keep a few spare for failures, swap as required and still quids in.

[Norphy]

if you're competent there's no reason to have such a contract in place

 

I'm sorry but this kind of attitude really makes me grind my teeth. I'm competent. I'm experienced. I like to think that I'm relatively intelligent. However, even taking all of that into account, I don't and can't know everything.

 

Speaking entirely for myself, wireless is one of those areas where neither myself or any other member of my teams really have the expertise and experience to be able to support and maintain a wireless network by ourselves. Support gets you much more than a body in to replace an access point if they go wrong, it also gets you healthchecks, troubleshooting and access to experts from the vendor and manufacturers.

 

If you have that expertise, that's great, well done, I'm pleased for you, fill your boots but don't assume that someone buying in a support contract for a service isn't competent.

Edited July 6, 2018 by Norphy

[E_G_R2]

I'm sorry but this kind of attitude really makes me grind my teeth. I'm competent. I'm experienced. I like to think that I'm relatively intelligent. However, even taking all of that into account, I don't and can't know everything.

 

Speaking entirely for myself, wireless is one of those areas where neither myself or any other member of my teams really have the expertise and experience to be able to support and maintain a wireless network by ourselves. Support gets you much more than a body in to replace an access point if they go wrong, it also gets you healthchecks, troubleshooting and access to experts from the vendor and manufacturers.

 

If you do, that's great, well done, I'm pleased for you, fill your boots but don't assume that someone buying in a support contract for a service isn't competent.

 

Agreed, I'm a one man band and though I'd like to do everything and control everything its impossible so I buy in support for those instances when I just don't have the time to teach myself.

[synaesthesia]

Not at all how it meant to come across, apologies if it did.

[k-strider]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]49603[/ATTACH]

We have Ruckus in place for about 5 years and it has been Fab the attached is our ave use on a fairly light day.... im only just starting to look to replace it in the next year or two... we have 250 iPads going up by another 150 this comming september and around 100 laptops

[Primus]

Berttie.

 

We currently replace a lot of expensive Aerohive and Ruckus with Extreme WiNG Wireless. It's enterprise grade (scales to 20,000+ APs per controller) totally bullet proof and full Layer 7 (so you can monitor and control any device anywhere on the estate down the individual application), and the cost is unbelievable (you can also just lease it at no risk which we do a lot into Education, don't like it send it back anytime you like with 60 days notice). We've just replaced Ruckus at the Wirral Academy Trust with it (and they would be more than happy to talk to you about it or give you a live demo). It's also now the defacto wireless standard for all schools at Newcastle Council (they host the controller in their DC and each school just "spins up" access points) and we're in the middle of a rol out across another entire academy trust to name just a few. Send me a message and I'll put you in touch or send you some eval kit to play with. Paul.

 

As someone who knows NCC and their interesting network I'd not be using them as an example - more of an example of what not to do! I'd also say plugging it as the de facto standard in NCC schools is massively stretching the truth at this point...

[AlanD]

Hi All,

 

Very short story .. we have Aerohive wireless solution that is now 3-4 years old. Its must have been a 3 year deal as we now have been hit with an £8k bill for a 12 months license renewal for 56 APs. We are kicking back on this of course.

 

The question is what are you all using as its seems to us we could almost replace our whole AP network with another vendor and have reduced costs going forward.

 

Who are you using and what are you ongoing costs.

 

Thanks

 

I don't think this model works very well for schools...web hosting a "controller" shouldn't be a significant cost...supplying a replacement guarantee for old APs isn't terribly helpful - as you'd probably have later APs as replacements (such as ac wave 2 models)….and they probably don't fail that often - of at all...and how many support calls do you typically make? Probably none at all...it just works...or should just work. And while the layer 7 stuff is great...its probably just duplicating what your web filter/firewall does (or should do).

 

There are a number of enterprise WiFi solutions that don't have such on going costs.....

 

We use aerohive - and their units are great...but I don't use or pay for any of their management stuff....and just program them via the CLI ...because they are fully autonomous - and know how to work with neighbouring units etc....but its not a solution for the feint hearted....and of course we don't have any fancy dashboard stuff...but it all works with 100 or so APs, with VLANS, radius authentication , etc etc....

[Roberto]

Hi All,

 

Very short story .. we have Aerohive wireless solution that is now 3-4 years old. Its must have been a 3 year deal as we now have been hit with an £8k bill for a 12 months license renewal for 56 APs. We are kicking back on this of course.

 

The question is what are you all using as its seems to us we could almost replace our whole AP network with another vendor and have reduced costs going forward.

 

Who are you using and what are you ongoing costs.

 

Thanks

 

We're running the properly expensive stuff - aruba - and we have something like 2 controllers and 150-ish APs. I think we pay around £8k a year licence and support so your costs there do seem expensive.

[Blue_Cookeh]

I don't think this model works very well for schools...web hosting a "controller" shouldn't be a significant cost...supplying a replacement guarantee for old APs isn't terribly helpful - as you'd probably have later APs as replacements (such as ac wave 2 models)….and they probably don't fail that often - of at all...and how many support calls do you typically make? Probably none at all...it just works...or should just work. And while the layer 7 stuff is great...its probably just duplicating what your web filter/firewall does (or should do).

 

There are a number of enterprise WiFi solutions that don't have such on going costs.....

 

We use aerohive - and their units are great...but I don't use or pay for any of their management stuff....and just program them via the CLI ...because they are fully autonomous - and know how to work with neighbouring units etc....but its not a solution for the feint hearted....and of course we don't have any fancy dashboard stuff...but it all works with 100 or so APs, with VLANS, radius authentication , etc etc....

 

Agreed.

 

The days where you have to spend mega bucks for a decent wireless solution are long gone. When I had quotes for Meraki and Ruckus I laughed when I saw the cost, both initial and ongoing. We have fancy dashboards, we have RADIUS authentication and layer 7 monitoring... and it's all open source.

 

Paying £8,000 a year for a wireless solution? What planet are some of these schools on. We could redo our entire UniFi install and keep a few back as spares for that money, and it would last a good 5 years or more.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[Wave9_Lee]

I might regret commenting here (again) : )

 

We offer Cisco Meraki on a rental basis over 3 or 5 year period, no operating lease, including ongoing support. The licence is 10 years, and that means in 9 years a faulty AP would be replaced with a new one of whatever the current equivalent is. I honestly think that the features, warranty, support and timesaving features included are worth it. But I would say that wouldn't I!

[berttie]

Hi Guys,

 

For those of you using ubiquiti ...a few questions

 

1) How do you do your content filtering - We have a hosted lightspeed system at our ISP (schools broadband)

2) We will have Staff / Students / Guest SSIDs which will need different filter policies

3) We only allow 6th form students to have WIFI access, how do you handle this ? (guest tokens)

 

Thanks in advance

 

rob

[ITGuyWestMidlands]

Hi Guys,

 

For those of you using ubiquiti ...a few questions

 

1) How do you do your content filtering - We have a hosted lightspeed system at our ISP (schools broadband)

2) We will have Staff / Students / Guest SSIDs which will need different filter policies

3) We only allow 6th form students to have WIFI access, how do you handle this ? (guest tokens)

 

Thanks in advance

 

rob

1. Any web filter capable of acting as a transparent proxy will be fine, particularly for BYOD.

 

2. Dynamic VLANs (staff and students VLANs) or Radius based user authentication with your web filter doing the accounting ( your web filter knows who any http(s) requests are coming from so applies the correct policy accordingly)

 

3. As above. User based radius that only allows authentication for students in your sixth form group.

[atcoates]

If I could sweet talk the beancounters into letting me spend some money, I would seriously be looking at Ubiquiti. We have a Meraki set-up here at the moment and it's an absolute money pit with the licensing costs and support. I've tried and tried to convince the powers that be that they are burning money on the current wireless set-up, but there is no appetite there for them to change it! So bloody frustrating when there are much more cost effective solutions out there.

We could probably kit out the whole school in Ubiquiti kit for the cost of just one year's Meraki subscription. It's bloody ridiculous!

We just bought each Meraki AP with a 10 year licence it works out much cheaper.

[AlanD]

Hi Guys,

 

For those of you using ubiquiti ...a few questions

 

1) How do you do your content filtering - We have a hosted lightspeed system at our ISP (schools broadband)

2) We will have Staff / Students / Guest SSIDs which will need different filter policies

3) We only allow 6th form students to have WIFI access, how do you handle this ? (guest tokens)

 

Thanks in advance

 

rob

 

I don’t use Ubiquiti...but would do it the same way...

 

1. Filtering done by existing...smoothwall filter...by connecting BYOD traffic to an isolated vlan port.

2. Users have to authenticate...we use smoothwall as radius...which connects to our active directory. I wouldn’t have more than one SSID. Mulitiple SSIDs can use a surprisingly large part of wireless bandwidth just advertising themselves. Smoothwall rules AD group rules determine if access is possible...and what that access allows.

3. Rule in smooth wall for that radius group...although....I think I would be allowing access to internal portal servers for everyone...for homework, timetables,etc.

 

Yes, you will need users to install a certificate...and I’d include guests in that...and if that is inconvenient for them...tough...they can always use 4G.

[RedwayNetworks_Michael]

Hi Norphy, Are you using all the Hivemanager features on the select licence with Aerohive. If you are not using all the extra features from the licence then you can not renew the licencing and just fall back onto the connect structure with Aerohive. Unlike Meraki Aerohive dont cut you off for not renewing the licence it just means you lose some of the features. HP also do instant APs that dont require licencing. Ubiquity is ok i think they do a good outdoor AP however personally i dont think they are quite enterprise grade and ok if you want a cheap solution.

[AlanD]

... however personally i dont think they are quite enterprise grade and ok if you want a cheap solution.

 

What do you base this on? Where does such a mindset begin? Have you actually got one out - and put it next to ...aerohive...or meraki...or whatever ...in a classroom of 30 laptops doing a domain logon and running HD youtube clips? No; its not a rolls royce solution...and no; it doesn't come with the rolls royce price tag. But they are certainly not domestic wireless access points - and support roaming, airtime fairness, radius logons linked to Active directory, a nice dashboard to show you whats going on etc, etc.

 

Where there is a difference...is that becuase there are no on going charges (either on going, nor upfront), no supplier is going to come on site for free to either install - or sort a problem out - or at least not without charging for it. Some charge even when their getting an annual matintenance fee. So if you don't know anything about wireless...and are thinking that ubiquiti is the at least the right cost solution for you - you might usefully decide to factor in some support cost. That - or know a colleague not too far away that might have the answers for you.

 

There is nothing "wrong" with cheap solutions. There is something wrong with "expensive" solutions that don't deliver anything extra.

 

 

You rarely get what you pay for. Doing so is no guarantee of getting anything better....but I agree - you sometimes do have to pay more for something which is better. Just make sure you are getting something better before you hand over the money.

[RedwayNetworks_Michael]

I agree with you Alan, Providing the wireless is designed correctly you dont always need to pay the most money.