Wireless replacement conundrum..

[mrbios]

Aerohive want extortionate money for their renewal, I can replace all my APs with either ubiquiti, Aruba or Sophos and still pay less than the 3yr renewal with Aerohive, so I'm jumping ship. The reason i mention Sophos (as it's obviously a lesser known vendor for wireless, not one anyone thinks of as a go to....) is purely down to the fact I'm looking at moving to a Sophos XG UTM next year and i'd like the integration and reduced management of having it all in one place. I should also add that Aerohive will still work out of support, however their hivemanager NG service basically locks you out entirely once support ends, you can't login to do anything at all on the management front, so any issues and I'm stuffed....otherwise i'd quite happily run out of support for 2 more years and get more value out of them.

 

Wireless here isn't used for any ultra important function, it's just a case of providing connectivity, there's no 1:1 plans, it was spoken about but brushed aside as an idea that doesn't fit this school. So I'm not looking for mega performance etc. however would it be daft buying wave 1 devices to replace wave 1 devices at this stage? Whatever i put in place, i want minimal ongoing costs. I tend to get about 700 unique devices connected over 49 access points in a regular school day, during lesson time AP capacity averages at about 30-40 clients.

 

My existing APs are Aerohive AP130's

 

I've currently looked at:

Ubiquiti AP AC Pro - Wave 1, The cheapest solution by a decent chunk, a side step in AP specs (Have one on my desk i've been playing with too)

Ubiquiti NanoHD - Wave 2 devices, but presumably there's a good reason they're less than half the price of the AC HD?

Aruba IAP-303 - Wave 2, cheaper than the NanoHD or Sophos AP's, but I don't see many people going Aruba anymore?

Sophos AP 100C - Wave 1, but integration into the UTM which feels like it would make management easier, never seen anyone using them and they've never been talked about here as far as i can see. (trial one coming to play around with)

 

It's tempting to just go the cheapest possible route, and do a direct replacement with what i have, 49 x AC Pro APs would still be about £2-2.5k cheaper than the 3yr Aerohive renewal for example.

 

Opinions? Stick with Aerohive? Run out of support? Move to a wave 2 device option? Side step to other wave 1 devices and benefit in another area? OR the final alternative, is spend more than the Aerohive renewal price on some better devices, but I'm not sure it's warranted in our situation and there seems to be a big leap in price fomr the models above to the next models up.

[AlanD]

I use (or rather used) Aerohive...but no, and perhaps you might be surprised, I didn't pay for their annual support. Instead - I managed them through the command line interface! I have never thought that the annual cloud hosted support model is the right one for schools....or at least not at the level pricing they charge....and their multiple year offers lock you in to them - with their "free" replacement guarantee getting you the same AP - when - if it was your money - you'd probably want to put a bit more to it and buy the latest model to replace something that failed. Most of the time (there has been the odd problematic firmware update) they just work...we used ours with radius authentication and smoothwall.

 

I'd certainly be happy using Ubiquiti as a replacement, and they get a lot of thumbs up from others on this forum. But I am a strong believer in not taking anyone else's word for anything - because everyone's situation is different. I'd advise you to get a couple of Ubiquity access points and try them out. You'll sell them on ebay for practically the same as you paid for them if you decide not to keep them. Don't expect any support from a supplier to set them up. You might decide to pay for support - but if you are confident with wireless you can probably do it yourself.

 

Personally I would restrict myself to the latest "HD" wave 2 models. And while I could argue that maybe most of our client devices are not wave 2, and so give little benefit, I would be thinking that maybe a year or three down the road I would be glad of the some of the benefits of MU-MIMO and the like. I'd probably put the HD nano high on my list because it fully works with a poE 802.11af whereas as many of the wave 2 access points (for all manufacturers) require 802.11at for all the features to work. Maybe that doesn't matter but its a consideration. But yes if I had the money I'd probably go for the full HD model with 4x4 streams.

 

The HD nano only has 2 streams I think on 2.4GHz...but has the full compliment on 5GHz. So as long as your access points are in the classroom (walls, and student bodies are enough to drop 5GHz down to a 54mb/s "g" connection rate) that should be pretty good. If you want good coverage over longer distances I'd definitely be wanting to spend more to get the full HD model because the 2.4GHz covers long distances better.

[mikeprice]

I put in a Unify system at my school and it was wonderful - actually quite boring as it just worked

 

We hosted it on site so I had control with no cost after the installation etc.. The controller took up very few resources = I just had to remember to update the controller every now and again (normally at the start of a holiday)

[JOrdan01070]

It sounds like you are on the aerohive select model have a look at aerohive connect it does not have all the features of select but it is free and support is through the aerohive community.

[JATSO]

+1 for unify

[rogerdnixon]

Just go for Aerohive Connect as already mentioned unless you need the higher end features. You get similar features to Unify and they host the management interface for you. APs are similar in price to Unifi. If you need the Selct options - then shop around - we got about £3000 off our renewal by doing this.

[mrbios]

It sounds like you are on the aerohive select model have a look at aerohive connect it does not have all the features of select but it is free and support is through the aerohive community.

 

Looking at the feature comparison sheet, i would lose out on a lot of network policy features that i use currently. I'm pretty sure the main one being "Override of select SSID settings at device level" I'm also utilising the firewall quite heavily, I'm not sure what the "limited support" aspect of that on connect means as to whether i would lose out. The rest of it looks fine to lose though. I'll try and have a word with the company that supplied it.

 

EDIT: Thank you though, i didn't know Aerohive Connect was a thing! I've now emailed the company that supplied it all 2 years ago to check our setup and tell me what functionality I'm using (from a network policy perspective) i would lose.

 

EDIT2: ok i think with Aerohive connect, the only thing i would have to do is split my BYOD and domain connected devices into two SSIDs, so i'd have a total of 3 SSIDs rather than 2.

Edited December 19, 2018 by mrbios

[DalekSec]

+1 for UniFi, but it does have downsides. Limited to 4 SSIDs, VLANs attached to RADIUS assigned SSIDs cannot be on another SSID.

 

Used UniFi at old place and at home. Looking at moving to it at current place but ran into the above problems (we are thinking of an SSID overhaul anyway) but that main problem we have is this: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/wireless-networks/202220-unifi-controller-5-9-29-detecting-wrong-ip.html

Edited December 19, 2018 by DalekSec

[peej2k]

Meraki, whilst expensive is offering 10 year licenses for all their wifi kit at the moment.

So basically, when you buy the Meraki kit, you'll not need to do licensing again before you replace it.

Not saying it's the answer for yourselves (I've just put it in and I'm loving what it does) but it is definitely something to wave in the face of competitors.

[DalekSec]

Meraki, whilst expensive is offering 10 year licenses for all their wifi kit at the moment.

So basically, when you buy the Meraki kit, you'll not need to do licensing again before you replace it.

Not saying it's the answer for yourselves (I've just put it in and I'm loving what it does) but it is definitely something to wave in the face of competitors.

 

 

Just had a look at Meraki, my god its expensive. $150 a year on top of the AP price! for $150 you can buy a decent UniFi AP and don't have to worry about licenses

[atcoates]

Just had a look at Meraki, my god its expensive. $150 a year on top of the AP price! for $150 you can buy a decent UniFi AP and don't have to worry about licenses

Those figures are way off it's more like £12-£15 a year.

[fredbayker]

Just putting this out there, I was told by somebody that the Samsung wireless kit is really good.

I have no experience or knowledge of costs etc but it maybe something to consider

[AlanD]

It sounds like you are on the aerohive select model have a look at aerohive connect it does not have all the features of select but it is free and support is through the aerohive community.

 

It’s very basic...no vlans...just a basic wireless connection...hardly worth having a controller at all in fact...

[AlanD]

Just go for Aerohive Connect as already mentioned unless you need the higher end features. You get similar features to Unify and they host the management interface for you. APs are similar in price to Unifi. If you need the Selct options - then shop around - we got about £3000 off our renewal by doing this.

 

APs from aero hive are a LOT more expensive than from ubiquity...

[AlanD]

Those figures are way off it's more like £12-£15 a year.

 

If you can commit to a 5 year contract...there are leaks to be done..especially for this those with large numbers of access points. It’s still a lot of money you wouldn’t be paying for Ubiquity though....

 

Having said that...I do like Meraki web interface management...but I quite like the dashboard of the latest BMW cars too...the trouble is the price they are asking is hard to justify.

[atcoates]

If you can commit to a 5 year contract...there are leaks to be done..especially for this those with large numbers of access points. It’s still a lot of money you wouldn’t be paying for Ubiquity though....

 

Having said that...I do like Meraki web interface management...but I quite like the dashboard of the latest BMW cars too...the trouble is the price they are asking is hard to justify.

Yes absolutely re the budget. We're lucky enough we've had various LA building projects and we've managed to wrangle a lot of kit. It also help when the contractors throw all your old APs in a skip ;-) It was an expensive mistake I made sure of it!!!

[DalekSec]

Anyone use Aruba? just seen and it and doesn't look that bad

[psydii]

Aruba IAP-3xx series are pretty good. If they are in a proper competition with other big name wireless vendors (e.g. Aerohive) a top tier HP reseller will be able to get bid pricing down to a price comparable to the high end Ubiquiti stuff. With Aruba you get the limited lifetime warranty.

 

Head to head we found the IAP-315 (a 4x4 wave 2 AP) to provide the most consistent connection across a wide range of clients. While never the fastest for a small number of clients, it had slightly higher and much more consistent throughput with 180 devices spread over 4 APs than the other vendors tested.

 

In the real world deployment we recently (accidentally) had the patch Tuesday updates, a sims update and a YouTube presentation all running in the same room (about 100 clients). The YouTube presentation ran without a glitch. The IAPs just balanced everything over all the nearby radios. Normally these 100 devices are spread out over the site - sometimes you hit use cases you don't expect and the network has to take it.

 

 

The IAPs also have a perfectly fine set of capabilities out of the box. No need to buy in central or Airwave, but they are available at a good price if you want them.

[chazzy2501]

Tell your Aerohive rep that you plan to move over to ubiquity if they don't come up with a competitive price.

[mdrabble]

I've just purchased 50 x Unifi Nano HD APs to replace my Meraki kit which the licensing it due to expire in June and with the issues of Meraki and Smoothwall when it come to roaming clients I didn't want to renew the Meraki kit.

 

Yes, the Unifi controller doesn't give you the same details as the Meraki dashboard, but I also purchased the Unifi Security Gateway so I can do Deep Packet Inspections to see what traffic is on the wireless.

 

I have also made the move from 4 SSID down to 2 SSIDs (1 for all users using Radius assigned VLANS) and 1 for Guests using the Guest Portal.

 

Yes the level of support may not be the same on Unifi when compared to Meraki but as I have only used Meraki support twice (both times for roaming issues - which they said it isn't down to them - so not much help or use!) I've not needed the support.

 

In total, i have saved approx £2,500 - £3,000.

Edited December 19, 2018 by mdrabble

[jonbd]

I've just finished moving from Aerohive to Unifi Nano-HDs this week. Licence renewal and support costs were crazy, and I wanted a few more APs as well, so it was a no brainer cost wise. Controller software was very easy to get going, and i've been able to swap out the APs one at a time without causing any issues.

[mrbios]

I've just finished moving from Aerohive to Unifi Nano-HDs this week. Licence renewal and support costs were crazy, and I wanted a few more APs as well, so it was a no brainer cost wise. Controller software was very easy to get going, and i've been able to swap out the APs one at a time without causing any issues.

 

Ah that's handy, someone making a similar transition. Which model Aerohive APs did you move from? Have you found performance and signal range to be somewhat similar?

 

My Aerohive contract expires on the 1st of July 2019, so i'd probably just run out of support for 20 or so days then replace them all in one go at the start of the summer (assuming i even go down that route of course....) I've already got the unifi controller setup as a test and one AP that i've been playing with.

 

I've contacted another Aerohive reseller now to see what price they give me, and messaged the original one. I'm going to tell Aerohive that i'd renew if they gave me a 3yr renewal for the same price as 1yr, but otherwise I'm off. I don't think Aerohive connect will do what i need unfortunately having looked into that a bit further.

[jonbd]

Ah that's handy, someone making a similar transition. Which model Aerohive APs did you move from? Have you found performance and signal range to be somewhat similar?

 

My Aerohive contract expires on the 1st of July 2019, so i'd probably just run out of support for 20 or so days then replace them all in one go at the start of the summer (assuming i even go down that route of course....) I've already got the unifi controller setup as a test and one AP that i've been playing with.

 

I've contacted another Aerohive reseller now to see what price they give me, and messaged the original one. I'm going to tell Aerohive that i'd renew if they gave me a 3yr renewal for the same price as 1yr, but otherwise I'm off. I don't think Aerohive connect will do what i need unfortunately having looked into that a bit further.

 

We had AP130s. Performance seems to be a bit better in some areas, but we had a few problems with the reliability of some of the APs anyway. So far it seems to be working nicely, and I much prefer the Unifi controller interface to Hivemanager.

[mrbios]

We had AP130s. Performance seems to be a bit better in some areas, but we had a few problems with the reliability of some of the APs anyway. So far it seems to be working nicely, and I much prefer the Unifi controller interface to Hivemanager.

 

How many SSIDs do you have?

 

In Aerohive I'm setup with 2 SSIDs which each have two different profiles depending on who or what is connecting. One SSID is radius authenticated, one is password authenticated. The Password one moves users into a guest vlan with restrictive firewall rules if used with a token, or puts them into a standard vlan if it's used with our normal password. Then the other radius one puts users into a BYOD vlan along with restrictive firewall rules if they login as a user, or into another domain vlan if they connect as a domain connected device.

 

Is it possible to setup UniFi in a way that will work the same as the above with regards to SSID, firewall rule and vlan assignment? Or am i looking at a big change in the structure of it all to achieve something similar?

[mrbios]

Actually managed to talk to someone directly from Aerohive for a change before i left yesterday. They asked the question "what do we need to get the price down to in order for you to be happy to renew?" I picked the price of the cheapest alternative solution and dropped £500 off that, which is a significant amount below what they previously wanted. I'm now waiting to hear back, as he's gone to his CFO with my request.

 

If i get 3 more years from the same APs for less than the cost of a new solution, it saves me all the hassle of setting up and installing all the new APs (especially as I'll be dealing with a new UTM solution around the same time), and hopefully in 3 years, maybe even 802.11ax might be affordable.