Cambium ?

[Bev]

I'm currently getting quotes to replace our wireless infrastructure, most companies are quoting for Uniquiti, but I have had a very competitive quote for Cambium. It's not a product I'm familiar with, so I was just looking for anyone's experiences with them?

 

Bev

[wright-fi]

Cambium cnPilot certified administrator weighing in here. We've helped to deploy Cambium into lots of Schools and it's been very successful (although we don't actually sell to schools directly).

 

Personally I think it's a perfect fit for Education, their indoor APs come with a 5 year warranty (Ubiquiti APs only have 1 year warranty) and a free for life cloud controller is provided by Cambium (hosted in AWS). Also I encourage you to take a look at the specs of the cnPilot APs, their APs are very well built, Wave 2 chipsets, strong antennas, good CPUs and loads of RAM.

 

Their feature set is quite complete as well, fast roaming (r/k/v), meshing and rogue AP detection are all available out of the box. Although in my experience most schools WLANs are relatively simple in comparison to the feature set of cnPilot APs.

 

Sorry if I'm sounding like a sales person, that's not my intention but I'm a big fan of their cnPilot Wi-Fi solution.

 

Feel free to ask if you have any questions I'd be happy to help if I can.

 

 

EDIT: Typo

Edited May 9, 2019 by wright-fi

[DavidYoung]

Hi,

 

Sorry to resurrect this thread but Cambium are currently at the top of our list for a wireless refresh and if there are any schools with Cambium deployed I'd love to speak to you. Particularly if you are doing high density or 1:1.

 

Thanks

[synaesthesia]

Hardware looks good although the companies morals are a little on the "apple" side of things. Steal something someone else does and whinge when you don't get your own way! (see lawsuits regarding them nicking UniFi gear and loading their own firwmare onto it)

[wright-fi]

Hardware looks good although the companies morals are a little on the "apple" side of things. Steal something someone else does and whinge when you don't get your own way! (see lawsuits regarding them nicking UniFi gear and loading their own firwmare onto it)

 

 

IMO that's not a fair analysis of what happened. Ubiquiti software was open source and Cambium made a sold a software version that would would enable some Ubiquiti products to talk to Cambium products.

 

The judge dismissed the case before it went to court. Here were his comments: "The disconnect between the broad claims articulated in the complaint, on the one hand, and Ubiquiti’s acknowledgement that the GPL and other open source software licenses limit its rights and therefore the scope of its claims, on the other, makes the scope of defendants’ allegedly unlawful conduct unintelligible."

 

Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2018cv05369/355208/59/

[gumbygaz]

Morning,

 

Just to drag this thread back again, we're also looking at Cambium. Product and price do look very good, and @wright-fi comments sound good, just wondering if you @DavidYoung or @Bev go with them in the end?

 

Cheers

[Bev]

Yes we did go with them. We’ve only had it in since the summer. So far seems ok. We have some issue s with iPads not connecting to the WiFi but I think it’s lightspeed relates rather than cadmium but I haven’t tracked it down 100% yet.

[Primus]

How good is the pricing? Unifi may only have a 1 year warranty but they're so much cheaper than the other companies that you can afford to buy lots of spares and still save a fortune.

 

I've also been using Unifi kit in education for 3 years now and I've not had a single device - switch or AP fail in that time.

 

You have to look at this holistically - identify what you need your new WiFi implementation to do and then rank each competitor against it. When we did this it wasn't even close - Unifi won hands down and I've never regretted implementing Unifi despite many companies quoting on other solutions and bad-mouthing them and spreading FUD.

[gumbygaz]

Thanks @Bev!

 

I've looked at Unifi and I yes I probably put it in the back of my mind because of the warranty. But yup really should have another look at it now I've got all the comparable quotes.

[DavidYoung]

We went with Cambium over the summer in the end too and it seems to have been working out fairly well. I do like the full cloud management as it's not relying on any of our servers, etc.

 

The cost was very competitive, I think it worked out about £8k cheaper than Ruckus on a 75 AP installation and I'm a bit more confident in it than Unifi. The 5-year warranty is good to have and we really needed a system without ongoing costs.

[yac2016]

Unifi everyday. We have it working in loads of schools. Not sure why you would look at other solutions.

[gumbygaz]

Thanks for the input all, going to go with Cambium after comparisons. 5 year warranty/support and full enterprise features gives us that extra confidence in the product.

[snagrat]

Thanks for the input all, going to go with Cambium after comparisons. 5 year warranty/support and full enterprise features gives us that extra confidence in the product.

 

You won’t be disappointed.

[Alawil]

Typically what are people paying for an e410 AP?

[snagrat]

Typically what are people paying for an e410 AP?

 

Around £154

[Alawil]

Thanks that really useful, can I ask who is your supplier?

[Alawil]

I’m debating whether to go for the e410 or e600 to serve the classes where 30 laptops or iPads would be used at once, would people generally recommend 2x2 or is the extra 60% in cost worth it for 4x4 ?

[mavhc]

You're not going to be using less wireless data at any point in the future, so future proofing is usually the way to go.

 

As long as it has MU-MIMO then you'll get to use the extra speed

[mavhc]

Seems I can get NanoHD APs for £100 inc vat.

[yac2016]

Seems I can get NanoHD APs for £100 inc vat.

 

Where from?