Is everyone using expensive access points?

[snoerre]

Hello,

 

looking around in this forum, I only read about either Ruckus or Aruba wireless if someone askes about wireless for campus environments. Well, I forgot to mention Ubiquiti.

 

Yes, we could buy Aruba Instant AP-555 access points for 900$ (plus IEEE 802.bt 60W power injector, plus mounting,...) because of academic / educational pricing. We could also get Ruckus R750 for 1200$ or R650 for ~900$ including taxes.

We actually bought some Aruba AP-555 some days ago, installed ArubaOS 8.6.0.2 code, setup tri-radio mode, so we now have 2x 5GHz (40 MHz) and 1x 2.4GHz (20 MHz) with WPA2 enterprise, some VLAN, nothing special. And we disabled "high efficiency" because our students just don´t update their Intel driver for getting connectivity to those Aruba devices and failed to connect with older ones. So, actually we have damn expensive 802.11ac access points with 40 MHz 5 GHz channels as air is too crowded in our buildings in general. That´s simply too expensive...

 

So let´s look at cheaper devices which just work when 30 to 60 or even more clients connect in one single room.

Of course there is Ubiquiti with its nanoHD which has quite good reviews. But I don´t know why I don´t like that vendor. When I look on to price comparison sites, there is also e.g. TP-Link EAP245v3 or even a 4x4:4 MU-MIMO Grandstream GWN7630 PoE+ powered 802.11ac wave 2 access points for less than 100$ with some cheapish Mediatek MT7615 chipset, plus some free on premise wifi controller with some basic features. So, why not just buy it?

 

I just cannot find anyone somehow bigger campus installation for those. It seems everyone is scared about using them because of "propaganda/paranoia" from the bigger vendors? Perhaps some tried in this forum and could tell about his or her experience with TP-Link´s or Grandstream´s "business" access points?

Regards

Edited February 12, 2020 by snoerre

[Roberto]

In my experience cheaper APs scale less well and have management issues. That’s not to say that you should be buying the most expensive kit either, it may well be overkill to buy meraki or Aruba where ubiquiti are middle range and will do all you need, for example... but unless you’re working for free, cheap kit doesn’t save money when you add the cost of keeping it going on a sophisticated network.

[DrCheese]

To be honest, it depends on how important wifi is to the way you work - I could have blown loads of money on top of the line wifi points a few years ago (My Ruckus quote was like 24k) but it's not mission critical for us so we run a mix of Unifi points and some older Aruba kit in different buildings.

 

If you're using it in a 1:1 scheme & your entire IT setup runs wirelessly, then yes by all means buy better kit.

[psydii]

You almost certainly don't require the higher end Aruba stuff. Aruba is great and if you choose the right model you will not regret it. I am not sure what the current Aruba line up is, but several years ago our HP partner advised us to go with the IAP 315 which was the lowest end 4x4 .ac wave2 model in their range at the time. They have proven to be absolutely rock solid we have about 80 of them with about 1700 devices, ranging from suites of laptops doing photoshop, iPads, and BYOD (mostly phones),we often have classes throwing gigabytes of data around, and not one problem.

 

We got extremely competitive pricing (they ended up being a tiny bit more that the Ubiquiti high end kit list price) because we ran an aggressive tendering process and tested three vendors with a real world multi AP deployment as part of the process.

 

I should point out that we also paid a specialist firm to do the RF design for us, which cost a few thousand to the cost but was massively helpful in reducing the number of APs required from initial projections of 140 to the 80 we ended up with.

 

For the last two years the only time I have to go into the console has been when we've been looking for a person/device on site, and needed to know what AP they are connected to help narrow down the scope of the search.

 

I really cannot enthuse enough about how liberating it is to have a wireless network that can take the load we put on it while requiring 0 hrs to maintain or troubleshoot.

[synaesthesia]

I wouldn't trust TP-Link for anything more than basic or SOHO equipment. Even forgetting about the capability of the kit, can you go and see it in action somewhere in a high use, high density enterprise deployment? Few and far between I'd say. Whereas Ubiquiti kit is used globally and you can find it's hardware in use from small businesses to city-wide deployments.

Support, warranty, after-sales etc all need considering too.

We've just had a full Aruba install completed with just shy of 90 x 514/515 APs, replacing our old Unifi. We'd have resisted the change a hell of a lot if it wasn't for the prospect of having a much larger wireless use scenario looming - we were *extremely* happy with the Unifi kit and just couldn't fault it especially for the money.

I don't like Ruckus much - too money-grabbing for my liking and they seem to like rinsing schools for everything they have like an easy target.

[PotNoodleTech]

You almost certainly don't require the higher end Aruba stuff. Aruba is great and if you choose the right model you will not regret it. I am not sure what the current Aruba line up is, but several years ago our HP partner advised us to go with the IAP 315 which was the lowest end 4x4 .ac wave2 model in their range at the time. They have proven to be absolutely rock solid we have about 80 of them with about 1700 devices, ranging from suites of laptops doing photoshop, iPads, and BYOD (mostly phones),we often have classes throwing gigabytes of data around, and not one problem.

 

We got extremely competitive pricing (they ended up being a tiny bit more that the Ubiquiti high end kit list price) because we ran an aggressive tendering process and tested three vendors with a real world multi AP deployment as part of the process.

 

I should point out that we also paid a specialist firm to do the RF design for us, which cost a few thousand to the cost but was massively helpful in reducing the number of APs required from initial projections of 140 to the 80 we ended up with.

 

For the last two years the only time I have to go into the console has been when we've been looking for a person/device on site, and needed to know what AP they are connected to help narrow down the scope of the search.

 

I really cannot enthuse enough about how liberating it is to have a wireless network that can take the load we put on it while requiring 0 hrs to maintain or troubleshoot.

 

Sounds like the ideal deployment! When you say aggressive tendering did you keep punching the reps until they got the price down enough?

[synaesthesia]

Sounds like the ideal deployment! When you say aggressive tendering did you keep punching the reps until they got the price down enough?

 

[sonofsanta]

I dunno why you don't like Unifi, but I worry you're missing out for reasons even you can't articulate. We've had Unifi in for 5 years now and it's been absolutely solid. We were only deploying to support BYOD--all our own kit is hardwired desktops, no laptops or tablets to speak of--so we didn't want to spend the big money on Ruckus etc. Unifi is the perfect range for being enterprise level without hitting that enterprise pricing. TP-Link etc. are home user stuff, and any money you save on purchasing you're going to lose on time spent supporting them.

 

The obvious answer to your problem is Unifi, and you really need to give them a fair shot. (NB: I don't own shares or get commission! I just like the kit)

[Davit2005]

We do use Aruba but then again we do have over 2000 access points across sites.

 

Nothing wrong with Ubiquiti WiFi but it depends on the organisational needs and features required.

 

I have deployed Ruckus, managed HP MSM and now look after Aruba, I use Ubiquiti at home. It was about 10 years ago I deployed Ruckus but I'd seriously consider Ubiquiti if I had the choice now.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Davit2005

[Sonic007]

Have you looked at Cambium? Free cloud management tool too.

[HarryMonkey]

Have you looked at Cambium? Free cloud management tool too.

 

We use them. The support doesn't seem as goos when it was Xirrus (or Riverbed), they are a bit slow to get tickets sorted and dead APs RMA'd but overall it's been a good system, we have about half a dozen SSIDs and find it all very straightforward to manage. My only gripe is their PoE injectors ( the 8 in, 8 out ones) are expensive to replace (£650) and we have had a few die on us over the years.

[localzuk]

I would say it all depends on need.

 

If you are putting 35 computers in every room in your building, all running off wifi, I'd suggest that Unifi may struggle, and you're probably gonna want to look at the high end stuff like the Ruckus R750.

 

We run Ruckus on most of our sites, and Unifi on one. They both work well - but they key thing is that the Unifi site is a small site with relatively low device density. I suspect we'd need many more APs in our largest site for our higher density deployment. We currently have 2 R710s handling 160 Chromebooks without breaking a sweat in one area.

[mavhc]

Unifi seem to have not solved that nanoHD disconnection problem in over a year now, that's not reassuring. You get what you pay for, if you manage to get your supplier to discount as much as they can

[Primus]

I would say it all depends on need.

 

If you are putting 35 computers in every room in your building, all running off wifi, I'd suggest that Unifi may struggle, and you're probably gonna want to look at the high end stuff like the Ruckus R750.

 

We run Ruckus on most of our sites, and Unifi on one. They both work well - but they key thing is that the Unifi site is a small site with relatively low device density. I suspect we'd need many more APs in our largest site for our higher density deployment. We currently have 2 R710s handling 160 Chromebooks without breaking a sweat in one area.

 

Our experience with Unifi has been that even with high density they're fine.

[Opendium_Steve]

We've had quite a few customers move from Ruckus to UniFi and it seems to work very well - when asked for recommendations we usually say UniFi unless there are some very specific requirements that it won't cover.

 

The only real problem that I'm aware of is that one of the firmware updates turned on the "Uplink Connectivity Monitor" by default, which can go wrong, and when it does it can take down your whole network - I'd recommend turning that firmly off unless you need it.

[Cache]

We've used Ubiquti kit for a good 4/5 years now and to be honest we haven't had any issues with it, but perhaps we don't use it a huge amount as we're still mainly desktops.

 

Having said that,I've put it in a couple of primary schools and they haven't reported any issues and they'll hit a single AP with 30+ ipads. Whether that's a good test or not you'll be able to tell but to me it proves it's fairly solid.

 

I did make the decision that in terms of the AP's we bought, we always bought the Pro versions. I did buy one nano but then it changed the plan for what we were doing at the last minute so it just serves my office now.

 

Depending on how many AP's you need, would something like Ruckus Unleashed work? We looked at it but then decided since the Unifi kit was working for us, we'd stick with it.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Cache

[AJWhite1970]

Unifi seem to have not solved that nanoHD disconnection problem in over a year now, that's not reassuring. You get what you pay for, if you manage to get your supplier to discount as much as they can

@mavhc just out of interest do you run Unifi kit on your sites or do you just repeat what you read on other websites as your own opinion?

 

Yes, it’s well documented there are firmware issues with the HD’s, it’s looking like 4.0.80 may have finally cracked that, but I run a site with 80 AP’s and 70 switches split over 3 locations, all unifi and I can safely say it’s the best purchase we’ve ever made, install and forget infrastructure at its finest with an unrivalled cost....

[ITGURU]

D-LINK here with wireless controller. Just set it and forget it no issues

[Davit2005]

One thing it seems with Ubiquiti, they seem very lax when it comes to implementing features of benefit that are not part of the Unifi family. They want to keep you in the family of products.

 

For instance, I use Unifi access points at home but because of specific needs I will not use Unifi/Ubiquitti firewalls or switches. With the Unifi access points there is no way to have lldp start up when the AP starts up. It is very handy to be able to see what switch ports have Unifi access points in.

Edited February 14, 2020 by Davit2005

[caffrey]

You can ? (If this is what you mean - there is a picture there just hard to see )

 

 

 

I wish they would expose some features, especially policy based routing - messing around with json files is silly

[mavhc]

@mavhc just out of interest do you run Unifi kit on your sites or do you just repeat what you read on other websites as your own opinion?

 

Yes, it’s well documented there are firmware issues with the HD’s, it’s looking like 4.0.80 may have finally cracked that, but I run a site with 80 AP’s and 70 switches split over 3 locations, all unifi and I can safely say it’s the best purchase we’ve ever made, install and forget infrastructure at its finest with an unrivalled cost....

 

I was looking at buying them, but that put me off. The fact is they've not fixed the problem in a year, my opinion is that's bad.

[chazzy2501]

I have majority deployed Unifi APs, The technical support is terrible, you'll be using the forums as primary support. Features are promised and never delivered and they'll EOL devices on a whim. They still offer the best value of any networking gear.

 

I also use Meraki sparingly, although it is excellent in all factors it is also impractically expensive. This is why it is strictly installed in areas that demand its features.

[dhicks]

So let´s look at cheaper devices which just work when 30 to 60 or even more clients connect in one single room. Of course there is Ubiquiti with its nanoHD which has quite good reviews.

 

We found it easiest to go with Ubiquiti hardware - it seems capable, and we can buy it at good prices (£150 for the Nano HD, £300 for the swish 2Gbps model) from Amazon, meaning we can purchase a couple of access points every month on the credit card and roll them out throughout the school as needed.

[mavhc]

Anyone used CloudTrax OpenMesh?

[MartinT]

We use Meraki APs (84 of them) and they are pricey for the annual licensing, but you get what you pay for. Being part of Cisco, their quality and support is premium.