WIFI Recommendations

[Roberto]

2) The AP505 only £500 if you buy them one at a time from retail. You're unlikely to do for a big wifi deployment. Instead, you'll go to your favourite Aruba vendor and say "I have a big wifi deployment coming up, what can you and Aruba do for me?". They'll come back to you with a price far below list, especially if you're a school. If you're buying lots of them for a large deployment, they're nothing like £500. Probably closer to £200 an AP. I don't like that pricing model any more than you do but it's the reality that we live in and that's what we've got to work with.

 

If they don't start putting actual prices online they're going to lose customers

 

It's very common in enterprise software and hardware. For the last big refresh I led for a college, the only thing the list price and the price we paid per AP had in common was the £ sign at the front of the quote.

 

For a job I'm currently working on, we're several months into negotiations with suppliers and I don't think we've even talked about costs yet. On another project, cost of the software and hardware were very much a movable feast depending on what other services we purchased from the vendor. As @Norphy says above, you don't have to like it, but it's way things are. If you accept that you can start to use it the way I do now where I work, as just one more lever to pull when negotiating what my employer wants out of a deal.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Roberto

[snoerre]

As said before the more you buy the higher is the discount you get from the big vendors. For Aruba AP-* access points we currently get over 64% off price list from HPE with a volume over 2 millions €.

[mavhc]

So what's a good price for each unpriced AP model? What did people pay for which? Let's crowd source not getting overcharged

[wintech1]

We are looking at a similar project in our MAT. What's people experience/opinions on Meraki AP's? We had the usual sales pitch with some nice discounts but not sure how Meraki compares to others.

 

We have UniFi AP's in some places but not impressed with Ubiquiti making them EOL.

[mavhc]

Aruba Instant: so looking at £30/year/device for aruba central, and £350/AP505, which over 10 years makes it £600/AP again, that's including a 40% discount

[Primus]

We are looking at a similar project in our MAT. What's people experience/opinions on Meraki AP's? We had the usual sales pitch with some nice discounts but not sure how Meraki compares to others.

 

We have UniFi AP's in some places but not impressed with Ubiquiti making them EOL.

 

The issue with Meraki is the licencing is expensive and, unless they've changed it since the last time we looked, your Meraki equipment stops working completely 30 days after your licence expires if you don't renew it.

 

Which Unifi APs have you been annoyed with going EOL? All manufacturers will mark equipment EOL after a certain amount of time.

[mavhc]

But how long is that time, and do they tell you in advance? I'd expect 10 years of support from first date of sale, and 5 years from last date of sale

[psydii]

Aruba Instant: so looking at £30/year/device for aruba central, and £350/AP505, which over 10 years makes it £600/AP again, that's including a 40% discount

 

FWIF IAPs work just fine without Central or Airwave.

[mavhc]

FWIF IAPs work just fine without Central or Airwave.

 

But I suspect without fancy central management you might as well just buy Aruba Instant On for half the price

[psydii]

But I suspect without fancy central management you might as well just buy Aruba Instant On for half the price

 

No idea if they are comparable feature/management wise, but I refer back to the limitation 25 APs in AIO vs 125+ for an IAP cluster.

[Primus]

But how long is that time, and do they tell you in advance? I'd expect 10 years of support from first date of sale, and 5 years from last date of sale

 

Your expectations are way too high for the price you're paying for Unifi equipment. However you get a minimum of 1 year notice a product is going EoL and it seems to be a minimum of 5 years support from launch but for some products has been longer I think.

[Wave9_Lee]

The issue with Meraki is the licencing is expensive and, unless they've changed it since the last time we looked, your Meraki equipment stops working completely 30 days after your licence expires if you don't renew it.

 

Which Unifi APs have you been annoyed with going EOL? All manufacturers will mark equipment EOL after a certain amount of time.

 

The more 'enterprise' manufacturers will have long and well documented EOL/EOS plans. With ref to Meraki, standard offer for Education is a 10 year licence at a heavy discount, so you get all updates, dashboard etc, new features and hardware replacement even if the AP dies in year 10. I think 10 years is a decent enough life, protocols and technologies will change by then too. So average cost for MR36 AP and 10 year licence would be around £410-420, so £42 a year. We can supply these as an annual charge model if you are struggling with capital budgets.

[MartinT]

On Meraki, I always found the functionality good but the licencing is expensive, as has been reported, and upgrading to later standards by replacing APs is expensive, too.

 

Ruckus are possibly even better performance-wise, the controller is good if less well laid out than Meraki, the licences are less expensive.

 

If you're installing a new wi-fi system, don't look at anything that doesn't handle Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax). You'll be building in rapid obsolescence.