Network Upgrade Recommendation for Primary & Secondary School

[Setro]

Hey Everyone,

 

We're looking at upgrading our wireless solution and our switches along with it. We have 50AP's at the moment and we're in the middle of looking at different providers for a new system.

 

Two companies which have currently been recommended to us are Ruckus AP with Aurba switch and Ubiquiti AP and their switchs.

 

I would apprceiate any comments or feedback of other schools as to what has worked and not worked with your current providers. Do you have any support contracts in place or just manage it in house with the AP's?

[chris11256]

We replaced our old Meru system with Aruba IAP-315's in 2019 and they've been solid as a rock. Literally a set and forget system that I rarely have to touch except for firmware updates every few months.

 

We're also going through a switch refresh now replacing very old HP switches with new Aruba CX kit. I can't comment too much on them as most of the order still hasn't arrived.

[Setro]

Thanks for the feedback, if you dont mind me asking what made you go with the Aruba AP & Switch? Are there any support contracts required with Aurba?

[Jcx500]

I would go either go Aruba or Unifi for Wi-Fi.

 

But for switching I would say Aruba.

[Norphy]

I think with switching it depends what you want from it. If all you need is a bunch of bog standard L2 access switches, the Unifi ones are probably adequate. If you need L3 functionality at the edge, you’re probably best at looking at other brands like Aruba, Cisco or Ruckus. As I understand it, L3 functionality is still pretty weak on UBNT stuff so definitely look elsewhere for your core if you need to do routing.

 

You don’t need support contracts with Aruba to use their hardware; once you’ve bought one, that’s it. You get all of the hardware functionality out of the box. What you do have to pay for is if you want to use a service like Aruba Central which is cloud management. You can buy a support contract for the hardware too, which you may or may not want.

[slugshead]

We're currently a Ruckus house, Aruba/Ruckus are both on the cards for the site wide replacement next year. It's going to come down to cost.

 

I'd stay away from Ubiquiti though, they don't give me a good vibe. Especially with their data breach back in January, which they downplayed big time.

[chris11256]

Thanks for the feedback, if you dont mind me asking what made you go with the Aruba AP & Switch? Are there any support contracts required with Aurba?

 

No problem. I'll admit up front we didn't get a quote for Unift kit, the lack of hardware support beyond 1 year put us off. So in both cases(wifi & switching) Aruba were cheaper. For our current Aruba CX 6200 refresh we paid £1720 per switch and for the IAP-315's we paid £230 per AP in 2019.

 

You don't need a support contract unless you want enhanced support(4 hour response and such) as everything comes with a limited lifetime warrenty(5 years from official end of support date I think).

[Guest Guest]

We use Unifi for our WiFi and Dell for Switching and we're very happy with it. We weren't effected by the breach as we run an on prem controller and don't have cloud access enabled, it doesn't have the level of warranty, however, at £70 an access point we have a few spares

[computer_expert]

I've used Aruba switches along with ubiquiti wifi and switches on the same network. The ubiquiti kit was nice when you eventually find a firmware revision that doesn't break something or other, but I'd much rather go Aruba. Once you start trying to do advanced things (like 802.1x port auth) that's where ubiquiti kit starts to show limitations. Like @Norphy mentioned, Ubiquiti kit would probably be OK if you just need a handful of VLANs and a cheap price (so you can keep a few cold spares on the shelf). The Aruba switches are great workhorses in my experience.

 

Like @slugshead, I've lost confidence in ubiquiti due to a lot of reasons (the breach, the force feeding of the somewhat useless new controller UI, the way they yanked unifi video self hosting, the repeated buggy firmware releases over the last 2 years or so, etc). I ripped out my home unifi AP as I got so fed up with it and replaced it with something has a lot less in the way of issues.

[Setro]

L2 and L3 what is that referring to?

[Setro]

Thanks for the info everyone keep them coming, they have been very helpful, I have several meeting booked to to view these products, and I feel abit more prepared now, especially with ubiquiti, holly molly those issues mentioned are big turn off.

[StoneGroup_JackW]

@Setro, in our opinion we would always suggest going for Cambium networks for primaries, due to it being a similar price point and having UK based support on hand should it be needed. For Secondaries, in a small secondary environment Ubiquiti etc is fine, however as mentioned above we would always advise Aruba, or cisco meraki

 

Hope this helps and if you need anything further, feel free to get in touch.

 

Thanks

 

Jack

[slugshead]

cisco meraki

 

 

I bet you do with those license costs

[StoneGroup_JackW]

License costs aren't ideal, however its a really good solution overall!

[XiJ]

We’re replacing a full trust with unifi network kit and WiFi. We use it extensively in edu and business. The only thing that was an issue was the recent Windows DHCP bug firmware in a couple of schools.

 

The hardest thing at the moment is getting hold of the kit. But it’s similar for a lot of IT kit

[Jcx500]

L2 and L3 what is that referring to?

 

Layer 2 (access level )

 

Layer 3 (Core Layer )

 

That’s how I think of it anyway

[mdrabble]

WiFi

I use UniFi for WiFi and have had no issues - partly because I wait a couple of month before applying firmware updates - so managed to avoid some issues.

 

Edge switches

I went for UniFi Edge Switch Max Lite - these are the non cloud based version so I manage these locally but you have installed the unifi controller to manage them centrally.

 

£300ish for a 48 port switch with 10gb fibre isn’t bad.

£750ish for 48 port POE version isn’t bad either.

 

Be aware 24 port versions don’t have SFP+

 

Support for Unifi kit is mainly via the community forms so keep that in mind if you need decent support.

 

Core

We have a DLink DCS-3600-32S which was in when I arrived, so added another one and stacked them - seem ok but interface is old (moans about flash being required)

 

Firmware updates are ok but you would think they would update the interface to remove the flash bits!

 

Both unifi edge switches and dlink switches can be managed by CLi which is easier.

Edited August 6, 2021 by mdrabble

[Davit2005]

L2 and L3 what is that referring to?

 

L2 is the most basic level of switch, L3 is where the switch can do routing (i.e. ip routing between vlans, intervlan routing). Some Cisco,Juniper and Aruba can use more sophisticated routing (i.e. Dynamic OSPF, BGP, etc) as well as stacking to give some L3 redundancy and stacking.

 

Unifi have started doing some layer 3 stuff more now but it does not offer the same feature set yet of the more enterprise aimed solutions from Aruba, Cisco or Juniper. It all depends what you need at the end of the day.

 

I had Unifi WiFi and Aruba switching working at home for ages. Yet the switches I wanted more out of them so swapped out the one Unifi switch I had for an Aruba 2530 and now have a stack of 2930f switches, complete overkill for home but I jus wanted it to practice the more advanced stuff on :-) . I still have some MikroTik switches to give the 10Gb port density for various LAB servers, NAS and video editing desktop.

 

I've seen places which have Unifi as L2 edge switches and Aruba core switches which will help bring the price down. Aruba kit is pretty reliable and whilst you can get Cloud based management there are also switches which can be administered either by the CLI or a web interface on the local switch. I installed 120 Aruba 48 port PoE+, 2530 and 2540 models about 4 years ago in 2 new builds and they have been rock solid. We have 15+ year old ProCurves still in production and swapped out by HP when they go faulty.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Davit2005