Wi-Fi Replacement

[mavhc]

I'm not convinced that the Cisco wireless was a good solution. If we are talking about Cisco networking (switches, routers etc..) then i would 100% agree, expensive, but definitely up there as top of the range. But their wireless and VOIP solutions (i believe, but could be wrong, that Cisco purchased their wireless / VOIP platforms rather than built from inhouse) I've always considered average at best (we had all 3 solutions together for the best part of 7 years). Meraki is different beast than their Aironet (it was Aironet that we had), but their licensing model just rubs me up the wrong way.

 

Sorry, i'm hijacking the thread.

 

Just replaced 15 year old Aironet with Cambium, it was pretty good until the hw got so old it was sometimes unreliable. At one site there were APs in use I never even saw in 10 years. They acquired Aironet.

 

Selsius Systems invented the IP phone, and was acquired by Cisco also. Replaced the Call Manager Express system with Freepbx, but still use their phones, auto reflashed to SIP, and they survive being thrown over hedges into the road.

[psydii]

Back in a/b/g times Aruba, Chantry, Cisco (with their early acquisition of Aironet) were the best, Trapeze and Aerohive were competitive in some markets and were among the best in the 'b' days. Meru also had an approach that solved many things that the MCA of these three could not. Once Autocell was either licenced or "freely available" all the big players got really good (and chantry disappeared into Extreme via a very round about route). Over time as the newer standard rolled out the smaller players, despite having some of the talent that defined these standard, simply did not have the deep pockets to compete.

 

The value proposition of each of the remaining vendors (and newer entries like Unifi) was always built around their management tools and support. Over time their secret firmware sauce has been replaced by Atheros / Broadcom silicon, and now it is all about the management tools and support.

 

That said, the next time I do a procurement I am going to do a head to head performance check (if I have the facilities), since I've not seen any real-world demonstration that Wifi 6/6e (and extrapolating the trend, Wifi 7) will actually improve empirically the performance the user experiences.

 

As time goes on Wifi (like Layer 2/3 ethernet before it) is becoming commoditized. They are increasingly all using the same silicon and, while the silicon is crucial, the overall product is what matters. Different customers have different priorities and those priorities drive their decisions.

 

[edit: rewrote last sentence to better express my point.]

Edited February 6, 2023 by psydii

[psydii]

One thing I will note (which is more closely aligned with the OP's question) is that 4x4 AP's in our last bake-off were noticeably better at handling large numbers of clients that had a variety of radios. Those vendors who showed up with APs with only 3x3 or 2x2 saw performance crumple much more quickly in our real-world tests (120 clients over six rooms with 3APs, client mix of netbooks(1x1), ipads (various), cheap laptops(1x1), good laptops(2x2) and a couple of mac books(4x4).

 

Also not all vendors implemented some of the channel management tricks of the standard (e.g. temporarily rolling back 80 to 40 or 20 in the presence of overlapping broadcasters) and instead went with very conservative set of capabilities that had lower cpu requirements (which manifested in lower cost APs), this again we saw a performance difference between hardware that used these capabilities and hardware that did not.

[mavhc]

If you've done comparisons, please publish the results

[Baerf]

Just replaced 15 year old Aironet with Cambium, it was pretty good until the hw got so old it was sometimes unreliable. At one site there were APs in use I never even saw in 10 years. They acquired Aironet.

 

Selsius Systems invented the IP phone, and was acquired by Cisco also. Replaced the Call Manager Express system with Freepbx, but still use their phones, auto reflashed to SIP, and they survive being thrown over hedges into the road.

 

Definitely no doubt that the hardware lasts, i just never believed the price justified the cost (and that includes the support).

We replaced the Cisco VOIP with 3CX which i have been extremely happy with.

[mavhc]

Paying for support is a scam, why would I pay you to fix the bugs in things you sold me, fix them for free or I'll return the whole lot

[psydii]

If you've done comparisons, please publish the results

If you meant me, I've just been looking but I can't find them, it was six years ago. Also the chipsets and firmware and standards have all changed since then. So vendor/configuration performance on current standards cannot be extrapolated. I will (and probably should have) acknowledge that there are significant changed in ax that may make 2x2 as or more performant than 4x4 in previous generations, I would love to test (or see test done) today.