Opinions on hardware options

[Pete_Hook]

Hi,

 

I'm a longtime lurker, but thought I'd ask for opinions on the different brands of WiFi hardware. We have been with Meru/Fortinet for years, but we are coming to EoL in a couple of years on our current setup and wondered what the thoughts are for best coverage vs cost across the range of brands/controllers/APs available? I'm only looking for a basic thumbs up or thumbs down to gauge others experiences with the current options, so I can focus on what to look at or avoid.

 

Thanks in advance.

[localzuk]

We just had Aruba kit installed across our 6 sites under the DfE Connect the Classroom project, and so far the WiFi itself seems to be pretty good. Good coverage, good speeds.

 

The Aruba Central control panel is bad though. It is slow, weird to use and can be buggy (not to mention, its expensive for what it does).

 

Prior to that, we ran Ruckus in 5 sites and Unifi in the last site. Both were stable and easy to manage.

 

If we had been paying for the WiFi ourselves, we would've been installing Unifi.

[Net-Ctrl]

It sounds like you're approaching this at the right time - planning early and assessing the market. There is a similar thread to take a look at if you haven't already that looks at the different generations of Wi-Fi right now that would be relevant to this - https://www.edugeek.net/forums/wireless-networks/236705-how-long-until-you-upgrade-wifi-6-a.html

 

If you're approaching this in a year or two Wi-Fi 7 will be the general approach for any vendor you look at - then it will whether to go for dual radio or tri-radio. Now is a good time to assess the rest of your network to make sure you're ready for that next step. Wi-Fi 7 APs will be power hungry - again regardless of vendor decision.

 

If you have time - it could be worth starting to speak to partners about your preferred solutions to gauge what they're doing, what the roadmap looks like etc. As an idea we're talking to clients now about what they might be doing in the summer of 2025. So use the time you have to review the market and plan accordingly.

 

Most solutions will be able to achieve signal coverage - one of the big challenges right now is density, and planning for future density requirements. Surveys, especially ones that will look at density are a great idea to do.

 

If you consider Ruckus, and need a partner, we'd love to be involved as and when you're ready.

[mrbios]

Unifi is cheap and cheerful, does a job but can bit a bit flaky at times. I've got 51 APs on Unifi at the moment.

 

We previously used Aerohive (Now Extreme Networks) and the APs were good but the renewal price was about as much as a full replacement of new Unifi APs.

 

If money wasn't an issue, i'd go for something more robust than unifi, but if money is tight, unifi does an ok job of things.

[mavhc]

Cambium as a step up from Unifi, free web console, pay more for features about selling wifi access. Or self host with OVA file

[NB9457]

I’d have a look at Juniper Mist, the pricing and feature set is really good.

[Jcx500]

Aruba all the way imo, have 1k access points installed and they run perfect

[Mr.Ben]

We have 34 sites on Unifi, just under 300 APs

 

The choice was made because of budget, and need to be centralised for management efficiency. I would rather have Aruba gear.

 

Unifi does what we need it to. It is so cheap (comparatively) we can justify a life span of 5 years before replacement and hopefully we will be in a better place financially at that point.

 

There is no real L3 functionality (so we do this on our firewalls), which IMO is the biggest weakness.

[RobFuller]

Cambium has been working well for us, certainly a step up from a previous UniFi setup. Free cloud management and 5 year warranty as standard and technical support.

[CrootUK]

Used UniFi for years in primaries, still do but CTC has allowed us to start moving to Meraki.

 

Secondaries are Meraki, understand the licensing isn’t for everyone but it pays off in many ways, thats my recommendation anyway.

[ITGuyNW]

Cambium has been working well for us, certainly a step up from a previous UniFi setup. Free cloud management and 5 year warranty as standard and technical support.

 

Can also vouch for Cambium

[Aprice]

We're mostly an Aruba house, but also work with Ruckus which were also great. We use Unifi on occasion, however try to avoid rolling it out unless it really makes sense for that purpose.

[jnfarmer]

We recently replaced our Aruba kit with Ruckus One and Cloudpath. Love Ruckus and no looking back.

[DWilson1997]

+1 for Meraki - it is a really solid setup

[MatthewL]

We moved from Aruba to Unifi based on cost. Both have pros and cons.

 

License costs were big part of it, Unifi does what we want, about 40 sites several hundred AP's, as found recently if wanting to make changes have to do it 40 times rather than just once but other than that they are solid.

[RezolutionICT]

Cambium Networks all the way. Great connectivity and client roaming. Easy to configure, no licensing costs with cnMaestro Essentials. Support ticket system very good. 5 years warranty.