Aruba instant on or Unifi

[nicholab]

Hi people talk to me need to deploy wireless where I work looking at Aruba instant on AP22 or Unifi U6 access points. I think we are limited to wifi 6 as we don't have 2.5G ports on our switches. Note this is a medium-sized business that having IT tidy up.

[timbo343]

Hi people talk to me need to deploy wireless where I work looking at Aruba instant on AP22 or Unifi U6 access points. I think we are limited to wifi 6 as we don't have 2.5G ports on our switches. Note this is a medium-sized business that having IT tidy up.

I was in the same situation when we looked at doing something with our primary school 100 series Aruba IAPs.

 

Both systems have their positives and negatives but devided to stay with Aruba only because it didn't need a controller to manage.

 

The Unifi system has the Voucher system for guest users which is great where as the Aruba IAPs don't have this feature so we got round this by setting up some Guest accounts in AD and the office managers are told to manage the passwords of the accoubts themselves.

 

I guess it boils down to price, features and if you want to have a controller onsite / a controller to manage.

[MatthewL]

Pros and cons with both, have used both, only thing lacking is support with Unifi you are on your own and the cost if one breaks you just replace no warranty swap as such as its usually out its period when it does. Aruba slightly better kit maybe, but you pay for it.

 

Neither to be avoided, weigh up the pros and cons of both.

[mavhc]

Cambium

[FragglePete]

+1 Cambium.

 

Cloud Managed, no on-going license costs. Just works. Not much more expensive than UniFi devices.

 

Pete

[Primus]

Out of interest - how much are you looking at for the current Cambium APs?

[mavhc]

In 2022: XV2-21X Cambium Networks XV2-21X indoor dual radio, WiFi 6 AP. 2x2 GbE EU. 24@ £215.00 ex vat

 

there's no problem buying devices that use 2.5Gb and running them slower for a while I would think

[nicholab]

How do I get my hands on one of each AP?

[FragglePete]

We used Redway networks to put the config together (RADIUS Authentication, etc) - done remotely, and we then put up the APs ourselves around the site.

 

XV2-21X - £190

XE3-4X - £356

XV2-2X - £286

XV2-23T External - £319

 

This was last year (2023) - whoever you engage with first will get preferential pricing from Cambium. As I said, I'd recommend Redway Networks.

 

I'm not running any of the higher end units that are 2.5Gb capable on 2.5Gb just yet - on my plan for Summer to put some switches in place that are capable but we've had no issues with it so far.

 

Pete

[Primus]

Thanks that's really useful, in order I think the Unifi equivalents would be:

 

U6-Pro - £125

U6-Enterprise/U7-Pro - £226/£139

U6-Pro - £125

U6-Mesh-Pro - £159

[Aprice]

I'd take Unifi over Instant ON, however in most cases would go for Aruba Instant over Unifi.

 

Wish Aruba hadn't named the two so similarly, when they are quite different products.

[gszech]

We replaced our Cisco Meraki with unifi few years back. Everything works and I'm happy with the system to the point where we also replaced switches CCTV with Unifi.

[IanDavidson]

I really wouldn't recommend the U7-Pro yet. The Unifi Community forums are full of complaints about stabilty, software issues, and they have internal fans to deal with heat.

The U6 Pro is very stable by comparison and surprisingly capable for the price. If you want to go 6GHz, the U6-Enterprise is a pretty good choice.

Just remember the Unifi auto-channel selection algorithm isn't great and most APs end up sitting in UNII1 - (36 - 44) in the 5GHz band so you may want to look at manual channel planning.

[k-strider]

have you considered Ruckus Unleased https://www.commscope.com/globalassets/digizuite/960644-ruckus-unleashed-portfolio-datasheet.pdf which is probably what i would put in a small primary school

[XiJ]

I liked the looking Aruba Instant ON. It ok a UniFi fan. Tried and tested in all the primary schools I’ve been in. Ideal for small business too.

 

If you don’t have a cloud space / on prem server then consider a cloud key for easy management and running stats / guest system.

 

Downsides are no manufacturer support, only forums and it’s a replace hardware job if faulty. But it’s cheap enough to do so (and I’ve only had to replace old models when I’ve put 48v through 24v AP’s)