D-Link Wireless kit, what are your thoughts?

[Kitkatninja]

Hi Guy's/Gal's

 

A question for all of you out there...

 

Has anyone here got experience of D-Link centrally managed wireless solutions? What are your thought on them?

 

We actually recommend 3-Com due to experience, and because they are mid-range. We've used D-Link switches in the past, but found them to be unrealiable/not as managable compared to 3Com & HP; however their wireless kit (apart from the home stuff, which was shocking) we've had no direct experience with.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

-Ken

[synaesthesia]

I can't offer too much other than I've had less issue with some of the Dlink kit than some of the 3com managed setups I've seen on my travels, however I try and have as little to do with them as possible. Like yourself, I find dlinks home kit fairly laughable at the best of times however the wireless stuff I've seen implemented just seems that little bit easier to manager and just as reliable as 3com stuff. The 3com management software is some of the most convoluted guff I've had the misfortune to encounter despite being fully aware it's not exactly meant for non technical folks to go prodding around in, but removing the ability to use your common sense to get your way around and solve an issue doesn't seem like cricket to me.

 

So, that's a "technical chaps laymans view" on it - with luck theres some wireless people on here who are better at it (and more interested!) than myself! (I tend to pick up the phone to our wireless chaps and get them to sort it normally).

 

 

 

Only had 2 major issues with wireless systems so far, 1 3com, 1 dlink. Both were down to physical cabling problems between access points and switches. I do have MANY many many problems with wireless in general, not relating to the manufacturers, the biggest is people turning off the wireless buttons on laptops, the second biggest people firing up 100 wireless laptops on 1 access point simultaneously

[redsnappa]

I know a school that uses dlink kit and there is nothing but problems with signal drop offs etc

[ful56_uk]

We us the dlink kit, in fact we did the case study for them on it. I like it a lot. Very stable and has excellent management features. We have ours running over 2 vlans setup on the switch.

 

Only problem really is when we get a class full of laptops trying to login at once, but if you plan your access point placements should be ok. After we moved some points to the more heavy usedd areas i was fine.

 

On the setup I got some excellent help from dlink tech support. I have a contact a dlink if you need to speak with someone there.

 

Mark

[mhowell]

The common problem for any school is the issue of multiple clients all logging on at the same time

This causes contention over the air, and produces scenarios where classrooms can take forever to log on

Commonly wireless systems in schools use microcell architectures which were originally designed for home solutions of only one cell and a few clients. Expanding these solutions into the "enterprise" and now schools (who really are power users of wireless) - after all how many organisations CEO's tell everyone to log on to the wireless network simultaneously at the same time every day, and then save their work at the same time every day - has created the issues of channel interference and contention issues when lots of devices try to connect simultaneously.

 

There is a solution out there that eliminates contention over the air and enables classrooms of laptops to log on quickly through a single Access point, ensuring successful delivery of learning and content over wireless.

 

There are schools out there actually removing their expansive cabled ICT suites thanks to the power of wireless that works

 

A good start would be to research Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant for enterprise wireless and work from there.