Netgear WFS709TP & Full solution - worth £3.5k? Quotes?

[rocknrollstar]

Hi, we are looking to upgrade our existing wireless network, which is currently multiple separate neatgear/hp pro curve APs (unmanaged).

 

We have been given a quote for the following

NETGEAR WFS709TP - FULL FEATURED SMART WIRELESS CONTROLLER

15 x NETGEAR WAGL102 - DUAL BAND PROSAFE WIRELESS ACCESS POINT

NETGEAR PROSAFE GS724TP-100EUS 24 PORT MANAGED GIGABIT SWITCH

INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION OF WIRELESS NETWORK

 

All for £3,500 installed and configured.

 

I had a chat with someone who said that she knew of several schools who had serious issues with this system/setup, so far as to say they are ripping it out and going with something else.

 

Can anyone offer any experiences/thoughts? We are a 250 intake Junior, with a large, spread out building.

 

Thanks.

[steveg]

I've got that same controller in one of my schools, and they have recently started using 30 netbooks in 1 class, with 2 access points in there, and it works perfectly, it also controls another 6 access points around the school.

 

Its not the simplest wireless controller in the world to setup, but if your having it installed this shouldn't be much of an issue.

 

It might be worth looking into the ruckus kit, as everyone on here seems to rate it pretty highly - I will certainly trial it at the next school that needs a wireless solution.

 

Steve

[Dos_Box]

2 Access points for 30 clients! Ruckus base units handle 100 clients!

[mac_shinobi]

2 Access points for 30 clients! Ruckus base units handle 100 clients!

 

I was just about to suggest Ruckus then saw your comment , am sure Simon @ CPLTD will be along at some point and can give you a quote on the ruckus stuff and may even be able to sort out a trial or something *shrugs*

[rocknrollstar]

Thanks, I'll contact Simon. Around our neck of the woods, a lot of people use Meru or Aruba, in Primary anyway. But happy to buck the trend if the price it right

[accura2000]

I use the same unit with a full bank of 16 access points. Works perfectly, I will add that i got the main unit for about 1100 quid and the access points are roughly 80 each. If you look around enough Netgear often give 2 access points away with thte units as well.

 

Took me longer to plug the access points into it than configrure it, i found it very simple and Netgear have very good customer support.

 

All that comes in at £2500 if you do your own cabling! if not add an extra 500 quid ish i would have thought, no power is needed for the access points as the whole lot is POE so your laughing really!

[Haptic]

Thanks, I'll contact Simon. Around our neck of the woods, a lot of people use Meru or Aruba, in Primary anyway. But happy to buck the trend if the price it right

 

Got your email fella Will get a quote over to you shortly

[rocknrollstar]

I use the same unit with a full bank of 16 access points. Works perfectly, I will add that i got the main unit for about 1100 quid and the access points are roughly 80 each. If you look around enough Netgear often give 2 access points away with thte units as well.

Thanks for this. Can I ask how many laptops you end up using, and do you have 30+ laptops logging in/using wireless almost simultaneously in the same classroom/area of the school?

[MicrodigitUK]

Got 1 * NETGEAR WAGL102 Access point going cheep if u decide to go with the Netgear system.

 

I only got it to test to see if I could get it to work with my Aruba controller. But unfortunately I couldn’t get it to provision because the ArubaOS database doesn’t know what a WAGL102 is. So they only seem to work with the OEM (ArubaOS 2.5) on the Netgear controller.

[Ste_Harve]

We're running a Netgear controller and WG102 flashed to WGL102, only did this as it was cheaper to buy WG102 than WGL102, dont know why though!!

 

We've got about 100 student laptops and 40 staff laptops that use it daily and dont seem to have any problems with it. I've not really configured and advanced settings on it but will do in the future. We've found it to be reliable and quick. We're adding 30 netbooks in the english department which will be shared across 2 access points but these will only be used for moodle access and internet.

 

Ste

[rocknrollstar]

Thanks for your replies. Meru systems look good, but too expensive, Aruba just too expensive. Speaking to Simon and Aggy about getting a Ruckus system installed- looking like the clear favourites :0

[m25man]

Has anybody else here looked at the Zyxel Hybrid kit or the Zyxel Blanket system?

 

I got my hands on a couple of the a/b/g Hybrids to play with and was very impressed with the simplicity of the whole system and the low capital outlay makes it a very cost effective solution for the smaller sites.

No controller needed, one AP can be configured as a system controller (you can even have a second one as a backup controller) whilst it also acts as an AP.

 

The units are all POE (802.11af) compliant, supports all of the essential features even has a built in Radius Server option.

 

At under £200 per point including the POE Midspan, you get a lot of wireless for very little money!

For less than £1000 you can easily build a 5 point fully managed system.

 

I sold on my first pair of NWA-3160's and now I'm playing with the 3166 N Hybrids.

There are dual active radio models and a bucket load of accessories available.

I now have a Hybrid N system with 3 AP's at home Tripleplay services everywhere with full HD streaming to two TV's at the same time, a wii, 2 iphones and a BB Storm, two laptops and two netbooks, an HP Mediacentre wifi PC and a Panasonic wifi CCTV camera.

A business SSID a home SSID and a Voip lan for the Snom Sip phones, I even set up a guest ssid with a captive portal!

 

But can it serve 30 laptops at the same time?

Obviously I don't have 30 laptops to test it with, but it certainly seems to handle everything that I can throw at it so far!

 

Clearly with the amount of Ruckus kit that is raved about on this forum, Ruckus has to be considered, but it's still not that cheap!

 

If you have a smaller requirement but need something thats easy to manage and is easy to scale up, I would at least have a look at the Zyxel hybrids.

I think they are well worth considering at the budget end of the managed wifi market.

 

The blanket system appears to be a badged Extricom clone but with stacking.

Pricing looks to be cheaper than the Extricom as well but a couple of features missing although Zyxel seem to have added some features of their own.

[Guest Guest]

2 Access points for 30 clients! Ruckus base units handle 100 clients!

 

How does a 802.11g AP handle so many clients? Or is that 100 a theoretical number?

[Ric_]

How does a 802.11g AP handle so many clients? Or is that 100 a theoretical number?

 

Clever antenna-arrays that do magical switching things. For a slightly more in-depth answer you may want to speak with Net-Ctrl.

[Haptic]

Or you can give us a call @ CP as we are a Ruckus Big Dog Partner and our pricing is unbeatable:p Edited September 24, 2009 by Haptic

[White_Fi]

The 100 maximum is based upon algorithm.

Each ap holds 100keys, tkip uses 4 keys per client and aes uses 1key thus 100 limit.

 

With 802.11g bandwidth is an issue if you try to get 100clients connect to one ap

the ap is more than able to handle this client number but of course you are stuffed for bandwidth. If it is a dense deployment u are looking for I highly recommend the dual band aps.

 

Sorry for spelling and grammar using the iPhone.

 

Remember net-ctrl will are a solutions company. No box shifting simple great project managment and support.

 

Regards

Stuart

senior wireless engineer

[Guest Guest]

^ Cheers or that. I thought as much but you never know, they could have had some magic jiggery pockery going on.