Wireless Access Points

[kxv2020]

We are about to buy Wireless Access Points for our laptop trolley's for the Science Faculty and Art & Design Faculty.

 

We are considering Netgear WG102 ProSafe??!!

 

Just wanted to know what other schools are using and any recommendations.

 

Thanks

 

Kiran

[Sylv3r]

We use HP Procurve 420 AP's. And have had no problems at all with them up to now. We have 16 around wall mounted around the school.

[john]

I am just about to organise a loan of some of those pro-safes from Netgear for eval in my place to see how good they are as we have very thick walls that eat wifi signal strength like theres no tomorrow. If its like the older Netgear APs they should be good stuff.

[Ueline]

Ok Cisco are expensive. We have 12 of the Aironet 1200 series and 20 of the older 350 series. Apart from the 1200s being shipped with the wrong firmware they're really reliable.

[indiegirl]

We've got two 3Com Wireless 7760's sat on the side about to be installed into ours. I have absolutely no idea whether they are any good, but they've got to be better than the one Netgear cr@ppy thing that was sat in there before...

[CyberNerd]

3com 8750's but if I were to do the whole site from scratch (we have about 95% coverage) I'd use cheaper 'dumb' access points and a concentrator to do the fancy stuff.

[Nij.UK]

I have just installed Cisco 1150 series access points, and they are very reliable and very easy to configue aswell.... but like Ueline said they can be expensive

[sidewinder]

We have about 55 Cisco 1100's

 

Solid and reliable, signal range isnt outstanding, but there are so many different types of building on this site its to be expected

[plexer]

Procurve 420's for me now as well moving from Buffalo can have multiple SSID's and vlans on the ProCurves.

 

Ben

[meastaugh1]

We are considering Netgear WG102 ProSafe??!!

I've had a relatively good experience with a few of these (WAG302). They seem a good low-budget solution.

 

I'm interested in the Procurves. Can the access points be configured to connect the user to VLAN X depending upon which SSID they connect to?

[plexer]

meastaugh1: I believe yes as each SSID can have different vlans associated with it.

 

Ben

[RMSSupport]

Hi we have just installed an Aruba system (36 APs) to replace the 56 HP 420's we had in place. Even though the 420's are the most solid of all the AP's we have used the inability to control all the channels / bandwidth settings from a central place was a big negative. This new system is fantastic ,worth a look if your looking for a substantial wireless system and seems to be extrememly stable.

[Ric_]

I must concur with RMSSupport here. I have a Bluesocket system (also centrally managed) and it's much easier to maintain.

 

The centrally managed systems obviously aren't as cheap initially but I suspect that they soon pay for themselves. Take for instance an AP firmware upgrade... say 10 mins at each AP and 2 mins walking between APs in a conventional system - 3 or 4 clicks using Bluesocket - time saving approx. 2 hours for 20 APs!

[tarquel]

I'l be using the rather cheap 'n' cheerful.... WRT54GL

 

I've just used one with custom firmware, to link the music room to the main building.... here's the thread regarding it:

 

http://www.linksysinfo.org/portal/forums/showthread.php?t=48482

 

It was pretty easy, though most of its still lost on me.

 

With the custom firmware, the unit supports all sorts - including WDS which has its good and bad points I believe.

 

But for the pretty small cost of these units, I think its a good way to get AP's.

 

Enjoy and feel free to ask me questions on messenger or PM's etc.

 

Nath.

[plexer]

Airwave's AMP software can be used to centrally manage thick and thin access points and they have linked with Aruba to manage both the Aruba centrally manageable access points and others.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Also as an update to this central management issue. The HP Procurve manager plus with an addon which escapes me at the moment can centrally manage a procurve wired and wireless network.

 

Ben

[djm968]

Cisco

[k-strider]

We have some WG102s in our school, along with WAG302s and more recently some WAG102s they all work really well, though my only regret with the WG102 is that they are only B/G and not A/B/G like the other two. Most of our laptops are A/B/G so we get twice the bandwidth of one point... but I can vouch for them being good access points, they are also PoE so if you plan ever to deploy them across the school you can power them from a PoE switch.

They also can use AutoCell so if you buy lots of them they chat to each other and adjust their power output and channel to best cover the area.