DIY Ruckus

[owen1978]

Just had a qoute for a Ruckus system in my primary school, it came to £13k.

Nearly 4k went on installing & configuring.

 

The question im asking how easy would it be to configure it myself?

 

Thanks

 

p.s the qoute recommended that I have 20 ap's, does that sound right for a small primary school

currently we got some cheapo dlinks (about 8) which cover most of the school

[Haptic]

Just had a qoute for a Ruckus system in my primary school, it came to £13k.

Nearly 4k went on installing & configuring.

 

The question im asking how easy would it be to configure it myself?

 

Thanks

 

p.s the qoute recommended that I have 20 ap's, does that sound right for a small primary school

currently we got some cheapo dlinks (about 8) which cover most of the school

 

be sure to give us a shout for a comparison quote bud we have save many a edugeek member plenty of money on Ruckus pricing, pm me your details and Ill work on comparison quote for you straighty away,

[owen1978]

be sure to give us a shout for a comparison quote bud we have save many a edugeek member plenty of money on Ruckus pricing, pm me your details and Ill work on comparison quote for you straighty away,

 

Hi Simon, The qoute is from CP LTD

[Haptic]

Hi Simon, The qoute is from CP LTD

 

oooops lol pm me your full details and i'll look at the quote for you in the morning fella:o

[Edu-IT]

Just had a qoute for a Ruckus system in my primary school, it came to £13k.

Nearly 4k went on installing & configuring.

 

The question im asking how easy would it be to configure it myself?

 

Thanks

 

p.s the qoute recommended that I have 20 ap's, does that sound right for a small primary school

currently we got some cheapo dlinks (about 8) which cover most of the school

20 for a small primary school? We've got 20 in quite a large secondary. Be interesting to see your site plan and where they want to put them.

 

You could do it yourself if you're happy running cabling. With POE it's easier as you don't have to worry about the plug socket side of things near the AP's but then you'll need POE injectors or a new switch. What you save on installation could probably buy a switch and you'll still have money left. The AP's literally screw on the wall and plug in to the network cable and plug socket if necessary. Easy enough to do if you have the time.

 

The ZoneDirector then sits somewhere else and scans and find the AP's then basically it's a case of clicking through the setup and setting it up how you want it.

 

Really easy to do.

[SimpleSi]

I bought Ruckus from Net-Ctrl - they recommended 6 APs and one central ZoneDirector Box .

 

This is for a 1 1/2 form entry school so about 10 classrooms normal Hall etc. running a bank of 20 (Moving up to another bank as soon as I can get them setup) netbooks on a trolley with about 6 special need laptops and usual one each for the teachers

 

Sometimes when I go to the school, I find 1 AP has been switched off - I switch it back on - nobody has noticed any loss with 1 of them out

 

After I updated to latest firmware (V7 APs didn't like talking to my NC10s) - I've never had anyone complain that their wireless didn't work

 

Unless your school has 4ft thick steel lined walls....

 

I use simple Buffalo APs capable of running 15 laptops in my other schools - I only place 1 per classroom and an extra one for the hall.

 

regards

 

Simon

 

PS I installed it all myself (When I say installed - I plugged ZoneDirector into network cabinent and put the APs on top of the teacher PC in the classrooms and 2 hours later I was up and running. )

[SimpleSi]

I actually tried to get Net-Ctrl to come in and do the install but they didn't want to take my money off me and now I know why

 

regards

 

Simon

[Jobos]

I'm fitting a Ruckus system in one of my schools so if your near Leicester you're very welcome to come and see how easy it is.

[dwhyte85]

We are a large secondary based in Berks, we very recently got Ruckus.

 

Ordered through CP LTD as they were nearly 3k cheaper than other quoters & have good technical knowledge - didn't try to sell me the world, just what I asked for, we were struggling as we had a tight budget for this kit and the other 2 quoters were over our budget, very glad I read the edugeek forums for some direction.

 

In terms of technical knowledge the ZD is pretty easy to setup anyway but as time was an issue for us, we had CP set it up... came ready to go out of the box, it's unbelievably easy. I'm struggling on the meshing side at the moment because I haven't RTM but having read elsewhere that's pretty easy to setup.

 

The coverage is very good on the Ruckus AP's, we have over bought on APs deliberately for growth and to account for saturated areas of use - we are supposedly getting more netbooks for years 8,9,10 & 11, it's good to know I can just go to our store area and collect one, tag it and plug it in. We haven't had time to properly fit them at the height we want but two screws and wall plugs and the option for PoE or mains, can't go wrong. I think it's best to overbuy on AP's if you have a large amount of laptops/wireless devices or you're going to buy more. Looking back on it because of how busy it is during 8.30 and 4.00 I would have asked for installation on top of configuration, it's hard for us to find time to put them in and I hate seeing the remaining investment sitting next to us because we can't access rooms.

 

Have to be honest, I hate buying through resellers normally I find them pretty intrusive and steal my time, Simon was very good - communication through e-mail (my favourite) & quick responses - can't fault CP on this order from getting the quote to after sales.

[Tricky_Dicky]

We are a large 3 form Primary school and have 12 access points which nicely cover the entire school.

In terms of equipment we have 60 childrens laptops and 30 staff one's so on PPA day it takes a beating and still works like a charm.

Can you upload a rough layout of your school and we can see how many we think you need.

Rich

[localzuk]

We're a medium sized school (600 kids) and are buying our Ruckus system in parts - we can't afford the full system in one go.

 

Setup is easy (took us 10 minutes from opening box to having it running and installed in the server rack). Access points set up in seconds.

 

We didn't pay for any installation, other than having a cabling company do network cabling to the AP sites. There's no need for an installer IMO. If you're unsure where to put the equipment, you could easily get a ruckus seller to do a site survey, which would tell you optimal mounting positions but that's about as much as I'd say is needed.

 

The install and config costs for other systems made up more than a third of the cost.

[stevenlong1985]

I installed and setup Ruckus wireless myself and did the cabling too ,

 

Ruckus Wireless Set up was the easy, manual work i.e cabling, and drilling holes can be a bit of a nightmare if your an very old school

[featured_spectre]

My school and another school with which I have ties too, has purchased ruckus, and both installs went smooth. My coverage went from 78% with 27 standard APs, to 98% (over an 8 acre site), with 10 APs, and the other school went from having minimal coverage (less than 10%) to complete coverage. If it wasnt for Simon and his prudent technical knowledge, neither school would have bought this.

 

Both our school and the other school recieved quotes from CP and Net-CTRL and both instances, CP was cheaper by a large margin (My case £6000, the other schools case £4000).

 

If you can find a fault with that then there is a problem! CP are amazing when it comes to ruckus!

[featured_spectre]

sysman, would you like to come down to my school to see ruckus in live action? We have over 100 wireless devices connected at any 1 time

[KWestos]

Just had a qoute for a Ruckus system in my primary school, it came to £13k.

Nearly 4k went on installing & configuring.

 

The question im asking how easy would it be to configure it myself?

 

Thanks

 

p.s the qoute recommended that I have 20 ap's, does that sound right for a small primary school

currently we got some cheapo dlinks (about 8) which cover most of the school

 

You could install this yourself in minutes - it's that simple (honestly, we did it a couple of months ago, really easy)

 

With regards to the number of access points, we are a secondary and we have 12 currently in use and that serves around 120 laptops, but could easily accommodate lots more.

 

We purchased ours from CPLTD, no-one could touch them for price, Simon's a good guy which helps a great deal!

 

If you would like any further info, please PM me.

 

Thanks

Edited January 15, 2010 by KWestos

[owen1978]

Cheers for the feedback guys n gals, Net-Ctrl are sending a demo unit so i can do a site survey myself and get an idea of how many i need. If all things go well I plan to roll out Ruckus to 5 other schools.

[john]

As another Ruckus owner I can confirm how easy it is to put up yourself and setup. The guy at Net Ctrl were there when I had a blonde moment when VLAN testing it during my evaluation period and from talking to the school its in they are still over 2 years since purchase loving it

[owen1978]

Net-Ctrl have have looked at the school plans, and that about 6 AP's would cover the school! Great!