D-Link Wireless ?

[slinkytech]

Hi,

 

My first post, but thought i would jump straight in with the question in which i have been meaning to ask for some time now but just been very busy and have not had time to register. Nice site by the way nice to see someone making use of VB 4

 

I am looking at purchasing a new wireless system for our school, we currently do not have a managed wireless system in place and it is somthing that has been on my list of things to implement for some time now.

 

I have been looking at D-link wireless has anyone got this at there school? if so what are your thoughts on it? does it work or do you have loads of problems i know that the old wireless kit wasn't very good but from what i have heard it is very good and does everything other products also do.

 

I can see Ruckus is quite a popular choice on here, i know that many people are probably going to recommend this instead but what does Ruckus do that D-Link doesn't?

 

What would you be looking for when looking at purchasing a wireless system? what are things that are high on your agenda, and what are the must have features? i.e. what should it do

 

Is there anything i should be looking out for with regards to features? it's going to be site wide and i dont want any problems with logging on etc does that mean i should have an access point in every classroom?

 

We may have classrooms of laptops at some stage, would i need more than 1 access point?

 

any feedback is appriciated

 

Many Thanks,

 

Mark

[MicrosoftTechy]

Ruckus Ruckus Ruckus Ruckus !

[nicholab]

Yes why get any thing else even Cisco make sure you mount on under side of a false ceiling if you have one. Ruckus cost performance is amazing i stuck with an HP and I don't like it!! You need to under stand that Ruckus has a novel concept and this is why it is so good.

[ful56_uk]

we have dlink managed wireless. here. does the job no problems

[witch]

If you do a quick search you will find quite a lot of informed discussion about wireless, and why we choose what we choose.

You need to know things like area coverage and what your walls are made of in order to know how many access points you will need.

[Pete10141748]

If you are going site-wide I'm guessing you'll end up with an access point in most classrooms, a good guideline for laptops is 1 access point to 15 wireless devices, any more devices to a WAP and you're going to see speed drop very quickly. Providing that you don't have walls lined with lead, 1 WAP per classroom + 1 WAP per key area (staffroom, group workroom etc) will probably give you the coverage you need as the signals will "bleed" through the walls giving each classroom at least a couple of WAPs within usable range.

 

If you're connecting up mobile suites of laptops, then it will need to be a managed wireless solution, regardless of what manufacturer you choose, as this *should* automatically balance connections between all available access points in range of devices, ensuring that you don't get 25 laptops on 1 access point and 2 on another in the next room down thus keeping as optimum a connection speed as possible. It also should ensure that WAPs that are in close proximity to each other do not have conflicting wireless channels.

 

Depending on your future plans for the laptops, VLANs might be useful, allowing you to set up seperate wireless networks/SSID's for key stages, year groups, visitors, admin, teachers.....

 

With most access points you'll have the choice of PoE (power over ethernet, WAP only requires 1 network cable for both power and data) or regular 3-pin plug power, the advantage of PoE of course is that you can put the access point anywhere you can run the network cable and not have to worry about getting an electrical socket installed; the downside is that you have to buy a PoE network switch to power the access points (personally, I like PoE as it eliminates the need to get an electrician to run additional power lines/sockets above celing tiles etc and gives me much more freedom to hide the WAPs away with ease).

 

As far as D-Link go, I personally don't like them based on my previous experience, all of their WAPs that I have used/seen act like 'home' WAPs, the ones that were installed here barely coped with having 5 laptops connected to them and several of them died of power-based failures very quickly. That's not to say that their newer stuff is bad, I don't know I've not used it, I've just been put off in the past and haven't seen them be able to contend with the likes of HP or Cisco managed solutions.

[Xirrus]

Good to see there are so many suggestions out there. At Xirrus, we will provide a free full real life site survey and then supply a quote. We then back it up with a 100% coverage guarantee meaning that if more units are required than we say, we will supply them free of charge. We also do free installation, training and configuration. Feel free to get in touch and also check out the new thread we started yesterday as sponsors of this forum.

 

Many Thanks

 

Ben