Wireless, Trapeze, Ruckus or something else?

[doofusdog]

We're in the final stages of picking a new wireless system. We have good prices for Trapeze and Ruckus. I'm tending toward Ruckus as it's both slightly cheaper and has more features out-of-the-box.. Trapeze makes you pay for various extra features..

 

Anyone have an opinion on this? Or experience with either?

 

ta

Craig

[nicholab]

Ruckus should work better out of the box and the management interface is a lot better out of the box.

[EduTech]

I have never looked at the other product, but Ruckus will tick all the boxes for an education environment as you say it's cheap and does a hell of a load of stuff out of the box!

 

Ruckus FTW!

 

James.

[localzuk]

Using Ruckus here. As yet to have any issues with it. Have it doing a couple of wireless meshes too, due to new build work.

 

Took me about 10 minutes from receiving the parcels to having the controller set up and mounted in a rack. Setting up APs is then a synch, as they auto connect to the controller and configure themselves accordingly.

 

You can have a fully installed wireless system within a day really.

[earlyriser]

Hi Craig. Maybe talk to Alistair Montgomery at St Hilda's? I can't remember whether they use Ruckus or Trapeze, it's one of them anyway. We use Ubiquiti gear, but it's not controller based (individual AP's) and it works really well, but it certainly isn't pervasive wireless by any means. We will be looking to upgrade to a controller based system next year, to support a classroom laptop program, and will be looking at Ruckus, Trapeze or Xirrus, so maybe you could post on how you get on, whichever you choose? John Driver

[doofusdog]

Yeah they're using Trapeze, I went and had a chat to him about lots of things.. We went with Ruckus and it's installed here now. I am very happy with it. We have got 12 AP's installed so far.. And about another 12 to go. Looking at the map on the controller we have 51 clients on right now.. We have had up to 75 so far. I did a pop my head in "How's the Wireless?" survey last period.. Everyone said, great, amazing or yup it works.. Nobody had had any dropouts, etc.

 

You're welcome to come and have a look and play with it anytime.

 

Craig

 

 

Hi Craig. Maybe talk to Alistair Montgomery at St Hilda's? I can't remember whether they use Ruckus or Trapeze, it's one of them anyway. We use Ubiquiti gear, but it's not controller based (individual AP's) and it works really well, but it certainly isn't pervasive wireless by any means. We will be looking to upgrade to a controller based system next year, to support a classroom laptop program, and will be looking at Ruckus, Trapeze or Xirrus, so maybe you could post on how you get on, whichever you choose? John Driver

[earlyriser]

Hey Craig, what is the rough cost of Ruckus and Trapeze gear? i.e Controllers and AP's?

[Brpilot99]

Ive got both and for me the Ruckus user interface is far superior to the trapeze one .....

[steve_nfi]

What about Cisco. We have a Cisco wireless system here and its really good. The AP's seem to have a greater span than others.

Easy to use Web interface for the controller and not as expensive as you'd think.

[Haptic]

Trapeze has many various applications of Wi-Fi delivery, notably a good range of electronic tags (they can measure temperature, location etc) very interesting tech for many different sectors including hotels and hospitals. I think Edu-wise Ruckus is still Top Dog (excuse the pun) due to the promotions and relative low cost for solutions that pretty much match their higher priced Cisco equivalents pound-for-pound.

 

Joe

[Soulfish]

Cisco's wireless kit has been getting really bad press of late and it has, according to quite a few reports on here, failed to provide anything like the level of service that you would see from Ruckus, Xirrus, Meru etc. In fact, Cisco was stripped out of a very high profile BSF school in Bristol earlier this year for failing spectacularly to provide a usable level of service. I's steer well clear of Cisco wireless atm.

 

+1. At the end of the day Wireless isn't a big thing for Cisco. They offer it more because they have to. I don't believe it's a bad system, but I don't think it has the capabilities of the dedicated enterprise wireless vendors out there.

[doofusdog]

we went with ruckus and it's going great..

 

i think i underestimated the range they provide and may have bought too many ap's. but we were well under our initial budget and will be able to extend the wireless into a few areas we hadn't planned on initially..

 

ruckus = great (so far!)

 

but keep on chatting about wireless, its interesting to hear

Craig

[drevil]

Cisco's wireless kit has been getting really bad press of late and it has, according to quite a few reports on here, failed to provide anything like the level of service that you would see from Ruckus, Xirrus, Meru etc. In fact, Cisco was stripped out of a very high profile BSF school in Bristol earlier this year for failing spectacularly to provide a usable level of service. I's steer well clear of Cisco wireless atm.

 

A poorly designed and implemented network will always be that regardless of what the brand is. Leicester BSF has wireless problems. The one thing in common between these schools and the one in Bristol is Northgate. There are many other Cisco wireless networks around that don't have problems.

 

Draw your own conclusions .....

[localzuk]

A poorly designed and implemented network will always be that regardless of what the brand is. Leicester BSF has wireless problems. The one thing in common between these schools and the one in Bristol is Northgate. There are many other Cisco wireless networks around that don't have problems.

 

Draw your own conclusions .....

 

Indeed. Lancaster University was a Cisco wireless place last time I was there. Might've changed since, but as far as I know it was working well but then, the planning time that went into that install was pretty large!