Meraki vs Ruckus

[CyberNerd]

How does it block rouge AP's? how does it avoid their interference?

 

Its obviously working quite well for you, just interested to know?

 

Rogue Access Points and Backdoors

The Meru WIPS continuously scans for rogue APs using the same access points that are serving clients. No separate overlay is necessary, as Meru's dual-radio access points can scan on all bands even while serving real time traffic such as voice and video – something not possible with many legacy microcell APs. For simple coexistence with other networks, administrators can white list legitimate APs that are not part of the Meru system. The WIPS also prevents attackers from setting up their own backdoors into a network by detecting and blocking ad-hoc networks.

 

Meru Networks | Security

[Butters]

Arguing over two products doesn't generally help the OP - he's after facts/figures rather than Aruba is better.

 

You've not actually stated why Aruba is better by the way other than saying Ruckus is entry level.

[White_Fi]

Is this not the topic

 

We're thinking of going for one of 3 options with the wifi depending on budget and requirements...

 

•full campus coverage

•public areas only (guest access for cafe etc)

•public areas + mobile laptop cupboards + AP on the back

 

 

therefore surely it is on topic to say that Aruba is the way forward, I do not work for Aruba, I am simply here giving my indepandant advice. I could quite easily sell ruckas but I prefer to give my customers the facts so they can make up there own mind. The truth is that Ruckas and Aruba could both do the solution and so could many other solutions including Meru, Cisco, Netgear etc. But it is my professional opinion that Aruba will give you the best results. I'm Stuart White is going to disagree but he would because he is not independant.

 

My advise would be to speak to an independant specialist because a solution of this type is not cheap no matter who you choose.

 

Not going to Lie, i am a bit of a Ruckus fan boy. This is the product i recommend that we sell here after extensive testing.

 

We tested all the other names as well and this one came out on top.

[White_Fi]

The rouge AP is identified, blocked and if necessary bombarded with dated to render it useless. Not sure how Ruckas deals with it though :-)

 

OK, so containment is a good thing in wireless but allot of implementations of containment is useless as a lot of the time it just sends out shed loads of de-auth packets to legitimate AP's.

It's still not going to bloke the interference.

 

So is University of Lausanne with 8,000 AP's and Harvard University entry level...ermm? Not to mention lighting up the entire east coast of India with Ruckus AP’s

[White_Fi]

I'm not getting into an arguement about it. Ruckas is an entry level management wireless system if compared to Cisco/Aruba and that is fact. I also didnt say it was rubbish because it isnt (I wouldnt sell it if it was)

 

Sorry i just can't see how you think University of Lausanne, Harvard Univeristy, Indian East coast, all BP garages down the westcoast of the US is entry level.

[gshaw]

A guy from Aruba is calling me on Monday (quite good timing for a random sales call for once!) so will have a look at it next week. I do wonder if they'll be able to get down to the Ruckus price level though? Meru I've had demos of, the claims behind the 30 laptops logging on at once at full speed sounds great but the solution was a few £k more than Ruckus \ Meraki so rules that one out tbh.

 

It's a 10 AP max solution we're looking for here, probably a top end of 30 devices on at any one time (and that's being optimistic) so doesn't need to be enterprise level but it does need to just * work *

 

The way I do things here is that if any technology can't be set up so tutors can just turn it on and get going then it's out the door, so whatever wireless system we go for needs instant connection, easy roaming and strong signal throughout so it's a set and forget extension to the current wired network...

[nicholab]

I have an HP system and it has lot of problems. I was over ruled and we ended up spending an extra £20K on this kit I would go with ruckus. Cisco and other providers do a lot of you looking to do business systems with ACL and radius. Ruckus system delivers what I believer is required in education to support 30 laptop per class room so that could be 60 an AP!! The controller of Ruckus is also includes all you need to manage the system with other system you need to have some kind of management system at extra cost.

 

Big question have you got money to pour down the drain?=Yes go for another system.

Ruckus has managed to delivery speeds twice as fast as Cisco in a test by tom's hardware guide.

 

Harrow school has ruckus the end!!!

Edited October 1, 2010 by nicholab

[localzuk]

I'm not getting into an arguement about it. Ruckas is an entry level management wireless system if compared to Cisco/Aruba and that is fact. I also didnt say it was rubbish because it isnt (I wouldnt sell it if it was)

 

Yeah, you'd be wrong there - large municipal schemes, such as those in India, make use of Ruckus. There's no 'entry level' about it.

[White_Fi]

Yeah, you'd be wrong there - large municipal schemes, such as those in India, make use of Ruckus. There's no 'entry level' about it.

 

Thank you. I agree there are not as many deployments out there compared to Cisco and Aruba etc, lets face it you don't get fired for buying Cisco or any other trusted name.

 

But Ruckus is growing wiser and better with age. Watch their space!

 

Cisco and the likes of others have started to realise that to get better wireless they need to start implementing things that Ruckus do. Just a shame for them that 90% of it is protect with patents.

[Soulfish]

To be honest the Cisco wireless system is shockingly poor compared to the rest of the competition. After seeing Ruckus, Xirus, Aruba, Meru etc the Cisco system just doesn't seem great. We settled on Ruckus in the end as it provides everything we want and more, while giving us a decent WiFi connection in 95% of the school. If we wanted to do anything really fancy (and Ruckus can do a hell of a lot anyway) then we'd be looking to do it with our Juniper switches/Juniper Firewall/Smoothwall Proxy.

[cbrasga]

Bottom Line

 

Meraki: Great for Public WiFi (no recurring costs for Public WiFi APs aka "Pro License", cheap 802.11g APs).

Ruckus: Great for enterprise wireless (best in class wireless technology, excellent management, and competitive pricing).

 

Note: If you're curious about Meraki's management interface, you can create an account and login. https://account.meraki.com/login/new_account

Edited October 2, 2010 by cbrasga

[Wes]

The rouge AP is identified, blocked and if necessary bombarded with dated to render it useless. Not sure how Ruckas deals with it though :-)

 

2.4 and 5GHz are unlicensed spectrums (public), you can't just go knocking out other people's wireless. There is no way Aruba does this, it would probably be illegal.

 

I think you need to also look at Aerohive's product. Like Meraki it offers Software as a Service, cloud based management. However unlike Meraki, this is simply a management console and not a 'cloud controller'. APs don't rely on any controllers, they are intelligent and use a set of protocols to create a distributed control plane and local forwarding. All APs come fully featured, out of the box including stateful firewall, RADIUS and WIDS. There's no need to set up VLANs for guest access. Guest traffic can be managed by the APs in the firewall. Also, you won't have the hassel of asking the LA to open up firewall ports for outgoing traffic as the APs use HTTP over port 80 to speak with the cloud based network management.

 

Moreover Aerohive offer hardware appliance and a VMware version of the management platform if you prefer. The APs don't care if they see the management platform or not, it's simply there as a NMS. You could take it away and the WLAN will not be affected. APs in my experience cost no more than any other 802.11n and you don't have the controller outlay, licensing costs or single points of failure associated with controllers.

[localzuk]

2.4 and 5GHz are unlicensed spectrums (public), you can't just go knocking out other people's wireless. There is no way Aruba does this, it would probably be illegal.

 

Sorry but Aruba *does* have this functionality - it was explained to Somerset Network Managers a couple of years back when they demo'd their gear to us.

[Wes]

I'm sorry, but I believe you were misinformed or have misunderstood. Aruba certainly has WIPS built into the AP, as do many other vendors but you cannot 'bombard' other transmitters in the unlicensed, public 2.4 and 5Ghz spectrum, which was my point.

 

Anyway, not the main point of the thread..... don't want to argue.

[localzuk]

I'm sorry, but I believe you were misinformed or have misunderstood. Aruba certainly has WIPS built into the AP, as do many other vendors but you cannot 'bombard' other transmitters in the unlicensed, public 2.4 and 5Ghz spectrum, which was my point.

 

Anyway, not the main point of the thread..... don't want to argue.

 

The capability is there. It was demonstrated to us. They did say that such functionality could only be used against AP's within an organisation (eg. if a teacher brought in their own AP and tried to use that, it could kill it off), and that using it to attack external APs would be potentially illegal.

 

Arguing that it doesn't have that functionality is pointless, I've seen it in action.

[CyberNerd]

but you cannot 'bombard' other transmitters in the unlicensed, public 2.4 and 5Ghz spectrum, which was my point.

 

I can.

[Wes]

yes, maybe you can, but you shouldn't - it's naughty. Anyway, now we're just playing semantics.

[localzuk]

yes, maybe you can, but you shouldn't - it's naughty. Anyway, now we're just playing semantics.

 

Semantics can make all the difference.

[Wes]

I think we've all learned something today

[Dos_Box]

PC Pro review of the Zone Director 1000:

 

Ruckus Wireless ZoneDirector 1000 review | Security appliances | Enterprise | Reviews | PC Pro

[gshaw]

My thoughts as it stands now...

 

- Meraki I think, an unproven (in UK education at least) solution with higher ongoing costs that means we either have to commit for 3 years straight off or risk price rises in future

- Aruba sounds pretty good, waiting on the pricing

- Aerohive was mentioned by the reseller doing the Meraki but they reckon costs more than Meraki so that's out

- Meru, pricey so that's out

- HP, seems to be a solution that's been passed around a bit now and seems more clunky than Ruckus?

 

Ruckus I think has it, the software as a service wireless doesn't really make a lot of sense as it stands as the costs end up as much (if not more) than the hardware solutions! If the APs were like £200 paying over the long term for the controller software might add up but as it stands there seems to be no cost savings associated with the cloud model imo...

 

Ruckus is coming in a shade under 5k for 10 APs, pretty good going for a wireless-N managed solution I'd say

[Domino]

Get in contact with a Ruckus Reseller and get a demo kit maybe?

 

I worked extensively with Net-Ctrl and can heartily recommend them, and IMHO once you've used the Ruckus gear in anger you'll see why so many of us on here are total fanboys. We did access point surveys with bluesocket gear and when we put the ruckus gear in it was simply astounding.

 

and the stability of the gear, well I've never seen the like in a wireless product - all down to the snazzy aerial setup and managed client tracking.

 

But, like I say, the proof is in the pudding - why not try it?

[Wes]

Aerohive will be no more expensive than Ruckus - £425 (in my experience) per AP and no controller to boot. You don't have to have it as SaaS, they do VMware and hardware versions of the HiveManager NMS. Support is the only ongoing cost as it is with any vendor. Moreover there's no licensing required for firewall, WIPS, Voice etc as there are with many controller vendors. They also have a neat feature called Teacherview which allows the teacher to control the clients in their class, turn wireless on and off, check what they're browsing and redirect them to web pages etc. Again, it's included in the price.

Ruckus beamforming is good, but is it really a necessity in schools where you're generally in the same room or next door to the AP. Currently this proprietory beamforming, soon standardised beamforming will become available which uses an entirely different chipset and antennas curently in development.

I understand you can get demo kit from Aerohive, free of charge. Most vendors will do this, you need to try a few and see what fits best.

[gshaw]

Currently this proprietory beamforming, soon standardised beamforming will become available which uses an entirely different chipset and antennas curently in development.

 

But how far in the future is that? I think at the moment we want a proven system that we can see being successful in other educational environments and with Aerohive and Meraki they seem to be in the early adopter stage as far as I can tell?

[Wes]

But how far in the future is that? I think at the moment we want a proven system that we can see being successful in other educational environments and with Aerohive and Meraki they seem to be in the early adopter stage as far as I can tell?

 

Meraki, certainly. There case studies tend to be very focused on guest wireless hotspots. Aerohive is up and running in the UK, the last year has really taken off for them. They have good case studies on their webiste.

Edited October 5, 2010 by Domino