aarono Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 We have been looking into a new managed wireless system for our school. We currently have about 15 access points dotted around the school in staff areas for staff use only. The access points are not controlled by a central controller and are setup individually which makes it hard to manage and a possible security risk. The idea is to replicate what we currently have and replace all our APs with a centrally managed system but with scope to increase more APs for future proofing. We have quotes for Extricom, Netgear, BlueSocket and Ruckus. Does anyone have any experience with these systems. I know Ruckus is popular on this forum and my gut feeling is they are who we will go with but would like to hear anyones views before we take the plunge! Cheers
paulfinlay Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 just to throw another name in the hat, check out http://www.aerohive.com
TheScarfedOne Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 +1 for Ruckus here. Superb kit and support from the NetCTRL guys is great (no im not a supplier)... 2
LukeC64 Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 Another on is Aruba. Problem with Aruba its not cheap, we use Aruba and love it but its not the cheapest thing in the world.
pantscat Posted June 9, 2011 Posted June 9, 2011 When I was narrowing down my wireless investigations it was between Ruckus and Aruba and Aruba seemed very keen to match the Ruckus pricing... Still went with the Ruckus solution in the end though.
nicko17 Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 Aerohive is a great fit for this type of deployment as its feature ritch like Aruba, but has no controllers so you can just add AP's and dont have controller costs. Its the same concept as a switch, router or the internet, with centralised management and fully distributed control between the AP's its fantastic. I love it and many other schools I know who have it say the same, great feature called teacherview as well which may be of interest, I would highly recommend it! Oh and they also do a great free evaluation process, check out Aerohive Networks, the leader in cloud-enabled networking
aarono Posted June 10, 2011 Author Posted June 10, 2011 Out of interest, why? Hello Dragon, who are you addressing here sorry?
julyan1 Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 We use Enterasys and their HiPath solution which is formerly Siemens.
pantscat Posted June 14, 2011 Posted June 14, 2011 Sorry, @pantscat The Ruckus solution, in our tests at our site, had better coverage and throughput. It also was much quicker to get up and running with no prior knowledge. Aruba had some nice features (the VPN AP for teleworkers) - but to be honest we wouldn't have used them.
youritworks Posted September 8, 2011 Posted September 8, 2011 Hi, I have been working with the Extricom solution for around the last 6 years, installed many sites and was one of the first in the UK to become certified to install the product range. This solution is by far the best solution on the Market today and will be for some time. Generally once installed the system just works. Happy to give some advice if still required.
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