Propaganda: Ruckus versus HP access point

[snoerre]

Just found, unfortunately only one slide...

Propaganda.pdf

[Mr_J]

we've been using Rucku without any problems for a while now - but maybe its time to look around.

 

Does anyone know how the licencing works with HP? is it as simple as ruckus?

[AngryTechnician]

If that graph is an accurate representation (and I suspect it isn't), HP must have made some shocking advances with their wireless kit. It used to be awful, as well as expensive.

 

If you import the file into Inkscape or another PDF editor, you can remove the amateur 'red square' redaction at the bottom left and reveal an HP logo underneath, suggesting this is originally from an HP slide deck. Not exactly an unbiased source.

[chazzy2501]

I've been looking into ruckus stuff and they support their claims with an independent review on Toms Hardware which convinces me that the APs are as good as their claims.

 

EDIT: Changed Link

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wi-fi-performance,2985.html

Edited September 25, 2012 by chazzy2501

[SYNACK]

If that graph is an accurate representation (and I suspect it isn't), HP must have made some shocking advances with their wireless kit. It used to be awful, as well as expensive.

 

If you import the file into Inkscape or another PDF editor, you can remove the amateur 'red square' redaction at the bottom left and reveal an HP logo underneath, suggesting this is originally from an HP slide deck. Not exactly an unbiased source.

 

Even if it is an accurate figure this does not take into account signal stability. If the signal strength is showing up lower then the laptop has to boost power burning more battery and the link is more likely to drop in the case of a meat sack wandering into the transmission path. Higher signal strength is likely to mean more resilience and reliability in adverse conditions. Not that I know but from the provided detail none of these things are taken into account.

[Mr_J]

It would take a lot to get me away from Ruckus i must say! They just plug in and work (with a zone director!)

 

We won't be supplying HP over Ruckus any time soon then! (good spot on the slide! @AngryTechnician)

[gshaw]

Have HP sorted out their management console yet? Last time I looked it couldn't do captive portal or guest authentication without an additional box and software (at extra cost of course!)

[apeo]

Honestly our Ruckus stuff is great when it works but when it doesnt.. what a pain..

 

I've been wondering if blanket wifi coverage (like that offered by Extricom), actually works or not but I still dont understand exactly how it works.

[apeman]

Dont do it!!! the HP kit is ***** **** Edited September 25, 2012 by Dos_Box
Profanity

[glennda]

Dont do it!!! the HP kit is ***** ****

 

I agree

Edited September 25, 2012 by Dos_Box

[MicrodigitUK]

Honestly our Ruckus stuff is great when it works but when it doesnt.. what a pain..

 

I've been wondering if blanket wifi coverage (like that offered by Extricom), actually works or not but I still dont understand exactly how it works.

 

Well I can tell you Extricom blankets at my school just didn't work. But my new Ruckus AP's we installed locally on laptop trolleys work 100% of the time. Only got Ruckus because Extricom fails on our site, but don't have the cash to completly replace the Extricom.

 

I'll swap you my Extricom 802.11n kit any day for some more Ruckus kit.

[nicholab]

HP wireless is rubbish I even had the third line support team out!! Ruckus works!

[bossman]

@all:

 

Anyone had a go with these: Meraki Cloud Managed Wireless LAN as a competitor to Aerohive: Campus Wi-Fi for K-12 and Higher Education Institutions | Aerohive Networks

 

With these 2 products it makes the others seem like old news

[glennda]

@all:

 

Anyone had a go with these: Meraki Cloud Managed Wireless LAN as a competitor to Aerohive: Campus Wi-Fi for K-12 and Higher Education Institutions | Aerohive Networks

 

With these 2 products it makes the others seem like old news

 

Not used the Aerohive but as working for a Meraki Reseller I have to say its brilliant! Although if you are in a school within an LEA it could be trickey to implement without getting the LEA to allow ports outbound (which I can't remember off the top of my head somewhere between 7-8000 i think).

 

You can also have Switching, firewalls and mobile devices all configured from one management portal in the cloud. I will however say that what it does tie you into is a yearly fee for the cloud manager as well as upfront costs for the Access points/firewalls/switches.

 

 

EDIT: Meraki also have a Android/Windows app for checking wireless strength around the place which is free (so is the IOS/Android manager).

But they if you are used to paying for support from ruckus/aerohive/hp etc its similar in cost to that.

 

We love it for clients with multiple offices across uk - a member of staff can turn up at another site and there wireless just works. It is also the same for if somebody plugged an access point in at home etc (you can setup so that is bridges a VPN from Access point to network I think)

Edited September 25, 2012 by glennda

[SuperfluousAdjective]

Honestly our Ruckus stuff is great when it works but when it doesnt.. what a pain..

 

I've been wondering if blanket wifi coverage (like that offered by Extricom), actually works or not but I still dont understand exactly how it works.

 

We have Extricom and it has been the bane of our existence. It doesn't work well and was incredibly expensive. We could have had all new Cisco 3602i access points installed with Clean Air licenses for half the cost of a comparable Extricom install. In our case we needed two 16 port "switches" or "controllers" @ $7,000 USD each and the software to make them work as a single channel cohesive unit was an extra $10,000 USD. Even if we didn't use all the ports, we were still out an incredible amount of money for wasted space. That's $24,000 USD for 32 ports before even getting to any access points. Even with an education discount it was incredibly expensive. And then the access points (or radios) were ~$900 each on top of the controller costs. And this did not include a license for "True ReUse" which severely limits the device density that can be utilized. Maintenance/license costs just to call for support and no additional licenses was twice as expensive as a cloud controller based solution including the annual cloud controller fees. Not to mention the fact that it just doesn't work very well. When using a dense assortment of devices the system fails and drops connections. We have had issues of access points dropping out and not communicating with the controller. Link lights not working on the controller randomly making trouble shooting difficult. Firmware was supposed to fix, but the web gui still shows activity on all ports, even when no access point is plugged in. If an AP goes down, the GUI doesn't really show it at a glance either.

 

Their claim that they are "not impacted by co-channel interference" is obviously as flatly false on the face as it is in practice.

 

The concept of Extricom is that the switch/controller is essentially a combination of the access point and the controller. The "access points" are not traditional access points. They are "dummy" devices that act as remote radios for the controller. They are essentially radio extensions of the controller and connectivity is fully managed by the controller. All access points are configured to run on the same channel and all "access points" or radio points are simply extensions of the controller. So if you have a mobile VOIP device and you connect to the wireless the idea is that you can walk around your building (assuming you spend $10,000 USD for the cascading software between controllers) and your wireless device doesn't know it is communicating with a new access point. The client never has to re-authenticate with a new AP or change channels. So in theory, if the controller does its job right, you don't lose a packet and you have seamless roaming. This is their "channel blanket."

 

The downside is that wireless is essentially a hub network. Only one device within range of other devices can communicate (send OR receive) at the same time. If two transmissions are received simultaneously the frame will be not be accurate and is discarded for retranmission. The wireless protocols have functionality built in so that when devices pick up a transmission it will wait to try to send, but it is far from perfect and becomes a major factor in any wireless deployment. Collisions or "co-channel interference" becomes more prominent in a single channel architecture if left unmitigated. If you have two classrooms of kids within range of each other using the wireless they will all be on the same channel creating more interference. This is a major problem for single-channel architectures so they come up with ways to reduce the interference. Extricom has "True ReUse" which if I understand it correctly simply tries to time the radios on their access points so that they are broadcasting without stepping on each other. I don't believe it does any client side tricks (you'd have to read their whitepapers if they have any). Most of your traffic is downstream traffic from the radios, so if you can time the transmissions between your radios that are in range of each other so that they won't step on each other you can improve your throughput and decrease your collisions. If you run out of capacity on the channel you have to buy a whole new round of access points/controllers and make a whole new wireless system on a different channel.

 

If you're looking at a single channel system I would seriously consider Meru over Extricom. They have a more complete product and they are a much larger company. I've called Extricom USA 3 times over 3 days and each time the same receptionist picked up and fowarded me to a phone that rang to voice mail (during normal business hours for the time zone). I left voice mails, but never received a call back. I also left two emails on the contact form of their website of which they never responded to. The fourth call I was transferred to someone who didn't even have the courtesy of putting me on hold while he finished up a personal conversation on his cell phone for the next few minutes, but at least he spoke with me, eventually. The organization seems to be a complete cluster. Years later they still seem to be stuck in "startup" mode.

Edited September 25, 2012 by SuperfluousAdjective

[SuperfluousAdjective]

@all:

 

Anyone had a go with these: Meraki Cloud Managed Wireless LAN as a competitor to Aerohive: Campus Wi-Fi for K-12 and Higher Education Institutions | Aerohive Networks

 

With these 2 products it makes the others seem like old news

 

We have used Meraki with positive results. They are very popular in our area due to their discounts and everyone we have spoken to about their installation has been extremely satisfied. We have talked to people who yanked out vendors like Cisco and replaced with Meraki because they didn't like the nickel and diming/costs associated with controllers and licensing. Meraki is up front with their costs, offer exceptional education discounts and their controller is very intuitive and powerful.

 

The product is not stagnant at all. The cloud controller is updated frequently. They have been pushing out their mobile device management which we find to be very useful. They also have good BYOD support which is a growing trend.

 

I have to admit though having an internal or VM controller like what Aerohive offers is very appetizing.

[mhowell]

For the record Meru now offer VM based controllers as well as physical controllers

We've successfully deployed many of these over the summer within the UK which makes for a more cost effective solution than our hardware based controllers

MAny thanks

Mark

[AngryTechnician]

Anyone had a go with these: Meraki Cloud Managed Wireless LAN

 

I trialled Meraki vs. Ruckus for our deployment. I was impressed with both, but we eventually went with Ruckus, for a few reasons:

 

1. Our own on-site testing indicated Ruckus had a small but significant edge over Meraki in throughput and range.

 

2. Ruckus has higher capital costs but lower annual costs, while Meraki is the reverse. With the quotes we got they actually worked out to be similar in price over 3-5 years (Meraki being slightly cheaper), but finance preferred to pay more upfront. There was also some nervousness over the fact that if you stop paying your annual Meraki costs the APs become useless, whereas if you stop paying your annual Ruckus you just lose the support. It's not something we're considering doing, but it was a contributing factor.

 

3. We don't have a leased line (can't afford it) and our VDSL line does go down every so often. I wasn't too happy with the prospect of reduced functionality on Meraki when you lose connectivity to the cloud controller.

 

4. Ruckus has a wider range of APs and hardware features. For example, most of the Ruckus APs have additional ethernet access ports on the back, whereas only the cheapest and least capable of the Meraki APs has one. This was important in a few locations where I had to 'steal' an existing ethernet cable from a machine where it would have been cost prohibitive to run new cabling (even though that's my preferred option). We also have a few of the tiny ZoneFlex 7025 APs which I love for the fact you can fit them into a single-gang wall socket.

 

That said, I did then select and Meraki for a smaller install at a different institution. The difference was that the other site has very little on-site equipment (not even a single comms rack!), has no on-site IT support, and is almost entirely BYOD. For this sort of deployment I think Meraki is better than Ruckus, because the self-service logon portal is better and the client monitoring you get through the cloud controller is superior to Ruckus. Meraki also has some set-and-forget firewalling built in; for example, in one click you can block almost all common P2P protocols, which is a lifesaver when you are trying to get a bunch of university students to share a single VDSL line.

 

Final thought: I'd definitely take either of them over HP.

Edited September 26, 2012 by AngryTechnician

[apeo]

@MicrodigitUK and @SuperfluousAdjective: Very interesting, and thanks for the explanation on how it works. Haven't read up on how single channel/blanket WLAN works yet so was slightly confused as to how it works or suppose to work.

[Oaktech]

propaganda.pdf...

 

Seems legit.

[gshaw]

2. Ruckus has higher capital costs but lower annual costs, while Meraki is the reverse. With the quotes we got they actually worked out to be similar in price over 3-5 years (Meraki being slightly cheaper), but finance preferred to pay more upfront. There was also some nervousness over the fact that if you stop paying your annual Meraki costs the APs become useless, whereas if you stop paying your annual Ruckus you just lose the support. It's not something we're considering doing, but it was a contributing factor.

 

^^^ this

 

I had Meraki on test as well at one point, found the management interface very nice but without a reliable crystal ball it's hard to know that a) the budget will always be there to pay for the ongoing cloud controller costs and b) the company will still be there and supporting that particular product at the same price in 3-5 years (less likely than point a but still possible, at which point you end up with a bunch of lovely white paperweights)

 

In the end we went with Ruckus. Also considered AeroHive but their cloud management \ support has the same caveats as Meraki and buying the VM appliance was the same cost as a Ruckus ZD. That, coupled with the fact AeroHive's APs were a fair bit more pricey than Ruckus sealed the deal.

Edited September 26, 2012 by gshaw

[browolf]

HP must have made some shocking advances with their wireless kit. It used to be awful, as well as expensive.

 

That's probably what they got from buying 3com; better tech.

[old_n07]

Also considered AeroHive but their cloud management \ support has the same caveats as Meraki and buying the VM appliance was the same cost as a Ruckus ZD. That, coupled with the fact AeroHive's APs were a fair bit more pricey than Ruckus sealed the deal.

 

We didn't find that the Aerohive was dearer per AP in fact it was the other way round from the quotes we recieved (with Ruckus being considerably more expensive) when comparing similar spec AP's so we wen't the Aerohive route with the VM controller, ditching the HP wireless solution we were using.

[old_n07]

Here are the antenna arrays for comparison from a Meraki, Aerohive and HP MSM ap in case anyone is interested. The Meraki and Aerohive use similar antennas.

 

Aerohive AP330

 

 

 

 

Meraki MR24

 

 

 

HP MSM460

 

 

[snoerre]

That's probably what they got from buying 3com; better tech.

 

Well, all H3C based wireless equipment won´t be sold any longer within Rest Of World, only within asian countries, starting with year 2012, if I remember correctly. Only those of us who already bought H3C equipment will be able to buy some additional access points (I think it was H3C 2620E?).

 

So basically all Colubris based MSM series will be the future. HP makes a lot of advertisement for the next big firmware release 6.0

Edited September 26, 2012 by snoerre