Investigating Managed Wireless - any advice?

[dgsmith]

We've had a long-term aspiration to get managed wireless and we're at the stage where it may be realistic, pending securing of funding. Currently we just have standard resistantial-type access points dotted around the place, some close together that cause overlaps (despite our best efforts configuring appropriate channels) and some that drop frequently.

 

I imagine we'll have to put a case forward and wondered how others who have previously been in a similar position have gone about this?

 

Also when actually setting up the network, have you found you don't need as many APs and/or that reliability has vastly improved?

 

We have approx 20 APs at the moment but hope we could reduce that by at least 25%, however our knowledge of how managed wireless works or indeed how many clients each can handle/coverage is fairly limited.

[paulfinlay]

In modern networks, wireless is no longer just about coverage. Of course coverage is important but you must also consider capacity. Think about what you need the wireless network to do. How many users does it need to support in each location? what will those users be doing? bandwidth requirements? Do you need site wide seamless coverage and roaming.

 

The latest 802.11n access points will provide up to 450Mbps per radio, but will your client population support this? The majority of mobile devices are only capable of 65Mbps.

 

Investigate the technology - Cisco, Aruba, Aerohive, Rukus, Juniper, Meru, Unifi - most vendors will be happy to give you some demo kit.

[Ergo]

As with all projects it is important to set your goals at the beginning. Think about what the purpose of the wireless coverage is. Are you looking for blanket coverage for a small number of devices but only for low bandwidth (internet) access? Do you expect to have whole classes of school devices in small areas (one classroom) who will be logging on with network profiles all at the same time? Are you looking to implement BYOD and do you need to look at the security and support of your network?

 

There are many varied options for why you may want a wireless network and deciding what they are before you look at specific technologies, brands or testing is important to allow you to fairly evaluate the products against your needs. Remember how you as a school decide to use wireless devices may not be the same as the school down the road.

 

Issues to consider with Wireless:

1. Coverage - just classrooms, corridors (for VoIP?), outside areas?

2. Density - how many devices in a given area at the same time?

3. Access - Personal devices, school devices, guests, students?

4. Security - how will you ensure only the correct users/machines are accessing the appropriate resources?

5. Support - how will you deal with the potentially increased support requirement (eg. BYOD accessing network & resources)?

6. Future plans - what may change in 1/2/3/5 years? Will the system develop and grow with you as a school?

 

Hope that helps

 

Dave

[dgsmith]

Thanks for the advice last month - we've had a survey done which suggests our current unmamaged arrangement coverage is reasonable ok, it is just the configuration of it and throughput that we'd notice improvements in.

 

As we haven't yet got a layer 3 switch, we can't do VLANs for guest access though it was suggested we could create a guest SSID which would essentially do the same thing, perhaps just slightly not as secure. Would it definately be worth only considering a guest VLAN if we wanted to go down that route?

[RTFM]

Thanks for the advice last month - we've had a survey done which suggests our current unmamaged arrangement coverage is reasonable ok, it is just the configuration of it and throughput that we'd notice improvements in.

 

As we haven't yet got a layer 3 switch, we can't do VLANs for guest access though it was suggested we could create a guest SSID which would essentially do the same thing, perhaps just slightly not as secure. Would it definately be worth only considering a guest VLAN if we wanted to go down that route?

 

At least you dont have the hassle of tagging all the switches with the VLAN information, it'll save you some time / money depending how you would have the install done. A flat network will just be plug and play more or less (once the controller is setup).

 

It doesnt hurt to demo stuff, we had some demo kit of Ruckus and we had Meru demo to us (long story why we didnt get their kit in to demo ourselves).

 

Ended up with a Ruckus solution and, compared to our old Netgear managed wireless it flies.

[paulfinlay]

You don't necessarily require VLANs. Most enterprise wireless systems will let you tunnel guest traffic securely through the network and dump it out of a port on the controller. This port can then be connected to a separate firewall interface or perhaps an ADSL connection used solely for guest internet.

[dgsmith]

Ended up with a Ruckus solution and, compared to our old Netgear managed wireless it flies.

 

Out of interest, why do you think the ruckus works much better than netgear? Our belief was that wireless is just that and varying vendors essentially should provide the same type of access point hardware and that it'd mostly just be the controller that varies. As two of those we're shortlisting fall within your comment above it'd be interesting to hear what made you ditch one and go with the other in the first place?

[RTFM]

Out of interest, why do you think the ruckus works much better than netgear? Our belief was that wireless is just that and varying vendors essentially should provide the same type of access point hardware and that it'd mostly just be the controller that varies. As two of those we're shortlisting fall within your comment above it'd be interesting to hear what made you ditch one and go with the other in the first place?

 

We get better throughput and its more reliable.

 

Granted, the Ruckus is N the Netgear wasn't which might have had an impact!

 

The Ruckus AP's a better quality and I suppose to some extent you get what you pay for (the Ruckus solution was probably 4 times more than our Netgear solution was 3 years ago). We also got a 3000 Ruckus controller and it's a much more powerful box than our old Netgear one.

[paulfinlay]

Most vendors use the same chipsets, but they all run bespoke software on top of this - so performance and features vary considerably.

[jcollings]

We had a Meru system installed by Virtue Technologies in summer and it is fantastic. I can highly recommend the kit and the installer.

[john]

The Ruckus hardware has very clever antennae technology (as well as others such as beam-forming) which is key to the success of the product compared to its competitors

[Steveduk]

The Ruckus hardware has very clever antennae technology (as well as others such as beam-forming) which is key to the success of the product compared to its competitors

 

A few years back we replaced our shocking Cisco system with Ruckus and it was fantastic. 100% uptime over the years and 1 Ruckus AP provided the coverage of 3-4 Cisco. The beam forming works a treat and we used to have 40+ clients on one AP without any problems. This was B/G only. We had a new system installed under BSF which so far is a croc.

 

Ruckus all the way for me - it just works and is standards based.