daveyboy Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 Chaps & Ladies.... Time for me to start getting things together for our school. But I would like your comments (Good / Bad) if you have any of these installed at your school (and please include any comments about the support you are given!) Please also include a rough idea of how many devices connect and an idea of uptime without any problems! Thanking you in advance..... Dave
AngryTechnician Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 We have had Ruckus since the summer, only averaging about 25-30 concurrent users at the moment but it will handle all of those off one AP. No faults whatsoever so far. Also look after Meraki at another site. When iOS6 hit, none of the iOS devices could log into the captive portal any more and Meraki were next to useless when I asked for support. Admittedly iOS6 had trouble with several captive portal systems, but given the amount we pay for support I had expected at least a workaround other than 'turn off the captive portal', which is what I've done for now. Have not yet retested with 6.0.1, but have heard nothing from Meraki for over a month, and they closed the support case without comment. 2
alan-d Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 We have had Ruckus for about 3 years and may be looking to upgrade next year. The zone director has pretty much run continuously for that period except for general school power failures and updates. We have around 29 APs and had 60+ connected wirelessly in areas of the school. Problems - most seem to be the fault of laptops choosing not to go to the nearest AP or one that is not as busy. We have had to tweak a few settings due to environmantal problems but overall the kit just runs as it should. Our support has run out but when it was in force it was pretty good. 2
timbo343 Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 Im trialing ruckus at the mo and very happy with it, even did own site surveys to see how it worked at our place and very impressed. I have heard (this is only heard so dont quote me on it or someone could tell me if im right or wrong) but netgear seems to be up there too. You coul ring a few suppliers and ask to test equipment. Can i just say that ruckus have some fantastic offers on at the monent ending at the end of dec. 2
Chris_Cook Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 We have had ruckus for a few years. The system itself works really well. I think in the past year, ive only had to reboot a couple of access-points a few times. Most of the problems we get are related to dodgy wifi interfaces or drivers in the clients, or mis-configured poe switches (we use separate vlans for wifi). Once we fixed these issues, they have'nt recurred. We have about 32 access-points, and 200+ clients across the school. most of our laptops are in trolleys of 15 or 30. I think i've only noticed a problem with too many clients on an access point once, when we had 60+ laptops trying to connect to one ap. It still worked, it was just a bit slow. This was a while ago, so I don't remember the exact details. It never happened again. 30+ devices on an ap doesn't seem to be a problem for us. If you expect those sorts of numbers of clients connecting to one ap, you probably need to talk to a supplier to get their recommendation. We also have a staff and student network for personal devices and phones. There are lots of options for this, and its easy to set up and not much work to maintain. I don't think we've had to use the tech support, other than for initial setup. I think that says a lot about the quality of the product. I would recommend an onsite demo of ruckus and the other popular systems. See what you think. 2
psydii Posted December 7, 2012 Posted December 7, 2012 Meru. 802.11agn, configured for coverage rather than client density. Nominally 1 radio per classroom (roughly one ap per two classrooms). In practice in highish density use (28+ devices in nearby 54m^2 rooms) the load seems to be spread fairly evenly across six nearby radios. All staff work wirelessly even those using SQL Server backed applications. 50% of our Student access devices are wireless. I am hoping to do some high density testing (60 clients in adjacent rooms) over the christmas period, to see how far we can push it.
jcollings Posted December 7, 2012 Posted December 7, 2012 We had Meru put in over Summer by Virtue Technologies. It's a big site so we have 75 APs. At the moment we have about 400 to 500 ish devices and it's fantastic. We are moving to 1:1 devices and currently support BYOD and it seems very quick and robust. We had minor issues but updating drivers on laptops sorted it and the support was excellent throughout. I would certainly buy it again and from the same company.
CyberNerd Posted December 7, 2012 Posted December 7, 2012 (edited) similar setup to @jcollings here. Meru with 75 AP's and upto 500 devices. We went for 1 AP for every other classroom with a view to expanding to one per classroom as more devices come online. As with the post above some minor issues with old drivers but overall VERY happy with it. The single channel architecture works superbly - devices simply wander between AP's without missing a beat. I did have to reboot the AP's once in the last two years - but that was because of a firmware update Edited December 7, 2012 by CyberNerd
glennda Posted December 7, 2012 Posted December 7, 2012 We have had Ruckus since the summer, only averaging about 25-30 concurrent users at the moment but it will handle all of those off one AP. No faults whatsoever so far. Also look after Meraki at another site. When iOS6 hit, none of the iOS devices could log into the captive portal any more and Meraki were next to useless when I asked for support. Admittedly iOS6 had trouble with several captive portal systems, but given the amount we pay for support I had expected at least a workaround other than 'turn off the captive portal', which is what I've done for now. Have not yet retested with 6.0.1, but have heard nothing from Meraki for over a month, and they closed the support case without comment. I had it working on an IOS 6 ipad other day
garethm Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 I've used Aerohive in a large secondary school - around 250 APs, close to 300 iPads and 50-60 laptops were in use before I left. It's an incredible solution - there's no controller requirement in the school, and everything can just be managed through the web browser. Certainly when I was there, we had close to 100% uptime for every access point across the campus, and even if one failed, the others would react and try to patch the "hole" left. Meru is in one of the schools I manage now, and I don't really like it. The APs are really ugly and huge, and the management seems pretty ugly and complex.
localzuk Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 We're on Ruckus here. 13 APs across the school, covering about 35 rooms. We have an average of 45ish devices connecting at any one time, but this is increasing constantly (when we got it 3 years ago, we have about 10 users on it). Current core uptime is 67 days, due to a power cut! We have a couple of them set in 'Mesh' mode where we can't get any wires into the room and they work great. 1
Netman Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 You need to look at the Ubiquiti Unifi stuff too - could save you a lot of money... 14 Unifi APs here averaging 120+ clients per day and 20-30 Gig of traffic. Think I've had to reboot 2 of them since June...
pantscat Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 I've had a Ruckus system for about two years with around 54 APs. It's been absolutely faultless with no downtime at all. Most usage we see is around 20 devices per AP due to the distribution density of the APs. I love it. A lot.
witch Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 Ruckus in one school with about 40 concurrent connections No issues really since installation Meru in the other with about 60 concurrent connections Generally OK but things are slower to log on, even if only a few devices connected
JohnDiGio Posted December 19, 2012 Posted December 19, 2012 I've used Aerohive in a large secondary school - around 250 APs, close to 300 iPads and 50-60 laptops were in use before I left. It's an incredible solution - there's no controller requirement in the school, and everything can just be managed through the web browser. Certainly when I was there, we had close to 100% uptime for every access point across the campus, and even if one failed, the others would react and try to patch the "hole" left. Meru is in one of the schools I manage now, and I don't really like it. The APs are really ugly and huge, and the management seems pretty ugly and complex. Agree with this. I love the management interface for Aerohive.
boogster Posted December 20, 2012 Posted December 20, 2012 Just taken over support in new school and never come across Unifi as previously use Ruckus. Currently only have about 7 users on wifi but am implementing a wireless network with 50 laptops etc and wanted to know if you have any problems with say 32 laptops hitting 1 AP for authentiaction etc... Will this be up to the job, have approx 11 dotted around the building. You need to look at the Ubiquiti Unifi stuff too - could save you a lot of money... 14 Unifi APs here averaging 120+ clients per day and 20-30 Gig of traffic. Think I've had to reboot 2 of them since June...
sudeshatilsley Posted January 14, 2013 Posted January 14, 2013 We are currently looking into site wide wireless coverage. We've looked at Aruba, Ruckus and Aerohive. Although the Aerohive solution looked attractive in the first instance, we didn't like the licencing model they use. We are now down to Aruba and Ruckus, we like the Ruckus solution and the few extras like Beam Forming sound good. We are due to have some Aruba access points in for trial later this week and will see how they cope with 30+ Google Nexus tablets attached.
oxide54 Posted January 21, 2013 Posted January 21, 2013 We are currently looking into site wide wireless coverage. We've looked at Aruba, Ruckus and Aerohive. Although the Aerohive solution looked attractive in the first instance, we didn't like the licencing model they use. We are now down to Aruba and Ruckus, we like the Ruckus solution and the few extras like Beam Forming sound good. We are due to have some Aruba access points in for trial later this week and will see how they cope with 30+ Google Nexus tablets attached. what is the licensing model? do you have to pay for the hivemanger for the "controllerless" network
sudeshatilsley Posted January 22, 2013 Posted January 22, 2013 You can have a virtual machine on site to "manage" the wireless aps which is a one off fee plus annual support etc or you have to pay for a 1, 3 or 5 year licence for a hosted (HMOL) service. The price is quite high if you compare it to other solutions.
glennda Posted January 22, 2013 Posted January 22, 2013 That sounds Similar to the Meraki System then - Meraki you pay for the units and then pay for a yearly license per ap (which is similar to the cost of support) for all the updates and the cloud controller.
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