Destinova

Ultimately this is the kind of slant you are going to get from a sponsored forum...

Why discount the experience and technical expertise of others? The WFD delegates (of which I am one, as is Lee (wirednot) who was at the Meru presentation) make up some of the industry's top technical experts in independent IT analysis and influence. Go watch the videos and decide for yourself, that's all I'm saying. They offer presentation time to any vendor. The WFD folks are hands-on designing, installing and troubleshooting multi-vendor 802.11 installations every single day. I absolutely defer to their expertise and advice in this space. Look at the comments on the blog post. Keith Parsons, GT Hill for example - these are top echelon wifi experts. I'll restate from my earlier post: "Do your research and be educated to prevent long-term pain."

If anyone is interested in seeing some of the flaws in Meru's architecture and how they struggle to explain the technology while glazing over things with marketing-speak, here's some further reading: What Meru and Xirrus Need to Do | wirednot Meru Networks 802.11ac and Bonjour on Vimeo Beware the pitfalls of early adoption of 802.11ac - do not fall victim to the initial push from early-to-market vendors that aren't prepared to support you through all phases of 802.11ac and it's lifecycle. Do your research and be educated to prevent long-term pain.

Meru still hanging on I see. Likely a good eco-budget vendor for the UK folks but in North America they continue to fall short. No innovation I'm afraid and some lofty (and fundamentally incorrect) ideas around CCI and 802.11ac. Good luck with that. You know you're at the rope's end when you're competing with Xirrus.

There aren't really 'different' standards for PoE. There is PoE (802.3af) and PoE+ (802.3at). These are both IEEE standards. Any implementations outside of these two standards are non-standard proprietary iterations of the technology and may or may not work with proper af/at devices. Examples of non-standard versions of this include Cisco's original "Inline Power" which predated PoE as a standard, but is forwards compatible in most aspects.

AliG: There should be no password on your activation/hotspot SSID. Options here are set to Open/None for Authentication and Encryption. I am running 9.6.0.0 build 267

Ruckus' DPSK and Zero-IT config are working well for me. Credentials are passed and are encrypted (HTTPS) and authentication is handled via WPA2 and a PSK. Not sure what issue you are really facing here. Yes, the provisioning/activation SSID has to be forgotten. This is not an issue with the Ruckus system, but rather the device OS. Devices will tend to remember any SSID they connect to and especially connect to open SSIDs like the Zero-IT/Activation one you use for a Ruckus deployment. Forget it and the device connects just fine to the requisite SSID. Android phones are a pain simply for two reasons: Androids by default won't accept apps that are not from the Android market so this has to be turned off in the settings, and second; the OS is so fragmented each and every device handles the provisioning file so differently - I end up copying and pasting the DPSK into the device manually quite a lot.

Thank you. The CWNP does not churn out marketing drones who blather on about how their access point can defy the laws of physics and cover more area or service more clients because of their magic RF algorithm. RF is RF and you have to plan for it, and this means paying for a proper survey both pre-install and post-install. Quit being so cheap You know who you are.

The only issues I've had with Android devices have been those using the default browser. Chrome on Android works fine, as done manually copying the PSK to the device.

AirTight were recently featured as a presenter at Wireless Field Day 5, and have also acquired wifi genius Devin Akin. They are touted as the next up and comer in the wifi space and have some brilliant differentiators to other vendors. I would highly recommend taking a serious look at them, and also a glimpse at their presentations from WFD5. Wireless Field Day 5

I highly recommend Ruckus' zero-it activation process and dynamic PSK for guest access, it's brilliant. BYOD Solution | Ruckus Wireless

Check your DNS. The AP's use DNS to find the controller. If your trial controller still has a record for "zonedirector" then the AP's will be trying to get to a non-existent controller.

Cluster the controllers, and have all AP's part of the same wireless infrastructure. You can use HREAP across WAN links so the controllers do not need to be local to the APs.

I'd have to disagree. This is UTP copper, and the more you expose and untwist the pairs, the more crosstalk you introduce. Cat5e was not meant to be spliced. In addition they've installed them incorrectly by feeding both ends through the same side of the box - they're designed to have one end come in each side.

Wow I've never seen those...so basically a splice for Cat5e.... Probably pretty close to the worst idea I've even seen. Get rid of them.

With gigabit ethernet and PoE your cabling is critical. Considering it is inherited cable and who knows how old it is, I'd start there.

Given the option to do a new deployment I would go with Aerohive. Their management plane is excellent and now offers full layer 7 application control and visibility. You don't need to worry about losing connectivity as this is not a 'cloud' controller but a distributed architecture across all access points. http://blogs.aerohive.com/blog/the-wireless-lan-architecture-blog-2/enterprise-wi-fi-differentiating-cloud-controllers-and-distributed-intelligence

Ah yes, classic!

Revolution Wi-Fi: Misguided Meru How is Meru even relevant anymore?

And you should expect any wifi consultant/company that is doing your installation will provide you with both a pre and post-installation survey. A validation survey should be a requirement of your RFP. You paid for the survey, it just isn't a line item on your invoice. What you don't pay now in having a proper survey done, you will pay later in having to troubleshoot coverage holes, co-channel interference, and RF propagation issues that only a proper survey will point out to you. Will a consultant come in and *just* do a survey for free? No. Will you get a survey "free" (in big air quotes) as part of a wireless installation contract. Yes, but the costs are built in, so it really isn't "free".

Exactly right. If you want a proper job done, you are going to pay a proper RF professional to do your survey for you. Walking around with a laptop and a 30-day trial of Air Magnet is going to guarantee your wireless deployment will fail. You MUST do an active survey prior to deployment. This is walking around with an "AP on a stick" (the actual AP you are using in the building) and surveying coverage in each location. This measures RF interference in each location and signal propagation. Each locations' survey is merged for an overall view of the floorplan. Post-installation passive survey's are a MUST, in order to validate the design. If you do not have credentials to the SSID being surveyed you are simply going obtain a measurement of RSSI/SNR values. If you have access to authenticate to the SSID, you can also do load/bandwidth testing. Without a validation survey, your installation is pointless. Predictive software that will "plan" your AP deployments for you are complete garbage. If any vendor offers to take a floorplan and drop AP's on it for you without doing an actual site survey, find another vendor. To summarize, a proper survey, done by a trained, knowledgeable WiFi professional, is *not* going to be free. Any survey you get for $0, is worth as much.

The Avahi Daemon (free, linux Bonjour gateway) works very well with any system as well. It is referred to in the Cisco document for the 4400 series controllers as they do not get the Bonjour Gateway update. It doesn't have the managed features (filtering) that some other may have. I'm also presently testing the free Bonjour Gateway from Aerohive. Enterprise 802.11n Management System | Bonjour Gateway | Aerohive Networks

iPads work just fine on Cisco, assuming we're talking enterprise (controller) Cisco gear. That being said they do not offer the Bonjour gateway feature until controller version 7.4. Bonjour Gateway Deployment Guide 7.4 [Cisco 5500 Series Wireless Controllers] - Cisco Systems

Sorry, I wasn't trying to insult you, it was more of a rhetorical/motivational question. Maybe it was my accent. Do you need to understand and be able to manually convert binary/hex/decimal? Yes. For the CCENT/CCNA - you aren't going to run into the hex conversions, but you'll need them later on for IPv6. You say you 'certainly know subnetting' - so you already know that conversion of decimal to binary and binary to decimal is key fundamental knowledge for subnetting. Will you need to manually convert binary/decimal for the CCENT/CCNA - Yes. Ex: Route summarization - I don't personally know a shortcut to summarizing routes. You have to break a network down into bits to determine where you are going to summarize, as in the following example: 10.1.4.0/24 10.1.5.0/24 10.1.6.0/24 10.1.7.0/24 Ignoring the first 16 bits as they are identical the third octet breaks down to: 00000100 00000101 00000110 00000111 You can summarize at the 6th bit, so your route summary would be /22.

Getting started in networking requires a bit of a grind through some theory. It seems dry and useless, but believe me it is base knowledge that you will use for the rest of your career. I started and stopped the CCNA about 10 times because I couldn't get through the OSI model, but now that I've moved far past that I see how valuable it is. The same applies to subnetting, hex/binary/decimal conversion (IPv6 is ALL hex!), etc. It gets better, and you get into the "fun" parts soon enough, but don't look for a quick way. Learn everything, be an expert. Fellow networking folks will be able to tell quickly if you rushed to get the letters after your name or if you really know your stuff. Be prepared as you progress for more of the 'boring' fluff. Cisco especially is highlighting the importance of planning and proper implementation with their current track of exams. Learn their PPDIOO model, or expect to fail exams. In short, the OSI model and subnetting theory are there to weed out the chaff. Are you chaff?