petertec

Why don't you just specify an acceptable pervasive db level within the tender and then the emphasis is on the supplier to meet that regardless of the technology they are proposing. Give building plans but make sure that they are aware of any structural concerns/anomalies. Most suppliers will assume a 10/15% contingency for a tender based on predictive surveying and anyone worth their salt will more than likely incorporate a physical survey into their tender response.

For me Ubiquiti isn't in the same league as Aruba, Meru, Extreme etc. I would place it somewhere between those guys and the really basic solutions such as Netgear. Fine for a small primary maybe but to me 1400 students and a one to one BYOD policy means that these are the solutions that need to be looked at. When you think of the additional functionality that these solutions offer in terms of Network access control and Network management then they are the better long term option. It depends on the context and the individual needs of the school but there is no doubt there is a massive difference in quality and obviously that brings with it a cost difference as well.

1400 students and BYOD would mean you would probably want to look at the true enterprise class wireless products and stay away from the likes of Ubiquiti etc. I would be talking to people like Aruba, Meru and Extreme. Also for most schools pervasive AC is going to be overkill. I would say that a predominantly N environment with maybe AC in the particularly dense areas would suffice.

Hi all, One of the vendors I have worked with in the past (Enterasys) has just been acquired by Extreme. I always liked Enterasys and their tech but I've never worked with Extreme and am obviously a little nervous with the acquisition. Can anyone give me some feedback on Extreme in terms of tech and also support and service please. Cheers!

also from what I can tell at the moment ac AP's are typically close to double the cost of n AP's.

Really no need to go AC pervasively in a school environment. Maybe in particular areas you could put in the odd AC access point but your surely not going to need to go AC across the site? People seem to be buying into AC far too much too early! In fact in many cases you will actually need more ac ap's than n ap's to achieve the same levels of coverage as ac only works on the 5ghz range and beamforming becomes a bit of a problem in dense environments. Also bear in mind that the second generation of ac ap's are going to require 2 gigabit ports! N isn't going to transition to AC overnight - it's going to take years - to jump from a pervasive 11n deployment to 11ac right now is overkill.

There does seem to be grey area between BYOD and MDM. MDM is more of a private sector product definitely - yet to see a use case in a school to be honest. Any decent wired/wireless vendor should be able to provide what you are trying to achieve without having to partner with Airwatch/MobileIron etc.

Ah my thread is sinking without trace, didn't get anywhere near 50 responses lol

Yeah same here, I think they are also seeing if BYOD could potentially save them money in the long run in terms of buying in devices. I think it is more of a case of when rather than if though

This is all really good stuff thanks guys, aiming for 100 replies so it gives me a good sample size!! Nice to see lots of 2's trying to move to 3's because thats where both me and my friend are right now, maybe i'f my management team knew everyone else was doing it they would let me!!

Hi all, A friend of mine working in another school chewed my ear off the other day about how his management team wouldn't give him capital to deploy wireless and that he believes 90% of secondary schools out there have a pervasive wireless system. I'd tend to disagree and say that the number would be a lot lower, I would create a poll but not sure how! If we say there are 3 options - 1. no wireless, 2. basic/limited/low quality wireless (lower end solutions such as netgear) 3. Enterprise class pervasive wireless Would be great to hear from guys at secondary schools in particular as to where you are at? Cheers

there are other solutions out there that do the same with regards to authentication and that continue to function if the controller goes down. thats why I say I'm not sure why Aerohive focus on it so much? Virtual controllers from other manufacturers aren't exactly pricey anymore either so I'm not sure what the value of Aerohive is? How much is the Hive Manager roughly??

I don't understand why Aerohive is pitched as controller-less? Hive Manager is surely just a virtual controller - much like lots of other options in the market? Seems like their whole pitch is based on a marketing spin?

Sorry didn't see the link first time around. Surprising that Aerohive doesn't have their own solution really. Cant say I have ever evaluated Lightspeed but I know BCM tends to be pretty pricey

Look at Enterasys, both their wireless and NAC look pretty sound. They seem to go under the radar for some reason but I think we will be seriously giving them some consideration. Used to be called Cabletron who i'm told (think I might be a bit too young) predate the mighty cisco!! @mark100 - what is Aerohive's NAC solution called?? Have you taken a look at it?

I think Airwatch is solely MDM as NAC vendors such as Bradford and Forescout integrate directly with them.

I haven't had experience per se but I have taken a look at a couple of solutions in detail. Bradford campus manager seems to be the front-runner when it comes to NAC but I know that its generally far too expensive for schools. Do Aerohive not have some sort of NAC solution?? I had a demo of Enterasys WLAN + NAC last week and it looked really good, they talked quite extensively about end point posturing so might be worth a look. They left me with a NAC vendor report from a company called Infotech also (probably as they are rated the highest!!), but it could be useful for you if you are looking at NAC in general. I can send you a link if you like, if I can find it!!

I think there are solutions out there that can do a lot more in terms of provisioning different user groups. Admittedly we are quite a forward thinking school but the way wireless is going we want to get this right first time. Some solutions allow different QoS and rate limiting, so allowing teachers more bandwidth than students etc, doing this without the need for VLANs to my understanding. Some vendors are even now doing this at the application layer ( meraki??). I know some schools are purely after connectivity but we are looking at a more BYOD friendly solution and something that gives us real specific control of users and devices etc. If Wi-fi adoption carries on the way its going then this would be sensible no? I'm not completely sold on the inherent security of VLAN's either, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_white_paper09186a008013159f.shtml#wp39054, there are plenty of articles like this from vendors that maintain VLANs were never meant to be used for security purposes but simply as broadcast domains? Or is this all overkill?

Does Unifi allow you a great deal of control over BYOD devices?

we are trying to 'future proof' in that we are looking at quite an extensive BYOD program for around 1000 students and teachers. Devices are only ever going to increase so we want a solution that will scale and be able to handle a high density of devices. Its not simply a case of guest access, we need it to be far more robust than that.

@synaesthesia Unifi is Ubiquiti right? How can it be so much cheaper than other solutions? I have used 'non enterprise' solutions in the past like Netgear and don't really want to again. Meraki, Ruckus, Enterasys, from what I can gather seem to have similar pricing. For Ubiquiti to be so much lower rings alarm bells? I'm sure I have read on here somewhere that Unifi came bottom on performance tests?

how did they compare in terms of price, @ass17 mentioned a Ruckus 95 AP solution for 50k and @nelsons a 88 AP meraki solution at 39k. I'm sure we will get some more info this week but I had never heard of them before and looking for a little background info. Appreciate the help!

No problem @snoerre, will do! How have you found the Enterasys solution in general? Meeting them this week.

Hi all, we are looking at replacing our old Wireless system, I was contacted recently by Enterasys, we are sitting down with them next week and just wanted to see if anyone had had any experience with them? They look like they are pretty successfull in the US edu market so would be good to know people's opinions of them? Obviously we are sitting down with the usual suspects, Ruckus, Aerohive etc. Thanks in advance.