TheRobins

Most Apple devices, and mid to high end android devices are now shipping with AC, I see around about 65% of my students using AC devices on our Meru Network.

Ive also tried the cheaper models, but actually found as with anything in life, they are cheaper for a reason. 90% of my users now have the elmo range of cameras. The quality and control is excellent as well as very good software. Also I found important with these is that they are easy to use, aesthetically pleasing (teachers like their rooms to be created by a team to TV experts) and backed up by a very good 5 year warranty. Elmo L12ID Visualiser & Document Camera | Elmo Visualizers & Document Cameras I have got these in between 240 - 270 depending on how the resellers battle each other out.

Ohh yes I would steer clear if I was you. If you really need to delete profiles I would use this https://helgeklein.com/free-tools/delprof2-user-profile-deletion-tool/ Its the best of a bad job With some simple batch scripting you can run it remotely on all machines. Hopefully that solves your issue, although I did have to re-image all machines that had this policy applied.

Opppss This was a while ago. Anyway, discovered what the cause was. It was a group policy issues. I hadn't noticed but there was an option ticked to delete profiles if they have not been used in X. However this policy is know to have issues especially with security. The issues only occurred when that pupil logged onto that machine and their profile had previously been deleted. I didn't really have the time to drill down why and decided that my re-imaging programme was much easier. Removed that policy, re-imaged and no issues since. Thankfully...

Windows corruption as you mention probably an iffy update. Glad you sorted it

I would look at DNS myself. Do you use IP to connect to the proxy server or a DNS entry Obviously try some internal DNS lookups on the affected server

Hard Disk issue on your DAS backup? Some backup agents really imbed themselves into windows and when they freeze, so does windows of course. Just be worth seeing if it happens again overnight. To be honest I wouldn't be too concerned, as long as the servers event log looks clear.

Im not concerned with this at all to be honest. The meru system I have has been nothing but a success. 100k is a very large estimate, although if you look at a large school environment with new switching, fibre links all thrown into the mix that could be a figure that pops up with not just meru, but all networks. I was once told a little saying by an old chap I had a lot of time for. "A poor man can only afford the best" Ill sit back and see what happens.

Hi Steve Is it a cost reason you are not looking at a dedicated POE switch? The cheaper ones I have seen to be not very useful, If you are talking sort of 8+ AP's the cost effective way is to go for a dedicate POE switch

Thanks all for your tips, all signed up and active

Bingo that would be great, I've just looked around at some other local schools and one or two have 365 along with their old email servers which are still online so obviously that's the way they went around it. Hopefully I can get it all setup and aim for a September switch over, but as you pointed out I could delay until christmas to transfer over.

Thanks for that. I obviously need to transfer our domain to it which could be fun taking a live .sch.uk address across from our LEA, Let the fun begin.

Office 365 That helps clear it up abit, The Microsoft site https://products.office.com/en-ie/academic/compare-office-365-education-plans doesnt take into affect ProPlus and OVS agreements, so as you rightly say the free E1 gives me all I need including 1 drive.

Thanks Steve, Whats E3 all about then

I am looking to move to office 365 in the summer holidays. I noticed since I last looked at it that the pricing structure has changed and has now really confused me. As part of our OVS agreement we have Office 365 ProPlus included. Now they throw in E1 and E3 which doesn't make much sense to me. To be fair when has Microsoft done it the easy way. Im just looking for an idiots guide or what is what. My main aim is to completely move our email to the cloud, Services such as Office applications and the cloud and onedrive would be nice but not essential.

This is where it got complex. You can go to every intel AC7260 machine, log in, go to the advanced driver properties and change these to 1.lowest There is a registry entry you can push via GPO, however sadly intel drivers dont always appear to be in exactly the same place, even with a batch of machines all imaged at the same time so its pot luck. You could maybe test this if you are getting the -256 hits in the station logs. If this doesn't solve the issue you can do some tweaks to the ESS profiles as well as deeper into the controllers config for signal strength handoff's. I would at this point suggest registering this issue with Meru Support, as any changes from this point can cause issues down the line. If turning the aggressiveness down to 1 solves it you should be ok. I actually don't need to turn my aggressiveness down now, I have the latest firmware suggested by meru support which is 6.1-2-29, coupled with tweaks to the handling config it runs much better. I was also told that V7 which is out soon is far superior especially with Intel, but we would all say that wouldn't we. We are using the MC1550 Controller and 25 AP832E access points.

Yes, Fixed my issues with the 7260's, I have a room of 30 lenovos as we speak all using 7260's on the same ap no issues. This issue is related to "roaming aggressiveness" What happens is the control really wants to be in control of any hand-offs or AP assignments. The Intel range of cards ignore this and in the background will go searching for new ap's. Of course the single channel setup causes confusion and it cause the card to try and access an AP that will not respond. A quick test is Login into an SSH session the running the following. Station log > enable Meru-Controller(15)# Meru-Controller(15)# Meru-Controller(15)# station-log Interactive Per-Station Event Logging Shell (enter "help" for help) By default logging is Disabled (enter "enable" to Enable logging) station-log> enable Logging enabled station-log> What you will see is the devices on your network as the communicate with the controller and as it hands it around ap's similar to below 2015-May- 7 13:37:11.677882 | e8:de:27:1d:68:c7 | 802.11 State | handoff RSSI (-65 -66) RSSI (-61 -62) 2015-May- 7 13:37:17.682556 | e8:de:27:1d:68:c7 | 802.11 State | handoff RSSI (-66 -61) RSSI (-59 -59) 2015-May- 7 13:38:08.279700 | 20:68:9d:e0:61:03 | Station Assign | assigned to 2015-May- 7 13:38:08.280160 | 20:68:9d:e0:61:03 | Station Assign | Reassigning from (rssi=-75) to (rssi=-39) 2015-May- 7 13:38:08.280164 | 20:68:9d:e0:61:03 | Station Assign | Assign Removed From 2015-May- 7 13:38:08.280319 | 20:68:9d:e0:61:03 | Station Assign | assigned to 2015-May- 7 13:39:20.781974 | 80:19:34:a4:c8:8d | 802.11 State | handoff RSSI (-80 -76) RSSI (-74 -75) You can see that as the signal of a device gets weaker, it will switch it to the new AP and report the signal strength back. Usually the numbers are very close as the system tries to balance the load, or as people move laptops, even walk in front of a laptop can give 10-20 Db of attenuation. With the intel roaming aggressiveness I expect you to be seeing some -256 ie RSSI (-70 -256) or (-256 -256) Do check this first, if you start seeing -256 its more than likely to be the issue.

Out of interest which chips, Am I guessing Centrino?

I've had similar issues recently. Now out of interest, are they intel chipsets in the wireless. I have got loads of information and diags, but you would need putty and root access to controller

Change of plan in the end, decided to spend a bit more and have gone for some Lenovo E540's which come with 7260's built in. Last stock of the STF/TAPS programme which has recently ended. I have done plenty of comparisons with our Meru solution with N wireless and AC. The AC seems much more reliable in a very small high density environment. Also they handle close proximity to other devices much more than the N laptops. Now you will never be able to do a full test as there are some many uncontrollable variables but with the 3x3 meru AP's it would be silly not to take full advantage. Yes at the end of the day unless you are running full VDI experiences with wireless devices in high density its not going to shine through but for no extra cost, lets get them anyway.

Wow what a can of worms I have opened. My desk now have 17 different models/quotes all trying to fit in to the requirements. Made things worse. I have however come across some very well priced Toshiba Satellite Pro R50-B-12X units. Comes with my Core i3, 4GB, AC wireless and 3 year warranty all in for around 260 each for new units. Only let down being the 5400 RPM drives. I am now just looking at SSD's in bulk to see if I can do both and still come within budget, you can never have enough spare drives in the cupboard.

Thats thankfully where I already have Meru 832'e AP's throughout so AC is always an option. I'm quite surprised there are not many cash back deals around at the moment.

I run a 7260 at home, They are dirt cheap and supports their proset functionality. You do have to be careful as well that many laptops are only fitted with 2.4ghz antennas, and not 5GHz support, you will suffer with poor signals and probably a burnt out wireless card after a while.

Refurbs probably not an option for this batch, I am looking for 3 - 4 years life and good performance. Worth a mention...

Had seen those, however the build quality and resistance to pupils isn't the best looking at it and previous experience. I will look again