jc666777

The Aruba IAP system is actually unlimited as of early this year. The controller AP is just there if you want to change something it doesn't do any co-ordination of any other APs. If it dies another AP assumes the 'management' IP address. So there is distribution of function with aruba Other good aruba feature all the APs are lifetime warranty and you don't pay any support feed but with meraki if you stop paying your yearly fee you wont be able to manage your system any more. So I would argue look at the 5 year costs. DISCLOSURE I work for Aruba.

Apple Devices use Bonjour to announce themselves on the network Bonjour is apple's name for their zeroconfing networking Bonjour uses 224.0.0.251/252 as addresses, the router chaps will know that those addresses are non-routable so routers drop all that traffic. That means that an AppleTV on one subnet cannot be discovered by a Ipad on another subnet. So you can't mirror your stream to the AppleTV. Wireless vendors are scratching their heads help what do we do. Many vendors are selectively 'bridging' bonjour broadcasts For example Cisco will 'bridge' the appleTV broadcasts onto the user wireless subnets (check cisco.com for detail), so users can discover the TVs OK if you just have a couple TVs but imagine a couple hundred and all the bonjour broadcasts being swamped to all vlans all users . nightmare !. Worth noting that AppleTV wireless only uses WPA-PSK so joining it to an 802.1x proper secure network is not an option Also your policy on the passcode for the apple tv is going to have to be strict - if you give all apple tvs the same passcode then a student learns one passcode - could stream some very interesting stuff. I here declare I have an interest in Aruba but it does allow role based access (only allowing staff to use TVs but allowing staff to permit ad-hoc student access) and location based access (find the tvs in the science block or on my floor only) jc

Hello Luke T You might want to check with the guys at Herts Schools ICT like Colin etc. They have deployed a lot of Aruba with the controller and with the controller-less option. You definately want 2X2:2 - most laptops support that now - buying :3 without laptops that support it is not very useful. you definately need 5ghz n support. The wifi alliance hasn't tested/approved with wide 40ghz channels in the 2.4ghz band so it is not very reliable. There are more channels available in the 5ghz band so you get more throughput when two sets of classrooms are near to each other - effectively if you have two aps on two different channels you are doubling your throughput. Some rule of thumbs 1 AP per classroom 3 classrooms next to each other 2 APs is OK. Make sure you have a little bit of overlap i.e. you dont put the aps right at the boundary of each other. Because if one goes down you lose coverage totally in that area. Pick a vendor and ask them to do a virtual paper survey youll get the survey for free then. ! regards, jane

A few vendors now support OpenDNS which is easy to configure generic filtering for a Visitor network. Aruba and others do that

Hi Matt I think Microsoft use Aruba for their offices but when they do a show in a big hall and want something cheap and cheerful they use xirrus.

Head of Bristol Brunel Academy says much school IT spending is wasted - Times Online An academy designed to be the first fully wireless school has been blighted by computer problems since being opened by Gordon Brown more than two years ago. The head of the £24 million Bristol Brunel Academy — a beacon of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme — said that its wireless system had yet to work properly who's wireless is this then ? Cisco although I heard Xirrus ?

Your problem might be non-wifi interference which can provide a much stronger signal than a nearby access point. Another nearby access point on the same channel will only gove about 30% drop. But non-wifi interference can kill a whole channel or the whole bg range. Can often be caused by high power bluetooth PIRs such as those for alarms etc. You can scan for this interference using a Wi Spy device. cheers