Opinions for a wireless AP?

unnamedplayer

Hi all,

I thought I'd post this here because I know this forum has a lot of knowledgeable networking professionals

I am looking at implementing wireless access at my organization but was hoping for some feedback or opinions on what APs to use. Our building is approximately 18,500 square feet (single story) and was wondering if you think I could find a single AP that would cover most of that by itself?

I was possibly looking at the Cisco Aironet series (1140 probably) because I can get them discounted, but I don't have a whole lot of experience with them.

Was wondering what you all thought? I appreciate any feedback.

qcomer

Do you plan on implementing managed wireless? RADIUS authentication? Or just a single AP.

Personally - I have been using Ruckus for my school district lately (used Cisco, HP, etc at prior jobs) and I find it to be awesome. I love the interface and the reliability/strengh of the APs are awesome. We are deploying them managed with a Ruckus controller using Microsoft NPS as a RADIUS server for 100 APs this summer.

it_consultant

Meraki makes the best wireless access points I have ever used.

Meraki: Enterprise 802.11n Wireless LAN

They are zero config and you don't need a controller or any of that mess. I have deployed literally hundreds of these and once you get past the price (they are not cheap) you will be happy you went with a truly enterprise wifi product.

qcomer

it_consultant wrote: »

Meraki makes the best wireless access points I have ever used.

Meraki: Enterprise 802.11n Wireless LAN

They are zero config and you don't need a controller or any of that mess. I have deployed literally hundreds of these and once you get past the price (they are not cheap) you will be happy you went with a truly enterprise wifi product.

We also looked at Meraki. I couldnt stand the price first off all. And second, they hold you captive with the licensing costs. If you dont pay your yearly fee the AP no longer works. I have been out of private-sector IT for awhile (I still do odd jobs here and there) but I know in Education we cannot afford to pay for something and then be told we cannot use it due to not being able to afford the yearly subscription fee. In California our budget is getting worse and worse so sometimes locking ourselves into a yearly fee could spell disaster.

Other than that - Meraki was nice too haha. Just becareful with it - it is owned by Google and if privacy is a concern I'd be weary. Who knows what they might be mining out of it.

We looked at Meraki, Aruba, HP, Aerohive, etc.

it_consultant

qcomer wrote: »

We also looked at Meraki. I couldnt stand the price first off all. And second, they hold you captive with the licensing costs. If you dont pay your yearly fee the AP no longer works. I have been out of private-sector IT for awhile (I still do odd jobs here and there) but I know in Education we cannot afford to pay for something and then be told we cannot use it due to not being able to afford the yearly subscription fee. In California our budget is getting worse and worse so sometimes locking ourselves into a yearly fee could spell disaster.

Other than that - Meraki was nice too haha. Just becareful with it - it is owned by Google and if privacy is a concern I'd be weary. Who knows what they might be mining out of it.

We looked at Meraki, Aruba, HP, Aerohive, etc.

I always have to preface it with "if you can get around the price" because that is an issue. A good one is nearly $700. The licensing costs are about $150 a piece (at least when I sell them) annually which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. You can rack up way more costs using Cisco's wireless system.

Its interesting that you mention education, I just sold a crap ton of these to a school district in Colorado. Meraki is one of those companies that cuts education a deal so you end up getting it way below retail. I will have to check with my rep to see what the non-profit pricing is. Its a matter of "do you like rebooting wireless APs?" If the answer is no, you will go with a high quality product (Cisco, Meraki, Aruba etc) and unfortunately they cost money.

unnamedplayer

I've heard good things about Ruckus as well. Ideally I would like to have a separate guess network as well. I've seen some products that offer the guest option without having to setup separate VLANs. I wonder how well that would work if I also wanted to enforce some type of content filtering or only allow HTTP traffic?

Lizano

unnamedplayer wrote: »

I've heard good things about Ruckus as well. Ideally I would like to have a separate guess network as well. I've seen some products that offer the guest option without having to setup separate VLANs. I wonder how well that would work if I also wanted to enforce some type of content filtering or only allow HTTP traffic?

I know Fortinet has wireless UTM's that will do all that, but I'm not sure you could cover your 1800 ft range with one unit.

unclerico

Aerohive hands down are the best and most feature rich I've ever worked with.

qcomer

unnamedplayer wrote: »

I've heard good things about Ruckus as well. Ideally I would like to have a separate guess network as well. I've seen some products that offer the guest option without having to setup separate VLANs. I wonder how well that would work if I also wanted to enforce some type of content filtering or only allow HTTP traffic?

I havent looked super far into it as far as the traffic part. But, We have a guest network setup with "client isolation" enabled - clients cannot talk to eachother. We also have our subnets and devices in a list of devices they cannot speak to devices on. Seems to work okay so far. I would like to eventually do VLANs but no time right now. I inherited a jacked up network.

We buy the Ruckus 7363 access points. Around $400 with the AP, mounting kit (which is lockable), power adapter and they come with a lifetime warranty. These things blow Cisco and the other high ends out of the water with the amount of features they come with for their price and also the quality/strength of the coverage.

We were buying support on each AP but we only buy support on the controller now. As long as you have support on the controller - if you update the firmware it pushes updates out to the APs also.