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For me it's Aruba all the way... the controllers are very intuitive and so granular that you can do prety much any COS that you may take a fancy to. The Captive Portal feature for guest access is fantastic and as stated earlier in this post, beats Cisco hands down. They are pretty inexpensive systems, compared to Cisco anyhow, and they are well worth a look at.

rowly76 Escribi?3:

For me it's Aruba all the way... the controllers are very intuitive and so granular that you can do prety much any COS that you may take a fancy to. The Captive Portal feature for guest access is fantastic and as stated earlier in this post, beats Cisco hands down. They are pretty inexpensive systems, compared to Cisco anyhow, and they are well worth a look at.

Rowly76, I just received a direct quote from Aruba (rather then CDW) and they are not priced too bad. The only thing that worries me is they have not shown me a demo of the interface, making me wonder if I'll have to take a class to learn it since it can be so granular. What do you think of it, did you have any problem learning it?

Have you considered ZyXel equipment?

www.zyxel.com - go to usa page and look at their equipment.

I can give you a contact for my rep, and he can pass you on to a USA rep if you are interested in looking into it.

We use them as an alternative to Cisco when pricing is a concern.

Our shop designs and deploys both Aruba and Cisco centalized wireless architectures and both vendors have their Pros and Cons.

Aruba's built in Wireless Intrustion protection and stateful packet capabilites (at an additional cost) are certainly Pros, but I've heard through the grapevine that they might be jumping on the "single-channel" environment bandwagon that Meru touts so highly. As I stated, this is only rumor, but either way I personally still on the fence with this design. That is mostly because I have not done enough research. Aruba has also made some major modifications to their code in version 3.X and has added a good deal of added funtionality. The new code had some critical problems with stability, but they seemed to have identified the problems.

Cisco on the other hand is more expensive and does not have the ability to perform stateful packet inspection, but does include Wireless Intrustion Protection in their controllers. Cisco has recently released their 5.X line of code and thus is a more mature version of code.

I could go on and on comparing these two vendors, but I'm not really sure if it helps.

Then there is the decision of purchasing support and both are not inexpensive by any means.

I've used Aruba for over 5 years with a great deal of contact with their engineers and other staff. I am 99.9999% sure they are not going to a single channel architecture. They definitely fit the bill for our implementation with a great support system and an engineering/design team willing to adjust when possible.

Be careful of rumors. There are many, many, many WiFi vendors out there who are spreading false information. It's amazing the problems I'm having at my location and the things we are supposed going to do... and I didn't know it!!! (p.s. the information being spread area lies btw).

millencolinf2f Escribi?3:

Needle Escribi?3:

Regarding multiple channels, what are you trying to do? are you trying to get more bandwidth or have multiple SSIDs? Do you feel that the captive portal feature is too restrictive with regards to design? Thanks!

Some of our conference facilities hold a high amount of people and I therefore like to install multiple APs to cover the area and provide sufficient access for guest devices. So I use multiple channels to keep the devices from interfering with one another.

In regards to the Captive Portal. I believe you're talking about Meraki's splash page. Yes, I do feel it's restrictive and difficult to 'brand' like our company's website or other features like capturing guest data like email addresses for promotional newsletters or advertising current specials at our site.

I wanted to provide an update to what I said earlier. I recently talked with a Product Manager at Meraki and he said there is not a problem co-locating multiple Root APs using the same channel because their meshing technology helps prevent interference between APs. I could not find any details on their website regarding this though, but did find this article http://www.ittconference.ie/prevconf/2007/ITT7ITB.pdf (starts on page 170 of 219) and heard other companies like Meru and their 'one-cell (or single-channel)' technology can do this. He also said to look for exciting updates coming out early next year.

Just to add to my quoted quote...

I went through the meraki partner training and they mention having multiple "gateway" nodes (those connected direct to cable) and that this is not a problem. I just installed a 7 node Meraki install that had existing cable drops and we get the benefit of Meraki management and no bandwidth degradation due to repeating the signal. We are running POE to the nodes so may as well have the extra bandwidth!

Linux_Box Escribi?3:

I've used Aruba for over 5 years with a great deal of contact with their engineers and other staff. I am 99.9999% sure they are not going to a single channel architecture. They definitely fit the bill for our implementation with a great support system and an engineering/design team willing to adjust when possible.

Be careful of rumors. There are many, many, many WiFi vendors out there who are spreading false information. It's amazing the problems I'm having at my location and the things we are supposed going to do... and I didn't know it!!! (p.s. the information being spread area lies btw).

I hope you are correct about Aruba not going that way, but as I said above it was a just rumor I heard and have not had a chance to verify. I would not necesarily call the rumors lies. It was more like an "oh by the way, I heard..." situation. Thanks for the heads up though, I'll be in touch with our Rep.

Aruba is not going to a single channel architecture (SCA), nor are they planning to support such in their system. They are, however, launching features that mimic those found in the Meru system. ARM 2.0 is a set of features that seem to be based on technology pioneered by Meru. See my article here:

http://www.cwnp.com/community/articles/aruba_copies_meru_you_decide.html

Hey, it's fun playing "Wi-Fi Policeman" ;)

Dear millencolinf2f,

I getting a rather late reply to you (just come back from a nice break :-) I would certainly recommend Aruba over Cisco. I don't work for Aruba pre-sales and I hold a CCNP so I've been Cisco all the way but since using Aruba I have defected.

In answer to your question, I would certainly recommend a course to get familiar with the management software. It is fairly intuitive (as long as you do things in the right order ;-) To be honest it took me a little while to get out of Cisco-mode and get to grips with the underlying software structure but I love the WIPS functionality and playing with the triangulation feature when I get bored and want to spook people ;-)

I have also heard good reviews of Xirrus and their phased-array antennas/APs. It's a different approach to the mainstream but I heard that they have installed it at the United Nations HQ... so it must be worth a look at ...