James, We here at Liberty University have just finished a technical evaluation of wireless and NAC solutions.
We started with 450 1231g "thick" APs and a dozen Vivato wireless panels. Since we are a Cisco shop, we were using Clean Access Layer-2 Virtual Gateway for "In-Band" wireless and "Out-of-Band" wired ports (Cisco 2550 & 3750, Dorm only through CCA). At one time, due to high availability, I had 30 physical servers for Clean Access. Since late last year, we have been deploying an Aruba Networks 802.11n solution with Aruba ECS (Bradford Campus Manager) for Layer-3, totally "Out-of-Band" NAC. Now, when I implement HA, I will have 4 physical servers, but configuration & upgrades treat tis system as a single server. Aruba & Bradford support have been fantastic. We are using their NAC Persistent Agent for both Windows & Macintosh. We now check patches on 64- bit Windows systems & Macintosh systems too. We re-scan systems without the weekly "kick everybody off". Our wireless is primarily managed from the master controller, although we hve added Airwave AMP for monitoring. We are looking toward all-wireless in any new dorms and our administration is excited at reducing the number of network switches needed. We officially "turned up" this system in early January and have over 470 APs deployed with more being added every week. Contact me offline for more information. Bruce Osborne Network Engineer Liberty University On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 14:00:42 -0500, James Moskwa <[email protected]> wrote: >Today, most all of our residence halls are wired (one jack per pillow on >average) with some wireless coverage in common areas. We are toying with the >idea of converting to 100% wireless, which would allow us to retire rather >than replace an aging switch infrastructure. > >As part of the investigation process, I was hoping to get some feedback from >other institutions on what they have done or are planning to do with their >residence hall infrastructure in regards to the wired vs wireless question. > >Any input would be greatly appreciated. > >Regards, >-- Jim > >Jim Moskwa >Manager Networks & Security >Information Technology Department >Johnson & Wales University >8 Abbott Park Place >Providence, RI 02903 >Office: 401-598-1556 >Fax: 401-598-1329 >Email: [email protected] > > > > >
