Steve, Be sure to investigate the number 2 wireless vendor, Aruba Networks. We chose them over Cisco several years ago and are very happy.
Aruba has a wide range of wireless products for every size business. (Their Instant AP solution has a maximum of 16 APs before you need to upgrade.) They also have the Airwave product that can provide cross-vendor wireless monitoring, if you need this. We found the Aruba controller's built-in firewall and their overall architecture superior to Cisco's offering at the time. Feel free to contact me off-list if you want more details. Bruce Osborne Network Engineer IT Network Services (434) 592-4229 Liberty University | Training Champions for Christ since 1971 -----Original Message----- From: Steve Bohrer [mailto:skboh...@simons-rock.edu] Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 4:25 PM Subject: Anyone tried Ubiquiti UniFi campus wifi? A few months ago there were some generally positive posts about Ubiquiti's Air Fiber links, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried out their UniFi controller-less campus wifi solution, particularly with their dual-band "UniFi Pro AP" and/or their "UniFi AP AC" access points. For background, we are a very small college, and currently have an older Cisco WLC/WPS system, mostly with their A/G APs; though we have "N" in one building. The hardware limit of our current pair of WLCs is 75 APs, and we've hit that, so are considering our next step: Expand our Cisco system with newer gear; or else go to something else for our un-covered buildings, and have two systems running side-by-side for a while as we transition to the new system. I want to add about 25 APs right now to cover our four main dorms, and I think our eventual full-coverage, high-density (for small values of "high"!) deployment might be about 150 APs total. Staying with Cisco means upgrading from our WLC 4402s to 5508, which also means upgrading from WCS to PI, and it is feeling a bit like overkill for our size. I can't say that I've been heavily using all of the features and reporting of our current WCS. We are having presentations from other vendors, and my Sys Admin recommended Ubiquiti, and their price is _amazingly_ low. WIth their gear, we could add the new APs and also replace all of our existing Cisco APs for significantly less than the cost of adding 25 new Cisco "N" APs+WLC+PI. For our scale, that is really attractive. Part of the cost saving, of course, is that Ubiquiti doesn't have reps and a sales team and such, so we won't get nearly as whizzy a pitch from Ubiquiti as we have from the rest of the wifi vendors. Thus, first hand experiences from other schools that have actually deployed this stuff would be very useful. Thanks for any pros or cons you can share about UniFi. (Feel free to mention your favorite wifi system as well, if you think it reasonable for our small scale and budget. From the stuff we've seen so far, I like Ruckus, Aerohive, and Meru, but don't have much user feedback on any of them.) Steve Bohrer Network Admin, ITS Bard College at Simon's Rock 413-528-7645 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
