RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru
If you talk to enough people, you can find horror stories for pretty much every vendor out there. And the true cause of the horror is often debatable, as the blame is probably equally spread between the vendors themselves and the resellers/integrators working on some of those projects. I'd second the site visits and at least looking at the other vendors out there. At the very least, some of their unique features may prompt some valuable questions to ask the market leaders. We chose Meru (and are still very happy) after looking at everybody, but that was almost five years ago now. Pretty much ancient history at this point :) Matt Barber '07 Network and Systems Manager Morrisville State College 315-684-6053 From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Jennings, Zachariah E. Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 10:10 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru Well, my boss forced me to do a bake-off between Aruba and Meru a couple years back, even though we are an Aruba campus. The big selling points for me were ARM (Adaptive Radio Management) and band steering. It was funny. I asked the Meru engineer why my Macbook Pro was on 5Ghz one minute and then 2.4Ghz the next, even though I was about 20 feet from the AP in an auditorium. His response was There's no way for anyone except the client to control whether or not you get onto 5Ghz. I just nodded my head and smiled, knowing that Aruba's band steering did just that. I've heard some horror stores about Meru and Meraki implementations. Sometimes those type of implementations can work great on a small scale demo, but as soon as you expand it into a campus solution, it fails to live up to expectations. After years of being lied to by tech companies, I've learned never to buy something without meeting other people that use it in the same scenario that you are going to use it. I even try to do an onsite visit whenever possible. You know something is amiss if the sales person tries to steer you away from talking to other clients or visiting their clients' sites. Zach Jennings Senior Network Server Manager Aruba Certified Mobility Professional, Airheads MVP West Chester University of PA 610-436-1069 From: Scott Smith ssm...@siu.edumailto:ssm...@siu.edu Reply-To: EDUCAUSE Listserv WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDUmailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:30:37 -0600 To: EDUCAUSE Listserv WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDUmailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru I've seen many times on this list people discuss the differences between Cisco, Aruba, and Meru. I know there are pros and cons of each, but I'm wanting to get feedback from people who have either done a bake off or at least tested between them, and more specifically somewhat recently. I did this like 2 years ago, and discussed with hospitals as well as other Universities but I'm now wondering about more recent testings. -- [cid:image001.jpg@01CCD689.B68EB090] Scott Smith Network Engineering Information Technology Southern Illinois University Carbondale Redhat Certified Engineer ssm...@siu.edumailto:ssm...@siu.edu ** 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/. ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. inline: image001.jpg
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru
On 1/18/2012 7:30 PM, Scott Smith wrote: I've seen many times on this list people discuss the differences between Cisco, Aruba, and Meru. I know there are pros and cons of each, but I'm wanting to get feedback from people who have either done a bake off or at least tested between them, and more specifically somewhat recently. We started, years ago, with fat Cisco APs (Aeronets?). Got very complicated very quickly. Next we chose Meru, easy to deploy, fairly easy to manage, but it didn't scale well (cost or capability). We're currently using Aruba. In the current upgrades we are looking at density issues -- we started out just getting heat map coverage, without too much attention to density; as a result, we now have crowded/capacity issue areas, particularly in b/g. So I would have to concur with others concerns about spectrum and density. If you scaled for laptops, now you have phones, media players/readers, and iThings around every corner. Even unregistered/unauthenticated, they still associate and eat up airspace and a client slot. Jeff ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru
Toms Hardware did a very in-depth analysis of several manufacturers last year. I would go to their web site and see what they have to say. I've tested Cisco, Aruba, Meru, Ruckus and have considered Motorola recently. Tom's is a much more thorough test group. My results also considered reliability and cost both initial and overall maintenance. My budget is not huge so I have to make each dollar count. On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Scott Smith ssm...@siu.edu wrote: I've seen many times on this list people discuss the differences between Cisco, Aruba, and Meru. I know there are pros and cons of each, but I'm wanting to get feedback from people who have either done a bake off or at least tested between them, and more specifically somewhat recently. I did this like 2 years ago, and discussed with hospitals as well as other Universities but I'm now wondering about more recent testings. -- [image: Redhat Certified Engineer] Scott Smith Network Engineering Information Technology Southern Illinois University Carbondale Redhat Certified Engineer ssm...@siu.edu ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. -- Harry Rauch Network Analyst Eckerd College 4200 - 54th Ave So St. Petersburg, FL 33711 727-864-8318 ** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. red_hat_cert_eng_logo-clr_email.jpg
Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru
Well, my boss forced me to do a bake-off between Aruba and Meru a couple years back, even though we are an Aruba campus. The big selling points for me were ARM (Adaptive Radio Management) and band steering. It was funny. I asked the Meru engineer why my Macbook Pro was on 5Ghz one minute and then 2.4Ghz the next, even though I was about 20 feet from the AP in an auditorium. His response was There's no way for anyone except the client to control whether or not you get onto 5Ghz. I just nodded my head and smiled, knowing that Aruba's band steering did just that. I've heard some horror stores about Meru and Meraki implementations. Sometimes those type of implementations can work great on a small scale demo, but as soon as you expand it into a campus solution, it fails to live up to expectations. After years of being lied to by tech companies, I've learned never to buy something without meeting other people that use it in the same scenario that you are going to use it. I even try to do an onsite visit whenever possible. You know something is amiss if the sales person tries to steer you away from talking to other clients or visiting their clients' sites. Zach Jennings Senior Network Server Manager Aruba Certified Mobility Professional, Airheads MVP West Chester University of PA 610-436-1069 From: Scott Smith ssm...@siu.edumailto:ssm...@siu.edu Reply-To: EDUCAUSE Listserv WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDUmailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:30:37 -0600 To: EDUCAUSE Listserv WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDUmailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Cisco vs. Aruba vs. Meru I've seen many times on this list people discuss the differences between Cisco, Aruba, and Meru. I know there are pros and cons of each, but I'm wanting to get feedback from people who have either done a bake off or at least tested between them, and more specifically somewhat recently. I did this like 2 years ago, and discussed with hospitals as well as other Universities but I'm now wondering about more recent testings. -- [Redhat Certified Engineer] Scott Smith Network Engineering Information Technology Southern Illinois University Carbondale Redhat Certified Engineer ssm...@siu.edumailto:ssm...@siu.edu ** 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/. inline: red_hat_cert_eng_logo-clr_email.jpg
