Portland Community College is a Foundry Networks' shop with all of our
network (sans border routing and firewall/vpn services) running on their
equipment. This also includes wireless. We have not yet implemented
their IronPoint Mobility series of 802.11n-compatible, controller-based
access points, but we have had numerous technical
presentations/discussions about them with our SE. We still have
individual (non-controller-based) Foundry access points in place, but
are looking to replace them in the future with a controller-based
solution, also likely from Foundry).
My personal opinion from the literature, discussions, and presentations,
is that Foundry would be a good choice. The best advice or
recommendation I can offer is to make contact with them and evaluate
their product. I would be interested in hearing about the experience.
Chris Gauthier, CCNA, Network+, A+
Network Administration Team
Portland Community College
Portland, Oregon
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned
skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."
--Leonardo da Vinci
Mark Berman wrote:
Hi all,
We are using Cisco's WCS and controller infrastructure for our
wireless LAN. We've had a number of frustrations with it (most of
which have been documented on this list by one or another of you all).
We are a small school with limited staff and are finding that managing
the Airespace (I mean Cisco) wireless system is taking more staff time
than we anticipated.
So: With the upcoming advent of 802.11n, which would require replacing
all our APs, we are taking the opportunity to revisit our choice of
platform. The second place vendor response to our RFP a few years ago
was Meru. I was very impressed with their technology but unsure of
their longevity as a company. Now they seem to be doing very well and
are doing cool things with 11n as well as the older standards.
I have two questions:
1) Does anyone know of anyone other than Meru that's doing anything
innovative with enterprise wireless? (My take is that Cisco, Aruba,
Chantry, Trapeze, etc. are basically the same technology with slightly
different feature-sets and interface).
2) Does anyone using Meru have anything negative to say about them?
I've talked to several campuses using Meru and they all seem very
happy. Somebody must have had a bad experience! What technological
gotchas have you run into? What didn't pan out the way you expected
from the sales hype?
Thanks,
- Mark
--
Mark Berman, Director for Networks & Systems
Williams College, OIT, Jesup Hall
Williamstown, MA. 01267 413-597-2092
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