+1 for the Juniper gear. We're currently at about 650 APs (mostly the 532 3x3
stream AP, with the last legacy ones slated to be replaced this summer) and
three 2800 controllers.
Just two more points to add:
- RingMaster is slated to be replaced by the not-yet-released Network
Director tool, which runs on Junos Space, though not any time soon. The last
guess I heard was they didn't expect feature parity for a few more years, and
would keep maintaining RingMaster for now. You can see talks about it (along
with other tidbits and their wireless) on their wireless field day videos:
http://techfieldday.com/appearance/juniper-presents-at-wireless-field-day-4/
- If you're using a controller cluster, and have n+1 redundancy, the hitless
upgrade works beautifully. If you have enough AP coverage redundancy, you can
potentially do a full upgrade without any of your connected clients even
noticing that you did anything.
Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that
Manager of Network Operations | is simple, elegant, and wrong.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute | - HL Mencken
On 3/11/2013 3:55 PM, Daniel Westacott wrote:
Hi Educause:
We here at Minnesota (Twin Cities and Morris) are a pretty large
Juniper (Used to be Trapeze wireless) shop.
We are also a Cisco shop.
35 MX-2800 contollers
5000 access points, all 802.11n
20,000 peak users.
How are the reporting features?
Always been pretty good, hugely improved lately.
Is the interface easy to use?
Ringmaster is a Java thing, so there are some java\apple issues to
deal with for admins with apple. If you are running the ringmaster
tool you will need java. Even if apple things it should not run java
at all.
Are upgrades easy?
Very easy. We do vet everything (switches, routers, wireless) before deploying.
802.11ac early support?
Nothing shipping yet.
What are your experiences with support?
Great.
How expensive?
Reasonable, it was very much cheaper than the Cisco proposal.
How does it compare with Cisco’s offerings?
Not sure about the current cisco lineup, but it was a little ahead of
Cisco when we bought.
The RF planning tool works well for us.
Cisco had some issues with the scale of our plant, but I suspect they
have fixed that by now.
The Diagnostics are very extensive.
/daniel/
daniel westacott
University of Minnesota
Twin Cities Campus.
On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:26 PM, Joshua Strohschein
<[email protected]> wrote:
Greetings to all,
We are considering a wireless refresh for our campus and would appreciate
some vendor recommendations. While we currently are a Cisco shop, that does
not necessarily mean we will be in the future.
Here is our current setup:
1. 3x Cisco 4404 controllers
2. Approx 150 APs. Mixture of 1142n and 3502i models
3. Average 1500 devices at peak hours
We have two options. Upgrade our Cisco gear or choose a different vendor. So
who do you like and why?
Here are the main points that we’d like to know:
1. How are the reporting features?
2. Is the interface easy to use?
3. Are upgrades easy?
4. 802.11ac early support?
5. What are your experiences with support?
6. How expensive?
7. How does it compare with Cisco’s offerings?
Note: This project does not include our dorms, this is handled by a third
party.
Any other valuable insights are welcome!
Thank you for your time.
Joshua Strohschein
Network Analyst
The University of Texas at Tyler
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