We also currently use Enterasys wireless and have for several years through several products. We currently have around 300 of the 3610 AP's and 60 or so of the older Trapeze re branded products. We are very pleased with the access points and with our support from Enterasys as a whole. All support is handled by Enterasys themselves and located in the US.
We are currently looking at a budgeting a refresh where we upgrade and add additional access points to hopefully anticipate needs for the next several years. I have answered a couple of the other comments inline. On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM, James Andrewartha < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Joshua, > > We use Enterasys wireless and switches, as well as their NAC product and > Netsight management system (which does switches as well). We have 100 > APs currently, which will rise to 150 when the new 3710 AP comes out > (April I'm currently told). Right now we have just under 1000 clients > associated > > On 12/03/13 03:26, Joshua Strohschein wrote: > > 1. How are the reporting features? > > The wireless reporting is actually a little lacking compared to Airwave > (which we used with our fat Cisco IOS APs, we had ~40 1231s and ~50 > 1252s), but they're actively developing their web reporting site OneView > which is good. For wireless auth logs I actually use the NAC Manager > (which is basically a FreeRADIUS server with a nice GUI). > You can also get advanced wireless services that provides wireless IPS, additional mapping and reporting on top of what is already available. > > > 2. Is the interface easy to use? > > NAC Manager is a bit baroque, but the wireless controller Web UI is > quite good, and OneView is good too. There's also a command-line, which > I only use to put config dumps into RANCID and is pretty much equivalent. > > > 3. Are upgrades easy? > > We bought redundant controllers (you only pay the base price of the > controller, you don't have to buy each license twice). So you upgrade > one, the APs fail over to the other, then upgrade that one and APs fail > back. Note that APs will usually upgrade their firmware on association, > so the fail back is when they'll reboot and upgrade. You can control the > fail back however, so as to do it when you want. There's a scheduler for > the controller upgrade, I don't think there's one for the APs. > There is a way to schedule AP upgrades. Wireless Settings > Global Settings > AP Maintenance > Controlled Upgrades allows AP software testing and scheduled upgrades. I have successfully used it to resolve some of the iOS issues. > > > 4. 802.11ac early support? > > Definitely not, they've had 6 months of delays on their latest 802.11n > AP, and Enterasys is a bit of a slow mover in general. I'm a bit dubious > about the benefits of 802.11ac over 40MHz 3-stream 802.11n channels in > 5GHz, which would give you 450Mbps today, with a suitable client. Note > that iPads are single-stream devices, and prior to iPhone 5/iPad 4 only > support 20MHz channels, which basically means 802.11g speeds. > The last I have heard is support of 802.11ac will come in 6-8 months. The delay for the most recent iteration was apparently due to the FCC flagging something and holding it up. > > > 5. What are your experiences with support? > > We initially had a problem with Bonjour not working, which kept on for a > few weeks until it got escalated and an engineer came on site (from the > US, and we're in Australia, although he was here for another customer). > He was a switch engineer, but did help solve the problem with remote > assistance from their L3 wireless engineer. So their L1 wasn't so great, > and in retrospect I should have escalated it quicker, but once it was it > got resolved pretty quick. > > Addresses this above, but exceeds expectation and the support of any other company we have worked for. > > 6. How expensive? > > Pretty cheap, although how much of that was special pricing for us to be > an example school I don't know. Even so, I've heard it's pretty cheap at > regular education pricing. > > For education, depending on quantity we have been able to see ~25 to 50% off list for educational pricing. You should be able to find list pricing by googling, also make sure you find a channel partner at a gold or platinum level as they have access to better discounts. > 7. How does it compare with Cisco’s offerings? > > A lot cheaper, and a bit nicer too, based on my brief experience of > their WLC while doing performance tests. Cisco's WLC still doesn't seem > fully in to the 802.11n world, a lot of their rate bins in config and > graphs are based on 802.11g speeds. > > Their new (still unreleased) 3725 AP has a third radio purely for > intrusion detection, which compares favourably to Cisco's CleanAir. It > does require 802.3at PoE, but their other APs are strictly designed for > 802.3af. We had to use power bricks for the 1252s, and while I think the > newer Cisco APs (and those from other vendors) are 802.3af in theory, > Enterasys claims they may draw more over long runs or in high load > (Aruba's definitely guilty of this: > > http://www.educause.edu/discuss/networking-and-emerging-technologies/wireless-local-area-networking-constituent-group/aruba-ap-power-issue > ) > > Cisco is now all about Unified Access and the same policy across wired > and wireless - Enterasys have been doing this for years. It works best > with their switches, but works with any switch that supports RFC3850. > This is perhaps more relevant for your dorms, although I see they're out > of scope. > > Not sure, but I see lots of problems on this list with Cisco issues that we have never had to deal with. > > Any other valuable insights are welcome! > > We were heavily tilted towards raw performance, but beyond that (and > ultimately deciding) was the user access control management (NAC). If > you do go Cisco, you'd be looking at ISE, Aruba have ClearPass, and > there's third-parties like Bradford and ForeScout. The killer feature of > Enterasys was them writing integration with our MDM, Casper, for our > iPad fleet, but I imagine this would be less important for a university. > > We evaluated Aruba, Cisco, Enterasys, Ruckus, Meru and Aerohive. > Aerohive got knocked out for poor performance, hardware failures in 2 of > the 4 test APs and poor local support, but I don't know what they're > like now and in the US. Cisco were expensive and Cisco (ie hard to deal > with), Aruba were good but also expensive. Ruckus worked beautifully > (their engineer showed up, put up the APs and read his email while I got > great speeds without any tuning) but didn't have the enterprise features > we wanted (we could have bought Enterasys NAC to put on top, but then > why not buy Enterasys wireless too?). Enterasys we bought on the promise > of the new AP performing well, plus the integration with our switch > network and MDM software. > > We technically ordered through a partner, but all our support has been > direct with Enterasys because they want to use us as a demo school. Like > any technology project, you'll want a good partner - that was one reason > we didn't go with Cisco, as that partner had done our CUCM install and > left us in the lurch a bit. > > To sum up, the wireless tech is important, but so are all the parts that > surround it too, so work out what else you want from the wireless first. > > I'm not sure if I should post this to the list as we're a K-12 school, > not a university. If you have any other questions, let me know. > > Not sure, let me know if you have other specific questions and I will be glad to answer them. > -- > James Andrewartha > Network & Projects Engineer > Christ Church Grammar School > Claremont, Western Australia > Ph. (08) 9442 1757 > Mob. 0424 160 877 > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > > > -- Ben Parker Senior Network Engineer University of Mount Union Phone: 330-829-2866 Twitter: @BenParker82 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
