I second the Meraki recommendation. But I would expand that to Aerohive and AirTight as well. The cloud-managed stuff brings huge advantages in that insanity of controller upgrades (and it is just that) and management server care and feeding goes away. I run several Meraki sites, and can't say enough good about them. I also have a small prod Aerohive deployment, and an AirTight AP in my lab. As one who runs a very large Cisco deployment (almost 4K), I'm a firm believer in cloud-managed WiFi as a viable option.
-Lee Badman From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Hall, Rand Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 8:06 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Anyone tried Ubiquiti UniFi campus wifi? If you're willing to consider Ubiquiti you should take a look at Cisco's Meraki stuff. You may be able to get some trade-in value for your old Cisco stuff to stay with Cisco. It might make replacing your whole wireless network within reach. We have a 450 AP Meraki installation that's great. We added 125 this summer. It's nice to just keep adding without running into the controller brick wall (like you've experienced). It doesn't have all of the knobs and buttons of a Cisco or Aruba--but that doesn't seem like a deal breaker for you. Rand Rand P. Hall Director, Network Services askIT! Merrimack College 978-837-3532 rand.h...@merrimack.edu<mailto:rand.h...@merrimack.edu> If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions. - Einstein On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Steve Bohrer <skboh...@simons-rock.edu<mailto:skboh...@simons-rock.edu>> wrote: 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<tel: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/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
