We did that for awhile with two different vendors. Over the course of about
6-12 months, we migrated from a full vendor A system to a vendor B system. It
actually wasn't all that bad, really, provided you stick to some basic
principles:
1. Do it building by building. Don't swap half the WAPs in one building with
vendor A while the remainder is vendor B.
a. Keep a list of what buildings are on what system so you know at a
glance where to go to investigate trouble
b. Make sure to reserve some mgmt. IP space for your new gear. Lay all
this out before the first piece of new hardware arrives
2. Any proprietary L3 roaming between the two is obviously not going to work
3. Test test test! Your current vendor may have a small tickbox (like a MAC
filter or some other feature you're relying on) that the new stuff can't
replicate
4. Rip and replace may not be the wisest option. Understand the radio
propagation properties of your new gear. A total WAP infrastructure replacement
can be a great time to adjust coverage and really get it right the second time
around
In our case, our users never complained at all about the new gear (actually,
those who knew what they were looking at got good at spotting the new WAPs and
gravitated towards them :) Our old gear was .11g controller-based and the new
dual-band distributed data forwarding .11n stuff was a massive upgrade. UX
definitely improved wherever we put the new stuff in.
-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Oliver, Jeff
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2015 12:42 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Multi Vendor environments in WiFi space
All,
This is probably an old topic, but I have not seen anything in a while on it.
At present we are a Cisco shop with regard to our wireless deployment, and we
are looking at changing out a substantial number (250) of our AP's (1131 to
3702). These AP's represent about 30% of our deployment so is a substantial
investment, and as such our CIO has asked us to look at other solutions.
I am wondering if any of you are running multi vendor environments and if so,
what the UX is like? What are the toolsets like regarding management of two
disparate systems?
Cheers,
Jeff
---
Jeffrey L. Oliver
Sr. Network Analyst
Information Technology Services
The University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, Alberta, T1K 3M4
Tel: 403.329.5162
Mob: 403.315.4461
Fax: 403.382.7108
URI: [email protected]
**********
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/.
