If it’s really cat5 and not 5e, gigabit may work but you will run into a lot of crosstalk issues in bundles as the number of cables running gig increase i.e. five in a bundle of 50 probably OK, 20 out of 50, maybe not. I’d test the cat5 just to see where you are.
Wave 1 vs Wave 2 – Some of the benefits of Wave 2 e.g. MU-MIMO require client support, but in EDU with our high-device turn-over we’re more likely to see clients with this support sooner rather than later. You also have to decide to what extent you’re going to invest in Wave 2. That is, if you want to extract the maximum possible performance, you have to commit to two GigE to each AP or move to NBase-T for 5GigE. If you’re going to run a pair of GigE to each and every AP, you should probably invest in a NBase-T switch as the port cost is less than the cost for the pair of GigE ports. There are also power (PoE) considerations – if you want state-of-art and NBase-T, your switches may need to support 30 watts per port. Basically, you have a cascade of decisions (and compromises) to make. On the outsourcing question. The complaints won’t go away, you just won’t hear them, and service response time will no doubt go down, but you also won’t win the battle based on just that argument. I’d do a costing study. Figure out what A-ee is going to charge you per year, then figure out what it would cost you to provide the same level of service. Make sure to factor in the life-cycle of the equipment and see where you’re at. With A-ee, you are paying that yearly fee no matter what (unless you want it to stop working). If you own it and the college has a tough year, you can always delay life-cycle replacement for a year and be OK. Jeff From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> on behalf of Brian Helman <[email protected]> Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, August 4, 2016 at 7:57 AM To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Outsourced ResNet We're talking with a large college-oriented service provider about outsourcing our residence halls' networking (wireless and wired). Originally, I was going to write this email in a neutral tone, but I'm just not sold on the idea. I AM willing to listen to my peers on this list.... Anyone using these guys? Happy, dissatisfied, neutral? Assuming we look closer, I'd like to know how they handle guests: * student guests during the academic year * non-institutional residents .. ie "summer" guests that may be in housing for 4 days to 2 months * non-student residents (faculty in residence, administrative offices that may co-lo in res halls, etc) Some of our older res halls still have Cat5 cabling. This company is pushing 11ac Wave 1 products. They minimize installation costs by re-using cabling. Their specifications say that Cat5 for runs less than 150' is fine (for gbs ethernet). I'm doing this in my house, so sure .. but thoughts? They don't guarantee a signal strength. They use a device count (4:1). Our 5GHz standard is -60 or better. Concerns? One argument from sr management is -- Wouldn't you like the complaints to go away? My answer is, if we are funded to update the design (most places we currently have a coverage, not capacity design) they'll go away (we have 4 buildings with 11ac, designed for capacity. They are the only buildings we don't get complaints about). I do have consistency of service/experience concerns. Getting the res halls working well is obviously great, but if they then go to an academic building and the experience is different, that's a little more overhead on the Help Desk. I'm also very concerned about diverting funding such that only the res halls are fixed. Any other information .. again, good, bad or neutral .. as to why you used, considered, are using an outsourced service? I'm not going to put the name of the company (starts with A, ends with EE) so my question doesn't show up in obvious searches. Also, I'm only interested in this service as it pertains to wireless (not cross posting to NETMAN). Feel free to ping me directly. -Brian ********** 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/.
