While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into
this possibility for
the same reasons. While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have
any greenfield
515-only deployments.
We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco
as some existing
collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..
On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:
All:
We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000
access points. While every relationship with vendors have their ups
and downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the
point that I am considering making the enormous move to choose a
different vendor. The biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and
bugs that we just don’t consider appropriate to use in production. It
has been one thing after the other, and my extremely talented and
qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as well be on the
Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to solve
bugs. Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.
The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train. We have
them deployed in one of our IT buildings. Periodically, people that
are connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working. To the
user, they are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive. If they
are on their phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything
works fine on cell. Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than
switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve. Normally, if the users
disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think
they end up connecting in the 2.4G band). We’ve been working on this
problem with them for months. It always seems as though we have to
prove there is a real issue. I’m fed up with it. We are a
sophisticated shop. If we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we
bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem. I’m extra frustrated
that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train that we
don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus. To Aruba’s credit,
we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around February).
When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought
back half of them. I asked for them to buy back half because I
thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues
would be fixed by the time the 315s ran out. Not looking to be the case.
So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move
away from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).
There are other bugs I’m not even mentioning here. For those of you
that made the switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long
the honeymoon lasted, what were your motivators, and were you happy
with the overall results? Of course, this is a great opportunity to
plug your vendor. As I see it, we have 3 choices…. Something from
Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), something from
Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), something
from Juniper (Mist).
Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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Mike Davis
IT - University of Delaware - 302.831.8756
Newark, DE 19716 Email [email protected]
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