Controllers, NMS, etc- nice to make them all someone else’s problem.

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu<mailto:lhbad...@syr.edu> w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> On Behalf Of Price, Jamie G
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 1:44 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
<rhtur...@email.unc.edu<mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman....@mcgill.ca<mailto:norman....@mcgill.ca>  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it<http://www.mcgill.ca/it>
805 rue Sherbrooke 
Ouest<https://www.google.com/maps/search/805+rue+Sherbrooke+Ouest?entry=gmail&source=g>,
 Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<000000db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu<mailto:000000db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith 
Drive<https://www.google.com/maps/search/120+Smith+Drive+%0D%0ASyracuse,+New+York+13244?entry=gmail&source=g>
Syracuse, New York 
13244<https://www.google.com/maps/search/120+Smith+Drive+%0D%0ASyracuse,+New+York+13244?entry=gmail&source=g>
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu<mailto:lhbad...@syr.edu> w 
its.syr.edu<http://its.syr.edu>
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu<http://syr.edu>

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
<WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu<http://uw.edu>
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu<http://uw.edu/>

On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
<rhtur...@email.unc.edu<mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> 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
r...@unc.edu<mailto:r...@unc.edu>

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