I recently did an eval of Trapeze/Meru/Aruba/Aerohive (Xirrus wasn't
really on my radar) and ended up choosing Aerohive. Not only did we get
a system with no single point of failure, but we got it for less than
any of the others'non-redundant solutions. Aerohive has been great at
listening to and incorporating our requirements into the product. They
went as far as working with our NAC vendor, Bradford Networks, to
achieve the same level of integration that exists between Bradford and
Aruba (Aruba OEMs Bradford's NAC appliance) which amounts to reading
role info out of Bradford's system (RADIUS) and putting the user into
the appropriate role on the AP which governs things like VLAN
membership, QoS, firewall rulesets, etc. In short, my feeling is that,
for us, AeroHive is the most flexible, scalable, and secure solution we
could have chosen. Aruba was a close second in most areas, but
controller-based systems can't compare price/performance-wise. With
AeroHive's 3.2 release, they're coming out with some great new features
like true airtime QoS a la Meru's Air Traffic Control and for those of
you with Bradford CampusManager, rougue AP countermeasures through the
CM system (port shutdown, dead-end VLAN, etc). =20
Regarding Meru, I was initially very taken with the single channel
architecture, but after evaluating all aspects, I found a few holes in
the feature set as compared to the others, with no clear road-map and a
disturbing inability to execute in all their sales-related work. Their
RFP response was actually comical in its poor presentation and they
clearly wanted to steer us away from their N products even though the
RFP was written to strongly prefer N solutions (every other vendor
responded with N solutions). IMO, that said something about their
readiness in that area. =20
I'm happy to discuss off-list if you're interested.
Ben Schworm
Berkshire School
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Fred Austin
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 10:45 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Xirrus?
> Sorry for cutting off the previous responses to this thread but the=20
> server kicked my response back for too many lines?
We too are analyzing an upgrade to our wireless LAN also. We have had
Xirrus and Aerohive do site surveys. What I am trying to do is prevent
single points of failure. Controller-less architecture seems to be an
ideal situation. I really liked the robustness and flexibility of the
multiple radios. What I don't like is the single point issue. If that
Xirrus box goes down, for whatever, the whole building goes with it.
What I do like about multiple radio AP's is that we can offer a mixed
A/B/G/N environment without causing performance slowdowns for the N
users. Or once we move most nodes to the N standard. Some other features
I like is to have policy control such as TCP/UDP port management,
state-full packet inspection, kill rogue AP's, DoS attack prevention,
QoS, etc brought out to the AP rather than backhauling to a controller.
Our particular needs don't necessarily require as many AP's due the fact
that we only have single story buildings. We have a little less than 200
wireless computers and bandwidth needs vary throughout the day. But
clearly, the bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially.
Has anyone else looked at Aerohive? It would be nice to hear their
opinion in this thread also.
Thanks guys
Fred Austin
Technology Director
The Oakwood School
Greenville, NC
>
>
>> We are considering upgrading our wireless infrastructure. I'd like=20
>> to
>
>> hear from any schools that are using or had considered and decided=20
>> not
>
>> to use a Xirrus solution.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>> Larry Kahn
>> Director of Academic and Information Technology The Kinkaid School
>> Phone: (713) 243-5090
>> Skype: larry.kahn
>> Blog: newthingsnewways.blogspot.com
>>
>>
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