WiFi/SmartSchools.ie

[Clare-Marie]

Hi, 

We are looking into installing wifi throughout our school. Can anyone recommend any companies? We have heard of SmartSchools.... any thoughts/suggestions? 

Thanks

Clare-Marie 

[G P Ashe]

Lots of thoughts and suggestions - this comes up fairly frequently on the list and there is no ideal answer. 

Key considerations are budget, scale, area, population.

Most "solution providers" are tied to a particular vendor - Ruckus, Meraki, Meru, Aerohive etc. So you have to decide are you going to pick a provider and go with their preferred product, or pick a product and then find a provider. If you go the latter and can find more than one provider you can get competitive quotes which can be compared. Much more difficult to compare proposals from 2 or more different vendors.

-- gpa

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[John Hegarty]

We went with Meru from http://itrollout.ie/ and found them good to work with.

As Greg says most vendors selling enterprise wireless systems tend to do just one and specialise in that one. I'd say you will want to have an ongoing support contract for whatever system you buy so having a company that you can have a good relationship with is likely to be important. Having someone relatively local might be a good thing too. There is a lot of stuff they will be able to sort out remotely if needed but if you need someone onsite to sort a problem and their offices are a 3 hour drive away that could be a bit of a challenge.

jh

[G P Ashe]

I forgot my customary plug to Ubiquiti (www.ubnt.com) - best value for the feature set they offer without a doubt.

-- gpa

[Clare-Marie]

Hi thanks for your response. We are finding this exactly, each company is telling us their product/system is better!

[Clare-Marie]

Thanks John- yes I think a localish company is the best option . 

[Linda McCusker]

We went for Juniper and have found it fantastic - we have it in 2 years at this stage and have experienced no major issues.

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[Clare-Marie]

Do you mind me asking, who installed it for you? 

[Linda McCusker]

Hi Clare-Marie,

It was a company called Telindus - they were based in Belfast but have relocated to Dublin now.  I got in touch with them through the 100mbps pilot broadband scheme - they were employed to bring the fibre into our school.  

They are very professional and available to help straight away.  I've found it great - our school is a very large school with old buildings with thick walls in places - other companies said they'd need to put a router in each room and therefore were ridiculously expensive - these have a router between 2 rooms in the old parts of the school and one between 3 rooms in nearer parts.  All teachers using iPads all day and no issues anywhere. 

Also extra routers can be installed if we go down the student iPad route to boost signal.  If there is anything else you'd like to know or if you'd like to see it just ask!

Linda.

Sent from my iPhone

[John Hegarty]

I'd suggest that 1 access point between a number of rooms is fine when the usage is just the teachers. You are likely to run in to issues though when the density gets higher. The issue isn't so much the "strength" of the signal but the density of the demand on any one access point. I'd be very surprised if three classes with all students using wireless devices will work on only one access point. I'd say 1 access point per room is a better long term goal where you might have 25-30 people trying to use it at the same time. This isn't a hard and fast rule and it may also depend on the kind of usage. 25 people streaming video is likely to be more demanding that 25 people researching something on wikipedia.

jh

[Hassan Dabbagh]

I'm with ya on the ubiquiti stuff 

Hassan Dabbagh

087 9044716

[Clare-Marie]

Thanks a million Linda- lots of things to think about there. 

[Clare-Marie]

Ok thanks for that. We will look at our budget and see how far we can stretch but can look at access points for the future in this planning stage.