Wireless School Network Upgrade Project (WSNUP)

[Chris Nelson]

Hi All

What is the general feeling on the Wireless School Network Upgrade Project (WSNUP)?

Is it worth the cost if a school already has a good wireless set up in place - Ubiquiti system?

Also have a small school that hasn't been that interested in wireless even though I have suggested several times. They do have a couple of domestic access points installed due to being donated but would go in any upgrade. Is the WSNUB the way to go or install install Ubiquiti or similar instead that would probably work out a lot cheaper.

I know there was a discussion a while back but my search didn't find it.

Cheers

Chris

[Mike Etheridge]

My understanding is that the stuff they are rolling out isn't even ac, so they are a generation behind what some of us are doing (e.g. with Ubiquiti) in effect.

I am hoping they will be able to do the infrastructure upgrades they would have done anyway to support their solution/s, i.e upgrade the few 100 Mbps switched we have in some places on the edge to Gigabit on every port, and leave us with the (superior in my view) access points and controller system we already have in place.

Mike

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[Bevan McNaughton]

For smaller schools it depends. A layout of UniFi's should be fine for everyday needs, but for larger schools then WSNUP is probably worth it. One thing you have to consider with the WSNUP is that some options have ongoing annual costs (licencing) once installed. Some of their (WSNUP provided) radio/wireless is better in some cases. I have issues with UniFi's and Apple devices here (biggest complaints) and it's mainly around the fact that iPads, etc seem to get titchy with some settings. Areas where we have the UniFi Pro or AC series A.P's seem to run better with them however.

WSNUP is holding out for 802.11ac Wave 2 which can handle over 3Gbps, however your bottleneck is still the Gigabit uplink port....

We were SNUPped in 2011 when WSNUP wasn't available. A quote from Ruckus at the time was over $80k so not feasible. It has been cheaper for us to install a mix of Ubiquiti Standard, Long-Range, Pro & AC gear and upgrade/migrate A.P's over the few years since than put it all in on one hit, and as learning spaces increase their use of Wireless technology we can simply stick in an AC unit as required.

The downside to the UniFi's compared to the antenna systems on say the Ruckus gear is Horizontal Vs Vertical mounting. Although the Vertical mounting looks nice in say a suspended-ceiling environment, it does deminish coverage for horizontally held devices.

Bevan

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax: +64 3 216 9010

[trevor storr]

mmmm, one of the things that schools need to take into consideration is the cost of upgrading a system if for some reason the design/implementation turns out say 24 months later to be under specified.  Ruckus would be expensive for some schools   - in comparison to unifi.  We had to upgrade our unifi with a couple of extra ap's when we started using chromebooks.  This was to cover areas where the signal strength (5g) was a wee bit too weak.  Using unifi, the cost was trivial, but I'm not so sure if it would have been the case with ruckus.

What's the ap / client ratio for WSNUP?

trevor

cheers

Trevor

Trevor Storr
Director of eLearning, CantaNET http://educo.vln.school.nz
Waimate High School
Waimate
New Zealand

[Julian Davison]

Nevermind underspecified, the technology will have shifted so you’ll need to be considering future upgrade paths regardless of current spec.

Which means looking at AP-limits within management systems (do you pay x$ for y-APs so when you get that one more AP you pay another x$ just to manage it) as well as the ongoing maintenance of licencing what you start with.

 

J,

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[Mike Etheridge]

We have over 1000 users connected wirelessly generally, with 34 ac access points shifting Gigabytes of data every hour. If that's everyday needs, then, sure, UniFi is fine for everyday needs. Definitely works fine for us.

Mike

[Alan at Wadestown School]

Hi Chris

> What is the general feeling on the Wireless School Network Upgrade Project (WSNUP)?

> Is it worth the cost if a school already has a good wireless set up in place - Ubiquiti system?

We have got unifi access points (model UAP) which are about to be replaced this month by Ruckus access points (model 7982). 

The unfi APs are 802.11n as are the ruckus APs. The unifi are single-band whereas the Ruckus are dual-band.

When it was our time to get SNUPed we choose to replace the wireless too, because of a combination of 3 factors

1) some small parts of the school weren't yet covered by wireless

2) although the unifi gear has worked well, the promise is that the ruckus gear will work better

3) we only have to fund 20% of the upgrade ourselves

In practice the unifi access points seem to cope well up to 25 active clients. More that than and some clients seem to get dropped. 

I can download a file at 38 Mb/sec through one of our Unifi access points. Sometimes that's frustratingly slow and I hope to do better with the Ruckus gear. I'll let you know next month!

regards

Alan

Wadestown School

[Mike Etheridge]

W are replacing the UniFi n access points with the new ac access points. Dual band, gigabit uplink, secondary ethernet connection (FWIW). No problem with loading up these ones with users. Same (free) controller, can run mixed ap s if you like. Only issue so far is getting mDNS packets through the access points is a bit patchy. Will either set up proper DNS entries for the printers, or set printers up in another way, not Bonjour (mDNS).

Mike

[Julian Davison]

What are you doing with the old APs – I presume you’re not using them for additional coverage if you’re ‘replacing’ them?

 

From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com [mailto:techies-f...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Etheridge

Sent: Tuesday, 2 December 2014 11:52 a.m.
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com

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[Mike Etheridge]

Use a few to fill in the gaps. e.g turn power down to minimum, put in staff resource area. Sell the rest. They make very good home/small office APs. I've got a couple of the long range versions, suit someone with a large house/office.

Mike

On 2/12/2014, at 11:56 AM, Julian Davison <Jul...@decision1.co.nz> wrote:

What are you doing with the old APs – I presume you’re not using them for additional coverage if you’re ‘replacing’ them?

 

[Chris Nelson]

Hi All

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting reading and some good points raised.

Alan Wadestown School - I'll be interested in your findings.

Cheers

Chris