WSNUP

[Andrew de Wit]

Hi all,

 

We are a small Primary – 130 children with good fixed wired network – Snupped 4 years ago. We have been BYOD for 3 years and use a UNIFI wireless system which just works. We have Fibre through NFL.

 

We have also had an email offering to WSNUP us.

 

Is there a good reason why we should do this when we already have a system that works well and has no ongoing costs?

 

With all the chatter of ongoing costs I'm reluctant to recommend us going ahead unless there is a good reason.

 

 

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Andrew de Wit

Deputy Principal

Mangaroa School

[Gerard MacManus]

Would suggest that you talk to the connected learning advisory group

http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Ministry-initiatives/Connected-Learning-Advisory-service

Gerard MacManus

Hobsonville Point Secondary School

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[Patrick Dunford]

It is a cost to have these systems, this has to be balanced with benefits (new wireless gear to the latest standards). Unifi gear doesn't have the same degree of vendor lockin as the brands the Ministry has partnered with, this means you can upgrade in stages and spread the cost over a number of years with lower costs overall. I have worked with both types of system and honestly cannot see an advantage of the Ministry partnered brands over Unifi. Since you already have cabling to the MOE standards your benefits would be limited to the new wireless standards.

However your choices are limited because the new Ministry requirement is that State schools must engage a MOE approved wireless integrator, which will be one of their preferred brands agents. This probably covers any upgrade ti existing wireless systems.

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[WHS Ict Technician]

 

Is there a good reason why we should do this when we already have a system that works well and has no ongoing costs?

I can't see any. If you put in the unifi system yourself, then you can add to it or change it yourselves without triggering the ministry's requirement for an approved contractor.

[Bevan McNaughton]

Sometimes with WSNUP they also upgrade the switchgear so if you have say some old 8000S's they may move to AT x210's or x510's. Oddly they don't seem to go to PoE switches but instead use injectors still.....

We're using UniFi with little issues (Apple devices being a different story) and have done it in a rollover to stay ahead. I know schools who also swear by WSNUP Ruckus but if it works, it works either way.

Bevan

On 25 May 2016 at 14:42, WHS Ict Technician <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

 

Is there a good reason why we should do this when we already have a system that works well and has no ongoing costs?

I can't see any. If you put in the unifi system yourself, then you can add to it or change it yourselves without triggering the ministry's requirement for an approved contractor.

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

[Mike Etheridge]

We got the WSNUP and changed from Ubiquity to Ruckus because of the switch funding. For the same cost to the school as adding another handful of UniFi APs and upgrading a few of the 100MBps edge switches, we got a full set of Gig switches, a new core switch with double the capacity and 55 Ruckus radios. Cost to the taxpayer…that’s a different story.

Change to Ruckus was swings and roundabouts. Admin of Ubiquity was much easier, and if experience to date is anything to go by, would have been scalable and updateable for ever. Admin on Ruckus is clunky, and have vendor lock plus the probability(going on recent history including reading this list) of having to replace the whole lot including expensive Zone Director when we next need to expand/up the density. But Ruckus has a lot more capability compared to the UniFi setup we had, as far as number of WLANs running, and such things as the Dynamic PSKs with “Zero IT Activation”, which my users are slowly getting their heads around.

If I already had Gig to the edge everywhere and had all the backbone capability I needed plus adequate capacity at the core including for expansion in the future, I’d be sticking to Ubiquiti. But if you need backbone and core upgrade, you could well be better off going with a WSNUP to Ruckus. If that’s what they select for you -  can’t speak for the other solutions, if they are still using them.

Mike

[Andrew de Wit]

Thank you all for your comments today. They have been really useful. Much appreciated.

Andrew

[Patrick Dunford]

Hardly surprising with the cost of good quality powered switches, for the small number of ports needing power.

[Patrick Dunford]

Number of WLANs? Is that the number of SSIDs? Do you know there is a big overhead involved in multiple SSIDs? Ubiquity putting a limit on four is a commonsense recognition of that issue.

[Patrick Dunford]

Since your school will not get funding for the replacement of all the gear in a few years time and since the MOE will force you to use one of their approved installers who will all be vending one of their approved brands - it's a question of long term perspectives vs short. I worked for a school that wasn't bound by the MOE directive so they stuck with the Unifi gear and in years to come the TCO is going to be a lot less considering no school will get funding to replace their wireless gear when it becomes obsolete.

On 25/05/2016 15:39, Mike Etheridge wrote:

[Mike Etheridge]

I was using the Ruckus terminology, but Ok, Patrick, yes, number of SSIDs. The Ruckus controller allows you to turn off the SSID beacon for any of the IDs, and control which radios run which SSIDs so you can pretty much mitigate the problems you are talking about, beacons taking up all the bandwidth.

Don't get me wrong, if I'm a fanboy of either of these, it's Ubiquiti. But the total package we got with WSNUP represented good value for money for the school. If we could have had the Ubiquiti kit with the new switches it would have been a no brainer.

Sent from Samsung Mobile

-------- Original message --------

From: Patrick Dunford

Date:25/05/2016 9:09 PM (GMT+12:00)

To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Re: WSNUP

Number of WLANs? Is that the number of SSIDs? Do you know there is a big overhead involved in multiple SSIDs? Ubiquity putting a limit on four is a commonsense recognition of that issue.

[Pete Mundy]

On 25/05/2016, at 9:16 pm, Patrick Dunford <kahuk...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip> no school will get funding to replace their wireless gear when it becomes obsolete.

That's a bold statement.

[Pete Mundy]

> On 25/05/2016, at 9:07 pm, Patrick Dunford <kahuk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hardly surprising with the cost of good quality powered switches, for the small number of ports needing power.

I think part of the reasoning is also that the PoE switches that the original SNUP used (one of our local schools has them) are terribly noisy. Far too noisy for use in a cabinet housed in a teaching space.

The injectors however, are silent.

[Pete Mundy]

> On 25/05/2016, at 9:54 pm, Mike Etheridge <mike.et...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was using the Ruckus terminology, but Ok, Patrick, yes, number of SSIDs. The Ruckus controller allows you to turn off the SSID beacon for any of the IDs, and control which radios run which SSIDs so you can pretty much mitigate the problems you are talking
> about, beacons taking up all the bandwidth.

Mike's right, it's the number of beacons that matter, not specifically the number of SSIDs. Although if one beacon's all of one's SSIDs then in that situation obviously the number of them is a big factor.

A link with more info for those who are interested:

http://www.revolutionwifi.net/revolutionwifi/p/ssid-overhead-calculator.html

[Andrew Godfrey]

If/when you move to one AP per classroom and PoE VoIP phones, it might be tidier to have a 12 or 24 port PoE switch but yes, they are very noisy and you have to find a non-workspace to house it.

When we were SNUP'd there was quite a lot of work done to make sure that cabinets weren't housed in workspaces.

_______________________________________

 

Andrew Godfrey  |  Network Manager

[Kevin Whelan]

I found in the cabinets that needed too many ugly POE bricks it was tidier to buy a 1rack poe injector,12/24 ports, not a switch so cheaper and no noise problem
something like this

http://uk.level1.com/PoE-Injector/POH-1250/p-1021.htm

[Alistair Baird]

When we were SNUP'd there was quite a lot of work done to make sure that cabinets weren't housed in workspaces.

Interesting - we are currently undergoing Modern Learning Environment upgrade, and all the switch racks have now been in occupied workspaces because there are no 'resource rooms' in the new MLE, they're all turned into classroom or breakout spaces..

--

Alistair Baird

IT Manager

St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 990 259

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[Bevan McNaughton]

The new Allied Telesis PoE switches are very quiet - some quieter than the non-PoE ones (8000GS) which is great. We were SNUPped in 2011 and have since had to upgrade some switchgear since then (mainly due to capacity and PoE requirements) and the new gear (which is being used for W/SNUP is far superior to the old stuff.

The UniFi's now have the option to turn on/off Airtime Fairness and have the options of Band Steering which is great. That means that any newer devices we can start to force to 5GHz rather than clutter up 2.4GHz.

There are benefits/caveats to either UniFi, Ruckus or Aerohive. 

The biggest benefits for UniFi's are cost (overall and onging) and flexibility of the controller software.

The biggest benefits for Ruckus is their antenna array in the units and amount of advanced features (60% of which a school would rarely ever need to use).

Regards,
Bevan

On 26 May 2016 at 08:44, Andrew Godfrey <godf...@burnside.school.nz> wrote:

[Andre Kneepkens]

We were SNUPed about 4 years ago and have enjoyed reasonably trouble free wifi since then. Until the end of last term that is. We decided to put in an extra WAP and at the same time updated our firmware across all WAP's(we have 19). This has caused some devices to have connectivity issues. I'm told a temporary solution could be to roll back the upgrade. Makes sense and we will try that in the interim. 

However...what might be of interest to other schools was the revelation from our tech support providers that out wifi setup is now "end of life" and we should seriously consider replacing to newer specs. Like all tech anything over 4 years is pretty much obsolete, so not sure why I would be surprised really. I thought let's see what that might cost and got a quote for $35000...yep you read that right! I'm not sure how financially comfortable other schools are but finding that kind of money is a major event! I strongly suggest schools take a look at what plans they have to replace their wireless network and take steps accordingly, at the very least give the person who controls the purse strings some idea it's coming.

[Julian Davison]

It's also worth considering, as a budgeting option, not waiting until it's all obsolete and instead progressively adding 'current' gear to it, or replacing if you prefer. The cost is thus spread over a time and offers some opportunities to use the new and usually better spec'd gear in appropriate places such as those with high use.

The alternative ends up being one where you have little choice but to replace everything in one go, or embark on some form of hybrid approach with multiple systems.

J,

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[Alistair Baird]

The problem with Ruckus as I understand it is that the newer controllers aren't backward compatible with the older AP's, and the newer AP's won't work with the older controllers, so you are stuck with replacing the lot at once. Not totally sure, but we're about to find out in the next couple of weeks as we get reSNUPed 

[Julian Davison]

The last Ruckus site I was involved with discovered that all currently available APs were incompatible with their old ZoneDirector, unless they upgraded it to a point where the old APs wouldn't be. So there was a window of overlap - the main issue being that the APs hadn't been progressively replaced, so the options were either track down old (presumably second hand) APs, or whole-site replacement.

This may have been a specific issue that they were unlucky enough to strike, but the impression I had was that it was effectivelyhow Reckus went (which makes sense, most software drops off old hardware as it picks up new, so ZoneDIrector is likely the same).

As it stood I believe their ZoneDirector hardware was able to be upgraded to a newer (but still not current) version.

[Craig Knights]

We upgraded our Ruckus controller for the R600 APs and the older APs still work (I forget the model)  but not well with the new software when busy.  We still have some old ones in low density areas...

[Andrew Godfrey]

The older Ruckus 7962 units only have 64Mb RAM on board and that is the limitation as far as upgrading firmware to handle new functionality.

The units that only have 64Mb are 7962, 7762, 7363, 7343, 7341 so you will probably start having problems once you upgrade past 9.7 although there are some recommendations for running 9.8 available from Ruckus.

 

_______________________________________

 

Andrew Godfrey  |  Network Manager

[Craig Knights]

yes we have 7363.  I tried all the Ruckus tweaks but under hard usage they freak out and need a power cycle.

ta

CJK

[Patrick Dunford]

Also true. The Ministry has said once the gear is installed it is up to the school to maintain it out of their funds. WSNUP is a one-off.

[Patrick Dunford]

That is however the case where you are told you need a new hardware controller and it will not work with your existing APs.

[Kevin Whelan]

Simple answer is no
in your case you already have a working system and are aware of the costs
don't fix what ain't broke
the wsnup is more for schools that don't have any wireless yet and the money or professional contacts to get them started