Enterprise Wireless

Bakedgoods

Bakedgoods

Bakedgoods

Capodecina
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Have any of you guys got any experience or opinions on Aruba wireless compared to Cisco?

From all the research and reading i've been doing their technology certainly seems at least on the same level, or possible ahead. One of the main selling points is the fact Microsoft have switched their WLAN to Aruba, and that's a massive wireless network.
 
we're happy with our installation of the aruba kit, we have a couple of controllers and around a hundred access points. we're actually using the alcatel badged version, but it's the same underlying hardware and code. the local college where i am doing my ccna also use it. i attended the training course down in london and it's very popular with some massive organisations (other than ms!) either using it themselves or reselling it too.
 
We use Aruba with Pioneer AP's its a PITA! To connect wirelessly you have to authenticate to the AP and then run the aruba client and vpn in.. bleh.
 
I have heard good things about Aruba (apparently MS use it) but we have a HP based setup. All centrally managed.
 
BAA are using Aruba in Terminal 5 too, the guys supporting it were on the same training course as me. Price is very subjective as it depends who you are and how much kit you buy and sometimes also what's in it for the vendor... Fortunately I don't get involved in the money side of things though so I'm afraid I can't help you there, all I can say is we like our installation!
 
bigredshark said:
Personally I prefer the cisco solution, integrates better with the rest of your network, it's not cheap though, price will vary with quantity and how much cisco like you obviously...
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from an integration perspective i can completely agree with you with regards to sticking with one vendor. we're not a cisco house though, so it made sense from our perspective to go with the alcatel branded aruba stuff. we also use the alcatel voip stuff for the same reason. everythings up in the air at the moment though, we may be changing equipment vendors in the not too distant future.
 
atomiser said:
from an integration perspective i can completely agree with you with regards to sticking with one vendor. we're not a cisco house though, so it made sense from our perspective to go with the alcatel branded aruba stuff. we also use the alcatel voip stuff for the same reason. everythings up in the air at the moment though, we may be changing equipment vendors in the not too distant future.
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We're not entirely, but the option of chucking a controller card in a 6500 and just chucking a few access point in beats a seperate controller in my book. Different options will suit different people in the end.
 
From what i've read it seems Aruba may scale better? I know Cisco is secure but Aruba has the first CESG Manual Y approved network, and also has now convinced Microsoft to switch to Aruba for wireless, with Cisco previously providing them with wireless capability and the rest of their wired network infrastructure.

It just seems like they deserve to be considered along with Cisco and not just dismissed...
 
Wardie said:
From what i've read it seems Aruba may scale better? I know Cisco is secure but Aruba has the first CESG Manual Y approved network, and also has now convinced Microsoft to switch to Aruba for wireless, with Cisco previously providing them with wireless capability and the rest of their wired network infrastructure.

It just seems like they deserve to be considered along with Cisco and not just dismissed...
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Maybe, to be honest I'll be dismissing them for a couple of reasons...

- The cisco stuff is very good indeed, not much improvement I can think of

- I can do without another network equipment vendor to deal with, I need to spend money with Cisco anyway so I may as well spend more and get a decent discount.

Scalable is maybe true, but how many people have enough wireless users for it to matter?

At the end of the day there are a multitude of vendors out there who do individual things very well, cisco don't make the best routers, or the best switches but they make everything and the OS is consistent, that counts for a lot.
 
Yeah I can see the benefits of keeping the vendor list down, and the benefits that go with being a partner. I think Aruba seem to offer some quite attractive security features though, their xSec protocol is pretty impressive and certified by the US Government (256bit), also no security keys are stored on the AP as it is all handled centrally by the controller.

I'm still struggling to find a price comparison that makes sense though, I don't suppose you kinow if Aruba are typically cheaper? They appear to be cheaper the larger the network gets. I suppose if you're a Cisco partner or large customer then any cost savings by selecting a new vendor could possibly be minimal.

I've found one price comparison here which seems a little odd, especially scenario 3, to make it worse there was no year date on the article :\

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I'd say anythign which isn't completely open standards complient is asking for trouble. My guess would be if you take the system in isolation Aruba would be cheaper, but if you're using a 6500 as both your wireless controller and access switch for a building that changes the value for money proposition. Those figures are TCA rather than TCO as well, which means it doesn't take into account what running it for 3 years will cost (that gets complicated though, how much money is saved by managing 5 boxes rather than 10, using 3 vendors instead of 4 etc...)
 
Ok this 'report' is retarded... check out the image below, totally different pricing. I thought 6500s were used more for core/distribution switching rather than access stuff?

And what do you mean by isn't open standards compliant? Arubs do offer 802.11n products as many other vendors do, but they are saying that firmware upgrades will support the final standard. They obviously also offer typical standard compliant 802.11g stuff.

It's good to get your input because you really know your stuff, cheers :)

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Wardie said:
Ok this 'report' is retarded... check out the image below, totally different pricing. I thought 6500s were used more for core/distribution switching rather than access stuff?

And what do you mean by isn't open standards compliant? Arubs do offer 802.11n products as many other vendors do, but they are saying that firmware upgrades will support the final standard. They obviously also offer typical standard compliant 802.11g stuff.

It's good to get your input because you really know your stuff, cheers :)

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From that it looks like they've done a really bizarre job of speccing the cisco solution, it could be done a lot cheaper than that, especially for the last scenario.

6500s are usually core/distribution but I work with a few companies that use them as access, if you have a larger number of users in a building it's certainly an interesting idea. A 6500 can do so much with the right modules, you can fit an IDP blade and run IDP on all your users traffic at the access layer (something I'd do if I was designing an enterprise wireless solution), there are firewall blades etc...

The big thing about the comparison is, what if there were 200 wired users as well? With Aruba you add an entire switching infrastructure to the price, with cisco you add some line cards to the 6500s.

My open standards comment was mainly about security standards and protocols the manufacturers are coming up with, there's no guarentee how much support you'll get from them in future...
 
Bare with me I don't know half of what you do..

I don't understand your point about the 200 wires users and needing an entire switching infrastructure if using Aruba?

I don't know much about the 6500s but they basically seem like a stackable solution with different modules for wireless, firewalling etc. The Aruba central controllers have a stateful firewall and perform packet inspection there.

I'm just trying to weigh up both of the solutions really as it seems like both have their merits, I don't think you should always just go with the name and things need to be explored.
 
Wardie said:
Bare with me I don't know half of what you do..

I don't understand your point about the 200 wires users and needing an entire switching infrastructure if using Aruba?

I don't know much about the 6500s but they basically seem like a stackable solution with different modules for wireless, firewalling etc. The Aruba central controllers have a stateful firewall and perform packet inspection there.

I'm just trying to weigh up both of the solutions really as it seems like both have their merits, I don't think you should always just go with the name and things need to be explored.
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The 6500 is a chassis based switch, you can buy a 13 slot version, if you filled it with 2 supervisors (the controllers which make it all work) and 11 48port gigabit line cards then you'd have 528 Gig ports in a single box.

If you replaced a couple of those line cards with wireless controllers though, you'd have something to control your thin access points and still have 400+ gigabit ports. If you wanted that many ports and wireless controllers under the Aruba product set you'd need to buy a seperate switching solution, which together would probably cost a lot more.

Most companies don't deploy wireless company wide for every user, just for laptop users is most common I'd say. So you still need a wired infrastructure in addition to the wireless.

The aruba product does have a firewall but I couldn't see any mention of IDP (which is a different beast).

I agree you shouldn't always go with the name and there are solutions where Aruba have a better product, but for most people the integrated solution Cisco offer is going to be better value. It only gets better if you start to add Cisco IP phones and suchlike.

If you used the best equipment for everything Cisco would rarely get a look in, you'd use Foundry switches and Juniper routers, Checkpoint firewalls etc...the best solution is a different thing though, keeping the box count down and reducing support complexity is a big factor when you're support 30k users worldwide, thats where cisco is a big winner
 
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