Enterprise Wireless

Very fair comment, i'm guessing the cisco IP phones are very good then? I've talked about VoIP before but we're talking lots of extensions.

I'm still not following you on the switch capacity thing.. regardless of what vendor you use you will need for example.. 500 wired devices, and then 50 access points and however many controllers. The total port count will still be the same..

I have a feeling i'm missing the point with the 6500 stuff - I really don't know anything about it :)

Is there not a realiability issue with using something like a 6500 on an access level, in that if the controllers break you'll lose everything rather than just losing one switch? (Although this isn't a common occurance...)

(Go easy i'm trying to learn ha-ha)
 
Wardie said:
Very fair comment, i'm guessing the cisco IP phones are very good then? I've talked about VoIP before but we're talking lots of extensions.

I'm still not following you on the switch capacity thing.. regardless of what vendor you use you will need for example.. 500 wired devices, and then 50 access points and however many controllers. The total port count will still be the same..

I have a feeling i'm missing the point with the 6500 stuff - I really don't know anything about it :)

Is there not a realiability issue with using something like a 6500 on an access level, in that if the controllers break you'll lose everything rather than just losing one switch? (Although this isn't a common occurance...)

(Go easy i'm trying to learn ha-ha)
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Cisco IP phones are...well they're a good product now, they were always designed from the ip point of view and the early implementations missed a lot of fairly standard pbx features but most of that is sorted these days. They're certainly turning into the industry standard, they're reliable and very scalable in deployment.

My point on the phones was cisco make a few 802.11 cordless handsets and I've seen a few problems getting them happily talking to non cisco wireless kit on occasion.

My point is, a lot of enterprises will already have 6500s, so you're not paying for a 6500 chassis, power supplies, supervisors and wireless controller blade. You're just adding the wireless control blade to your existing equipment.

Even if you're not, then compared to a standard wireless controller (like from aruba) it's still cheaper to integrate them all into the one box as opposed to buying them completely separately. If you spend £30k on the switching, then spending £10k to add a wireless controller to the switch is much better value than another £30k on a seperate controller (and it's only one box to manage, power, find rack space for etc..)

A chassis based switch for access is the best possible option really, because they're modular and redundant. The line cards are very simple in design and have a MTBF (mean time between failure) far higher than stand alone switches. The supervisors (cisco's name for the controllers) can be fitted in pairs, so if one fails then the second will take over seamlessly. It's generally accepted it's a lot more reliable than fixed configuration switches (2900s, 3750s etc).

The aruba kit isn't bad, it works just fine and has lots of features. If you used another vendor for your switching then it'd be a better proposition than cisco, Cisco only wins because of the integration.
 
That's a great response, thanks a lot!

Just another easy one for you, with the Cisco wireless gear and the wireless modules you're talking about for the 6500s, are these modules used for connecting the APs? Or managing them?

If it's a wireless controller module doesn't that mean managing the APs on a large network would take a fair bit of effort as you will be managing loads of difficult WLAN controllers that are in various 6500s?
 
Wardie said:
That's a great response, thanks a lot!

Just another easy one for you, with the Cisco wireless gear and the wireless modules you're talking about for the 6500s, are these modules used for connecting the APs? Or managing them?

If it's a wireless controller module doesn't that mean managing the APs on a large network would take a fair bit of effort as you will be managing loads of difficult WLAN controllers that are in various 6500s?
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Probably you'd just choose one 6500 at each office to house wireless controllers (or depending your WAN connectivity, maybe one 6500 per area). They are strictly management modules, the actual connectivity is by the line card modules (cat5 or whatever) to the access points.
 
Doesn't this mean you have to individually manage each AP then? With the aruba gear you can centrall manage all of the 'thin' APs, making life a little easier when you're talking about 100+ APs?

Thanks for all this input :D
 
Wardie said:
Doesn't this mean you have to individually manage each AP then? With the aruba gear you can centrall manage all of the 'thin' APs, making life a little easier when you're talking about 100+ APs?

Thanks for all this input :D
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No, the wireless controller in the 6500 is the single management point where you manage all the thin APs from, thats the whole point...
 
bigredshark said:
No, the wireless controller in the 6500 is the single management point where you manage all the thin APs from, thats the whole point...
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What if you have several 6500s though? That means you'll have to manage and configure each of these seperately, unless there's a central wireless lan controller or software suite that allows you to collectively manage them all at once?

Apologies if i'm being dim :D

I don't really understand the architecture for something like above.

Let's imagine you have 10 or even 20 6500s, from what I understand from you're post you would have to manage the wireless at all of the 6500s, rather than centrally.

If you can see what i'm getting at?
 
Wardie said:
What if you have several 6500s though? That means you'll have to manage and configure each of these seperately, unless there's a central wireless lan controller or software suite that allows you to collectively manage them all at once?

Apologies if i'm being dim :D

I don't really understand the architecture for something like above.

Let's imagine you have 10 or even 20 6500s, from what I understand from you're post you would have to manage the wireless at all of the 6500s, rather than centrally.

If you can see what i'm getting at?
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Yes, that true, but a single 6500 could manage hundreds of access points, so if you had several 6500s managing wireless then you'd have a huge deployment...

There is a centralised software suite to help in that circumstance as well.
 
Wardie said:
Schools/colleges don't really have the same sort of requirements as enterprises..

I did attend a speech by an Extricom guy on 802.11n and to be fair it was pretty good.
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I wouldnt just dismiss it like that.
IIRC, current implentations include Silverstone for car data communications, and several sites that use cable cars for safety.
It is well worth a look into. Its features/abilites far outstrip anything else out there.
 
BoomAM said:
I wouldnt just dismiss it like that.
IIRC, current implentations include Silverstone for car data communications, and several sites that use cable cars for safety.
It is well worth a look into. Its features/abilites far outstrip anything else out there.
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Features aren't where it's at, how many enterprises will switch to wireless n? Not a huge number. Every wireless product out there has the features required these days.

Specialist installations aren't a good example usually, some fancy installation to suit a special situation isn't 1000 users in 5 offices doing normal office work at the end of the day.

Also, the problems with schools as an example is they simply aren't enterprise customers in terms of their need for support and reliability, you loose your wireless network for a day it's inconvenient, some enterprises do and they're loosing millions of pounds an hour...
 
bigredshark said:
Features aren't where it's at, how many enterprises will switch to wireless n? Not a huge number. Every wireless product out there has the features required these days.
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Who said anything about features being where its at?

Actually go and read about the product before dismissing it.

Also, the problems with schools as an example is they simply aren't enterprise customers in terms of their need for support and reliability,
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Hence why the technology has you connected to more than one AP at a time, with ZERO connection drops at all when moving between then.
There isnt another wireless tech out there thats capable of that.

Again, go and read about it before commenting please.
If you do, you'll realise that it is designed for large scale mission critical applications.
The simple fact that half the big players out there want to buy up this small company should be proof enough of its potential.

Here, go and read: http://www.extricom.com/
Its even advertised on the main page as being enterprise wireless. ;).
 
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Aruba allows you to roam exactly how you're describing above :)

The main benefit I see at the moment is the centralised management, that's a massive advantage. I'm sure Cisco does something similar but it's not come across the same if the stuff i've read and from this thread.
 
Didnt know Aruba does that.

There might be some other solutions out there that do some/a few of what the extricom thing does, but i know for a fact that there isnt one out there that offers all of what extricom does. The solution was extensivly researched, and it was concluded that Extricom, whilst unheard of, or not popular with the people of OCUK;), does offer a package that no other WiFi solution can provide.
Again, i ask you all to read up on it.:).
Dont just dismiss it because you've never heard of it or are aprehensive about it/its claims.

Thats all im gonna say on the matter. :).
....and no, i dont work for them. :p
 
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