Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Blake Brown]

Excellent info. Thanks for sharing Jamie!

~Blake


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of "Price, Jamie G" 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 2:47 PM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

External Email
Hi Blake and Wi-Fi Pros,

Here’s a sample of our decision matrix. We also included relationship with 
vendors (both the parent company and resellers). Also, what kind of Python 
support and scripting, what can we do out of box or with some programming-- and 
partners already established with the solution that could add on a wanted 
solution (maybe we want to buy a solution APIs/Programming that would do 
automatic classroom attendance).

Happy to chat up our decision criteria with folks, feel free to email me direct 
at jamie.pr...@cuanschutz.edu.






Social Media Login for Guest (user data
  would require 3rd party project)
Additional licenses
Additional licenses
Base platform
Base platform
Bluetooth Asset light asset tracking
Hard, additional products needed
Hard, additional products needed

Easy
Easy
Ease of IoT Onboarding




Ease of Partner for IoT consumer devices




Student Dorm Hospitality AP




Analytics




Student Success Software and Partnership




Ease of Problem Resolution




Management Server and Reporting




Wayfinding






From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Blake Brown
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:38 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We are also looking at replacing our existing Cisco deployment and have 
narrowed it down to either Mist or Meraki, we are currently doing in house 
trials with both. I would be interested in receiving any additional feedback on 
both of these vendors, on or off this particular email thread, if you’re 
willing to share. More info about the RADIUS bug on the Mist could prove to be 
very beneficial in our decision making.

Thanks,
Blake


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
on behalf of "Price, Jamie G" 
mailto:jamie.pr...@cuanschutz.edu>>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 10:44 AM
To: 
"WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

External Email
We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of m

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Price, Jamie G]

Hi Blake and Wi-Fi Pros,

Here’s a sample of our decision matrix. We also included relationship with 
vendors (both the parent company and resellers). Also, what kind of Python 
support and scripting, what can we do out of box or with some programming-- and 
partners already established with the solution that could add on a wanted 
solution (maybe we want to buy a solution APIs/Programming that would do 
automatic classroom attendance).

Happy to chat up our decision criteria with folks, feel free to email me direct 
at jamie.pr...@cuanschutz.edu.






Social Media Login for Guest (user data
  would require 3rd party project)
Additional licenses
Additional licenses
Base platform
Base platform
Bluetooth Asset light asset tracking
Hard, additional products needed
Hard, additional products needed

Easy
Easy
Ease of IoT Onboarding




Ease of Partner for IoT consumer devices




Student Dorm Hospitality AP




Analytics




Student Success Software and Partnership




Ease of Problem Resolution




Management Server and Reporting




Wayfinding






From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Blake Brown
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:38 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We are also looking at replacing our existing Cisco deployment and have 
narrowed it down to either Mist or Meraki, we are currently doing in house 
trials with both. I would be interested in receiving any additional feedback on 
both of these vendors, on or off this particular email thread, if you’re 
willing to share. More info about the RADIUS bug on the Mist could prove to be 
very beneficial in our decision making.

Thanks,
Blake


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
on behalf of "Price, Jamie G" 
mailto:jamie.pr...@cuanschutz.edu>>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 10:44 AM
To: 
"WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

External Email
We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke 
Ouest

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Sullivan, Don]

Ryan,

I used to work for a vendor that built/sold switching, wireless, and telephony 
equipment (not Cisco but a competitor). I was on the post sales side of the 
business working issues through technical support. When we had a situation with 
a customer like you are describing, especially dealing with multiple issues, we 
set up conference calls that included the customer, the account team, and a 
representative from the company’s Technical Support team who owned the trouble 
ticket, plus someone from the group working the bug issues. If necessary we did 
it on multiple days of the week (depending on severity of the issue) so that 
the customer would be able to hear from the guys working the bug(s) as to what 
was going on and how it was being addressed. At a minimum it was once a week 
and every outstanding issue that was being worked was documented and reported 
on. My feeling was that if the customer could hear what was being done to solve 
the issue, it may not alleviate all the frustrations but give them a chance to 
vent to the guys who were knee deep in the code plus add some additional detail 
that could be helpful in solving the issue. I was wondering if Aruba had 
offered you guys anything like. I would think with your university brand and 
influence, they would want to do everything in their power to keep you as a 
customer.

Don Sullivan
Network Administrator
205-726-2111
Technology Services
Samford University

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Turner, Ryan H
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 2:35 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and 
why?

We are on 8.5.0.3 for the ITS cluster. We were going to upgrade to 8.0.0.5, but 
we had a disaster in one of our data centers just before the holidays.  Power 
was tripped for a 13,000 sq foot data center.  For some reason, APs associated 
to the controller in this building did not fail over to the other site.  We are 
going to be testing this scenario again next week by yanking the power to 
confirm if we’ve hit yet another bug, or if this was a one-off.

Ryan


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Steve Fletty
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 1:20 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

What version of 8.5?

We saw some issues in our lab prior to 8.5.0.4. We have a mix of 335s and 535s.

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 10:15 AM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the sw

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

We are on 8.5.0.3 for the ITS cluster. We were going to upgrade to 8.0.0.5, but 
we had a disaster in one of our data centers just before the holidays.  Power 
was tripped for a 13,000 sq foot data center.  For some reason, APs associated 
to the controller in this building did not fail over to the other site.  We are 
going to be testing this scenario again next week by yanking the power to 
confirm if we’ve hit yet another bug, or if this was a one-off.

Ryan


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Steve Fletty
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 1:20 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

What version of 8.5?

We saw some issues in our lab prior to 8.5.0.4. We have a mix of 335s and 535s.

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 10:15 AM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices….  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community


--
Steve Fletty
Network Engineer
Office of Information Technology (OIT)
University of Minnesota
Phone: 612-625-1048
Email: fle...@umn.edu

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Blake Brown]

Jeff,

Can you elaborate on the "snags" you have hit with Mist? We are considering 
their product but have now heard from several different resources that their 
upper level support may be lacking. We can take this off list if you prefer.


Thanks,
Blake


On 1/9/20, 12:06 PM, "The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv on 
behalf of Jeffrey Mesch"  wrote:

External Email

I really think this is the key factor in this...how the vendor (and 
reseller if applicable) responds and the relationship overall.

We're a tiny school, just 500 students.

For +5 years we've had a great relationship with arguably one of 
HP/Aruba's top engineers in the state. General Motors headquarters is on 
his list of responsibilities. Despite being so small he'd give us as 
much time as he gave GM.

Despite the relationship, we went with Mist for wireless because of 
their innovation and problems with a couple Aruba resellers.

We hit some snags with Mist, and now both the local reseller and 
Mist/Juniper engineers won't give us the time of day. Level 1 support is 
good, but beyond that we've basically been on our own.

In hindsight I've wondered if our results may have been better had we 
stuck with Aruba because of the well-established relationship. In 
general we tend to have more success with vendors/resellers where 
there's a solid existing relationship.

+++Jeff


On 1/9/20 1:42 PM, Patrick McEvilly wrote:
> I agree with you, all vendors will have bugs and it’s how the vendor 
> responds is what matters.  Our experience on how Aruba handles them has 
> been nothing but positive.
> 
> We have found our fair share of bugs on Aruba and yes some of them 
> probably should not have been found by customers.  The support/response 
> from Aruba has always been top notch.  Usually within 24 hours of 
> reporting the bug the issue has been identified and the fix is in the 
> next release.  We do allow our SE remote access into our infrastructure 
> which helps with not draining our own resources while working to resolve 
> these problems. Our Aruba SE takes care of reporting the bugs and gets 
> them prioritized for us so for the most part we are hands off when 
> dealing with Aruba support.
> 
> *From: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
>  on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" 
> 
> *Reply-To: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
> 
> *Date: *Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM
> *To: *"WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
> 
> *Subject: *Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and 
why?
> 
>  From my standpoint, it really isn’t about having bugs. They will all 
> have them.  Its how the vendor handles the request when it comes in.
> 
> Extreme is a very good example of this.  While we have bugs, I know I 
> can escalate it all the way to the C level of executives if I don’t 
> think an issue is getting handled quickly.  If I tell them a bug is 
> critically important, then very soon we are on the call with a 10+ 
> developers/coders/executives working to fix the problem.  While not 
> everything has been perfect, I know that if I tell Extreme something is 
> important, things get resolved.  I feel as though I’ve had to complain 
> so much in the past two years over issues that I’ve become chicken 
> little.  It should be obvious to an executive team monitoring an account 
> that when you have significant bugs exceed 2-3 months, the wagons need 
> to be circles.  It doesn’t seem to be automatic.
> 
> So, in short, its not always the existence of bugs that is the problem.  
> It is the company’s response to the problem.
> 
> Ryan
> 
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
>  *On Behalf Of *Jeffrey D. Sessler
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:56 AM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and 
why?
> 
> Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago the 
> Aruba folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various unresolvable 
> problems with Aruba AP’s, including one that required a weekly reboot of 
> a particular model.
> 
> As Lee mentions, the grass isn’t always greener, so expect that you’re 
> going to run into issues with any vendor. As such, it’s going to come 
> down to support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor. 
>   Startups are great as they have a single product with a single 
> code-train, so they tend to be pretty responsive at the start. Once they 
> have a few years under their belt, and their code base starts to 
> fragment, you’ll get to the same point you have with th

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Jeffrey Mesch]

I really think this is the key factor in this...how the vendor (and 
reseller if applicable) responds and the relationship overall.


We're a tiny school, just 500 students.

For +5 years we've had a great relationship with arguably one of 
HP/Aruba's top engineers in the state. General Motors headquarters is on 
his list of responsibilities. Despite being so small he'd give us as 
much time as he gave GM.


Despite the relationship, we went with Mist for wireless because of 
their innovation and problems with a couple Aruba resellers.


We hit some snags with Mist, and now both the local reseller and 
Mist/Juniper engineers won't give us the time of day. Level 1 support is 
good, but beyond that we've basically been on our own.


In hindsight I've wondered if our results may have been better had we 
stuck with Aruba because of the well-established relationship. In 
general we tend to have more success with vendors/resellers where 
there's a solid existing relationship.


+++Jeff


On 1/9/20 1:42 PM, Patrick McEvilly wrote:
I agree with you, all vendors will have bugs and it’s how the vendor 
responds is what matters.  Our experience on how Aruba handles them has 
been nothing but positive.


We have found our fair share of bugs on Aruba and yes some of them 
probably should not have been found by customers.  The support/response 
from Aruba has always been top notch.  Usually within 24 hours of 
reporting the bug the issue has been identified and the fix is in the 
next release.  We do allow our SE remote access into our infrastructure 
which helps with not draining our own resources while working to resolve 
these problems. Our Aruba SE takes care of reporting the bugs and gets 
them prioritized for us so for the most part we are hands off when 
dealing with Aruba support.


*From: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" 

*Reply-To: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 


*Date: *Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM
*To: *"WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 


*Subject: *Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

 From my standpoint, it really isn’t about having bugs. They will all 
have them.  Its how the vendor handles the request when it comes in.


Extreme is a very good example of this.  While we have bugs, I know I 
can escalate it all the way to the C level of executives if I don’t 
think an issue is getting handled quickly.  If I tell them a bug is 
critically important, then very soon we are on the call with a 10+ 
developers/coders/executives working to fix the problem.  While not 
everything has been perfect, I know that if I tell Extreme something is 
important, things get resolved.  I feel as though I’ve had to complain 
so much in the past two years over issues that I’ve become chicken 
little.  It should be obvious to an executive team monitoring an account 
that when you have significant bugs exceed 2-3 months, the wagons need 
to be circles.  It doesn’t seem to be automatic.


So, in short, its not always the existence of bugs that is the problem.  
It is the company’s response to the problem.


Ryan

*From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 *On Behalf Of *Jeffrey D. Sessler

*Sent:* Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:56 AM
*To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
*Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago the 
Aruba folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various unresolvable 
problems with Aruba AP’s, including one that required a weekly reboot of 
a particular model.


As Lee mentions, the grass isn’t always greener, so expect that you’re 
going to run into issues with any vendor. As such, it’s going to come 
down to support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor. 
  Startups are great as they have a single product with a single 
code-train, so they tend to be pretty responsive at the start. Once they 
have a few years under their belt, and their code base starts to 
fragment, you’ll get to the same point you have with the big incumbents 
i.e. too many code bases to support effectively.


Jeff

*From: *The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
>

*Date: *Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:15 AM
*To: *WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU 
 
>

*Subject: *[WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 
access points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and 
downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point 
that I am considering making the enormous move to choose a different 
vendor.  The biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we 
just don’t consider appropriate to use in production.  It ha

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Hales, David]

We've been an Aerohive shop for at least 10 years and have had a pretty good 
experience overall.  For scale we have about 2,000 WAPS across campus and we 
use an on-premise HiveManager box for the management plane functionality.  We 
had a similar issue several years back when they introduced the AP370/390 Wave 
1 AC gear.  It seemed to be chipset/driver based problems.  We weren't happy 
with the problem, but were pleased with the way the company handled it.  We got 
C-suite escalation pretty early on and they quickly made arrangements to take 
back every one of those units and replace them with a different product line.

Coincidentally, we are also an Extreme shop for wired gear.  We were waiting to 
see how the merger shook out before making a strategic decision going forward, 
but it looks like we'll be sticking with both product lines going forward.

David Hales
Network Systems Administrator
Information Technology Services
1010 N. Peachtree
Clement Hall 117
Cookeville, TN 38505
P 931-372-3983
F 931-372-6130
E dha...@tntech.edu
www.tntech.edu/its
[Tennessee Tech Logo]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Stephen Belcher
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 10:49 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?


External Email Warning

This email originated from outside the university. Please use caution when 
opening attachments, clicking links, or responding to requests.


Cisco shop here with around 5300 APs. We are looking to get away from Cisco 
because of bugs and poor support. I would be happy to go in more detail 
off-line.

Our fist choice is Mist. They are doing some amazing things but the price is a 
premium and we may not be able to afford them.

Our second choice was Extreme (we have one small site with Extreme wireless) 
but, we just found out yesterday that with the acquisition of AeroHive, all new 
wireless will be based on their AeroHive HiveManager cloud platform rebranded 
to ExtremeCloud IQ. We are doing a deeper technical dive for that platform to 
understand the new offering. That being said, does anyone use AeroHive in a 
large deployment?

Maybe it's just a problem with Wi-Fi in general...

Steve

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Michael Davis
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:27 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into this 
possibility for
the same reasons.  While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6 
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have any 
greenfield
515-only deployments.

We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco as some 
existing
collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..


On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:
All:

We've been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don't consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We've been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I'm fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I'm extra frustrated that due to issues we've seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don't want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba's credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they c

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Amel Caldwell]

I have direct experience with what Ryan described.  A couple days after X-mas 
when there were very few people in our building, I lost connectivity on my 
iPhone, 2 Mac Book Pro (different vintages), and a wireless Avaya desk phone.  
At the same time an engineer across the hall lost connectivity on a Windows 
laptop and his android phone, plus and Aruba Cape Sensor experienced the same 
thing.  On the clients involved there was no indication of there being a 
problem and they appeared to be connected, just no IP connectivity.  I did see 
that the Cape sensor roamed from the AP where it had -62 signal to one that had 
-89 and that is when we lost connectivity and 3 minutes later everyone roamed 
back and we again had connectivity.

So as Ryan described, no common drivers, we still see the SSID, we just get no 
traffic and it clears with no intervention.

Amel Caldwell


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:51 AM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

This isn’t the problem.  The drivers are updated.  Clients see the ssid.  Just 
periodically they stop communicating.
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking, ITS
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
+1 919 445 0113 Office


On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Martin Reynolds  wrote:
Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba APs 
we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's.  This is 
not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well.  The following 
link is for the updated Intel drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/54799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were installed 
but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed.  By using a 
different adapter from what is installed in the hardware (example USB-and not 
Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs

Thanks,
Martin

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton 
mailto:dmor...@uw.edu>> wrote:
Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahe

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Blake Brown]

We are also looking at replacing our existing Cisco deployment and have 
narrowed it down to either Mist or Meraki, we are currently doing in house 
trials with both. I would be interested in receiving any additional feedback on 
both of these vendors, on or off this particular email thread, if you’re 
willing to share. More info about the RADIUS bug on the Mist could prove to be 
very beneficial in our decision making.

Thanks,
Blake


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of "Price, Jamie G" 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 10:44 AM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

External Email
We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke 
Ouest,
 Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[cid:image001.png@01D5C6E1.458457A0]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith 
Drive

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Lee H Badman]

Controllers, NMS, etc- nice to make them all someone else’s problem.

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Price, Jamie G
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 1:44 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke 
Ouest,
 Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith 
Drive
Syracuse, New York 
13244

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Price, Jamie G]

We looked at MIST and Meraki, both great products. We feel our management went 
with ABC so Meraki it is.

In a nutshell (and I can expand upon the “whys”) you get so many more features, 
flexibilities, with an included management platform with either one of these 
vendors. Controllers are expensive bricks. The only real reason to stay with 
controllers is if you do not want a cloud base platform.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Norman Elton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:16 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the 
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans. Happy to 
talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever explained that 
startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their luster as they grow 
... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of the 
shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some surprising 
RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the resolution is 
... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited about their ability 
to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their support 
operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:
At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke 
Ouest,
 Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith 
Drive
Syracuse, New York 
13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w 
its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migrat

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Patrick McEvilly]

I agree with you, all vendors will have bugs and it’s how the vendor responds 
is what matters.  Our experience on how Aruba handles them has been nothing but 
positive.

We have found our fair share of bugs on Aruba and yes some of them probably 
should not have been found by customers.  The support/response from Aruba has 
always been top notch.  Usually within 24 hours of reporting the bug the issue 
has been identified and the fix is in the next release.  We do allow our SE 
remote access into our infrastructure which helps with not draining our own 
resources while working to resolve these problems. Our Aruba SE takes care of 
reporting the bugs and gets them prioritized for us so for the most part we are 
hands off when dealing with Aruba support.



From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

>From my standpoint, it really isn’t about having bugs. They will all have 
>them.  Its how the vendor handles the request when it comes in.

Extreme is a very good example of this.  While we have bugs, I know I can 
escalate it all the way to the C level of executives if I don’t think an issue 
is getting handled quickly.  If I tell them a bug is critically important, then 
very soon we are on the call with a 10+ developers/coders/executives working to 
fix the problem.  While not everything has been perfect, I know that if I tell 
Extreme something is important, things get resolved.  I feel as though I’ve had 
to complain so much in the past two years over issues that I’ve become chicken 
little.  It should be obvious to an executive team monitoring an account that 
when you have significant bugs exceed 2-3 months, the wagons need to be 
circles.  It doesn’t seem to be automatic.

So, in short, its not always the existence of bugs that is the problem.  It is 
the company’s response to the problem.

Ryan

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Jeffrey D. Sessler
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:56 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago the Aruba 
folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various unresolvable problems with 
Aruba AP’s, including one that required a weekly reboot of a particular model.

As Lee mentions, the grass isn’t always greener, so expect that you’re going to 
run into issues with any vendor. As such, it’s going to come down to 
support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor.  Startups are great 
as they have a single product with a single code-train, so they tend to be 
pretty responsive at the start. Once they have a few years under their belt, 
and their code base starts to fragment, you’ll get to the same point you have 
with the big incumbents i.e. too many code bases to support effectively.

Jeff


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:15 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?
All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out 

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wi-Fi Guest/Visitor Network

[Craig Simons]

Philippe,

I’ve looked at the ANYROAM material, and also the CANARIE run “eVA” initiative 
(https://www.canarie.ca/identity/eduroam/eduroam-visitor-access/) which is 
along the same lines here in Canada. The advantage of using either of these two 
systems is that they are already up and running, have some measure of support 
attached to them, and are free. However, we do have a great deal of capability 
with our Aruba ClearPass platform, which depending on how we design our 
guest/visitor service might be administratively easier from a “single pane of 
glass” perspective.

But I must say, for those without an existing guest management platform, 
ANYROAM (and eVA) should definitely be given consideration.

Thanks for your feedback!
Craig

Craig Simons
Network Operations Manager
Simon Fraser University | Water Tower 224
 University Dr., Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
T: 778.782.8036 | M: 604.649.7977 | 
www.sfu.ca/itservices

[signature_1218646200]


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
 on behalf of Philippe Hanset 
<005cd62f91b7-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 

Date: Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 1:37 PM
To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 

Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wi-Fi Guest/Visitor Network

Hello Craig,

Have you tested the ANYROAM guest service ?
(It’s free and runs on the eduroam SSID … specifically designed for parents 
etc… same functionality as eduroam but relies on phone number for 
authentication)
About 40-50 schools use it.
https://www.anyroam.net/node/6808


You can check the way it works at www.anyroam.net 
…under ANYROAM :)

Let me know if you have questions,

Philippe


Philippe Hanset, CEO
www.anyroam.net
Operator of eduroam-US
+1 (865) 236-0770
GPG key id: 0xF2636F9C




On Jan 8, 2020, at 3:41 PM, Craig Simons 
mailto:craigsim...@sfu.ca>> wrote:

Fellow peers,

Simon Fraser University is planning on deploying a guest network to supplement 
our existing eduroam service. We are anticipating this service to be used by 
parents, short term contractors, and the general public. Obviously, we are 
mindful of how opening up our networks to a wider range of users may present 
security and support challenges despite the benefits it brings. To gain a 
better understanding from those who’ve perhaps done this before, I’ve created a 
very short survey. I would greatly appreciate if you would consider taking 3-4 
minutes of your time to have a look (even if your institution doesn’t have a 
guest network!). I am hoping your experiences will help shape how we approach 
the design of the service.

After a week or two I will summarize the results and post to the group, so the 
more the merrier!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8CV82TV

Thanks!

Craig Simons
Network Operations Manager

Simon Fraser University | Strand Hall
 University Dr., Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
T: 778.782.8036 | M: 604.649.7977





SFU

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
IT SERVICES



**
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paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
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Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Steve Fletty]

What version of 8.5?

We saw some issues in our lab prior to 8.5.0.4. We have a mix of 335s and
535s.

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 10:15 AM Turner, Ryan H 
wrote:

> All:
>
>
>
> We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000
> access points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and
> downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I
> am considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The
> biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t
> consider appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the
> other, and my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith
> Miller) might as well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been
> doing for them to solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed,
> another one crops up.
>
>
>
> The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them
> deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are
> connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they
> are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their
> phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.
> Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and
> seeing a problem resolve.  Normally, if the users disconnect then
> reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think they end up connecting
> in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on this problem with them for
> months.  It always seems as though we have to prove there is a real issue.
> I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If we have a problem, 9
> times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem.  I’m
> extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train
> that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To Aruba’s
> credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around
> February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba
> bought back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I
> thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would
> be fixed by the time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.
>
>
>
> So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away
> from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are
> other bugs I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the
> switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted,
> what were your motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of
> course, this is a great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we
> have 3 choices….  Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped
> them for bugs), something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this
> makes sense), something from Juniper (Mist).
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ryan Turner
>
> Head of Networking
>
> The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
> +1 919 445 0113 Office
>
> +1 919 274 7926 Mobile
>
> r...@unc.edu
>
>
>
> **
> Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire
> community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the
> message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply.
> Additional participation and subscription information can be found at
> https://www.educause.edu/community
>


-- 
Steve Fletty
Network Engineer
Office of Information Technology (OIT)
University of Minnesota
Phone: 612-625-1048
Email: fle...@umn.edu

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Norman Elton]

The wireless-lan mailing list is always interesting, but this is by far the
best thread yet :)

We are a longtime Aerohive customer, and are aware of Extreme’s plans.
Happy to talk about my feelings regarding Aerohive off-list. Whomever
explained that startups are responsive at first, and start to lose their
luster as they grow ... spot on.

We are testing Meraki, Juniper/Mist, and Arista/Mojo. As always, some of
the shine wears off once you get into the product. I’ve found some
surprising RADIUS bug on Mist. Their initial support is responsive, but the
resolution is ... forthcoming. We are a big Juniper shop, so are excited
about their ability to monitor & manage (one day) our EX switches.

If you start and eval, make sure you open tickets and explore how their
support operation responds to requests (and bugs!).

Norman



On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM Turner, Ryan H 
wrote:

> At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.
> We have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *Norman Chu
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and
> why?
>
>
>
> We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility
> master) with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months
> and things have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a
> few issues.
>
>
>
> *Norman Chu*
>
> Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
>
> IT Services
>
> T:  514-398-7299
>
> norman@mcgill.ca  |   www.mcgill.ca/it
>
> 805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest
> ,
> Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
>
> [image: 1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *Michael Hulko
> *Sent:* January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and
> why?
>
>
>
> May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX
> chipsets that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had
> to be turned off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.
>
>
>
> ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6
> (as per our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.
> Any issues with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to
> 8.3x as it also seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.
>
>
>
> M
>
>
>
> On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman <
> 00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at
> client device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on
> which client NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any
> favors of late. Is very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed
> laptops may all have same bum driver.
>
>
>
> Just asking…
>
>
>
> *Lee Badman* | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
>
> Information Technology Services
> (NDD Group)
> 206 Machinery Hall
> 120 Smith Drive
> 
> Syracuse, New York 13244
> 
>
> *t* 315.443.3003  * e* lhbad...@syr.edu *w* its.syr.edu
>
> *SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY*
> syr.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *David Morton
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and
> why?
>
>
>
> Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since
> installing 515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first
> step to any migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no
> connectivity. In most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I
> believe that I remain connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that
> 30 seconds to a couple of minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now
> deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of our residence halls so I am concerned
> about their experience as well. Just before the holiday break we had a
> series of very high-profile outages that impacted our students leading up
> to and during finals week. The issue got so bad that our CIO had to issue a
> letter to students explaining the problem and what we are doing about it.
> This is the first time that this level of communication was needed in my 15
> years at the UW using Aruba.
>
>
>
> We too are 

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

At this time, this doesn’t appear to bother anything other than the 515s.  We 
have 315s on the same code and have not gotten reports.

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Norman Chu
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:08 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w 
its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We h

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Christopher H Ressel]

We had issues in early 8.5.x  that caused significant problems across our 
environment in a cluster due to an STM memory leak. This only presented itself 
in 3 controller clusters that exceeded certain concurrent client counts. 
Symptomatically, this caused clients to be intermittently disconnected, 
significant lag (in some instances minutes) in connecting, and the inability of 
some clients to connect at all. It was a pretty long week spent finding the bug 
due to the intermittency of the issue.



[University of Nevada, Reno]

Chris Ressel
Senior Network Engineer
Office of Information Technology
1664 N. Virginia St.
Mailstop 430

work-phone: 7756826034
email: cres...@unr.edu
website: https://oit.unr.edu


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of Norman Chu 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 9:17 AM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   
www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M



On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w 
its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the 

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Fishel Erps]

When we initially deployed wireless campus-wide, we evaluated Aruba against 
BlueSocket; at the time, BlueSocket won out easily.  We gave Cisco a shot a few 
years ago when we were looking to do a major upgrade/refresh (because we are an 
all-Cisco shop), but they blew the POC, and lost the project.  We stayed with 
BlueSocket and moved to their new offering and haven't looked back.  BlueSocket 
was absorbed several years ago by Adtran.  Overall, we have been very pleased 
with the product line and performance.  They are also quite affordable - 
relatively speaking.  They have cloud and VMware controller options.  The GUI 
is pleasant, and it's very user-friendly to manage.  We have 530+ access points 
running in "flex-mode". 

 

We've had few to no bugs.  They've stepped up whenever needed.

 

-- 

 

__
__


Fishel Erps,
Sr. Network & Infrastructure Engineer
School of Visual Arts
136 W 21st St., 8th Floor
New York, NY, 10011
LL: 212-592-2416
E: fe...@sva.edu
__

“Today I will do what others won't, so that tomorrow I can accomplish what 
others can’t” - Jerry Rice

 

 

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of Stephen Belcher 

Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 11:48
To: 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

 

Cisco shop here with around 5300 APs. We are looking to get away from Cisco 
because of bugs and poor support. I would be happy to go in more detail 
off-line. 

 

Our fist choice is Mist. They are doing some amazing things but the price is a 
premium and we may not be able to afford them. 

 

Our second choice was Extreme (we have one small site with Extreme wireless) 
but, we just found out yesterday that with the acquisition of AeroHive, all new 
wireless will be based on their AeroHive HiveManager cloud platform rebranded 
to ExtremeCloud IQ. We are doing a deeper technical dive for that platform to 
understand the new offering. That being said, does anyone use AeroHive in a 
large deployment?

 

Maybe it’s just a problem with Wi-Fi in general…

 

Steve

 

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Davis
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:27 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

 

While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into this 
possibility for
the same reasons.  While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6 
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have any 
greenfield 
515-only deployments.

We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco as some 
existing
collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..


On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:

All:

 

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

 

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
tim

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Norman Chu]

We have been running v8.5.0.4 (clustered controllers off of a mobility master) 
with a little over 4100 AP305’s and AP325’s for a couple of months and things 
have been stable here.  Prior to this, v8.3.0.8 was causing us a few issues.

Norman Chu
Systems Administrator, Network Infrastructure Team
IT Services
T:  514-398-7299
norman@mcgill.ca  |   www.mcgill.ca/it
805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Burnside Hall, Montréal, QC. H3A-0B9  Canada
[1501096696117_IITSlogo4email-cleaner-350.png]

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Hulko
Sent: January 9, 2020 11:58 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M


On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w 
its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu



On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and s

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Nick Rauer]

We installed 100+ AP-515s in every other room in our brand new Dorm that we 
opened back in September 2019. Because of the use of 515’s in this building, it 
forced our hand to move to 8.x sooner than expected. The entire months of 
September, October, and November we had very similar issues. We sent out a mass 
email to the students with information on the Intel driver bug and still had 
issues even after that mess.

 

After working with TAC for days, we finally decided to upgrade to 8.5.0.4 per 
Aruba recommendation. Since the upgrade, our students were able to make it 
through finals with minimal issues. I am attempting to stay optimistic that 
things will remain smooth when they return from break, but I am preparing for 
the worst.

 

Let's hope they figure things out in the new year!

 

Nick Rauer

Manager of Networking and Telecommunications 

Wheaton College – Massachusetts

W   https://wheatoncollege.edu/



 

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
[mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

 

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.  

 

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look. 

 

David

 

 

David Morton 
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

 

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu  





On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu> > wrote:

 

All:

 

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

 

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

 

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Miller, Keith C]

Hi Lee,

We were recommended by Aruba to move to ArubaOS 8.5 for the 500 series since 
they were planning on sunsetting 8.4 at the end of 2019. We are a couple of 
minor revisions off of the latest 8.5 code, but we don’t really have any 
options with regards to the 500 series APs. 8.4 was the first supported release 
and is no longer recommended and 8.6 is currently in beta.

Regards,
Keith
O: (919)962-6564 M: (803)464-2397

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 11:50 AM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Interesting. I wonder- does Aruba consider any of these APs or code versions 
that you all are struggling with to be “bleeding edge” or is it all mainstream, 
supposedly stable product at this point?

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Martin Reynolds
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:48 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba APs 
we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's.  This is 
not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well.  The following 
link is for the updated Intel drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/54799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were installed 
but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed.  By using a 
different adapter from what is installed in the hardware (example USB-and not 
Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs

Thanks,
Martin

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton 
mailto:dmor...@uw.edu>> wrote:
Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu



On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(bu

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Lee H Badman]

Good information. And good discussion.

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Miller, Keith C
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:07 PM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Hi Lee,

While we’ve experienced the issue with Intel NICs not being able to see SSIDs 
advertised when .11ax is enabled, a driver update has typically resolved that 
problem. The problems we are seeing range across many different device 
platforms ranging from Apple devices (iPhones and MacBook Pros) to Lenovo 
laptops and Samsung phones. I definitely do not believe it’s client related at 
this point.

Regards,
Keith
O: (919)962-6564 M: (803)464-2397

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
on behalf of Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 11:45 AM
To: 
"WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their pho

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Miller, Keith C]

Hi Lee,

While we’ve experienced the issue with Intel NICs not being able to see SSIDs 
advertised when .11ax is enabled, a driver update has typically resolved that 
problem. The problems we are seeing range across many different device 
platforms ranging from Apple devices (iPhones and MacBook Pros) to Lenovo 
laptops and Samsung phones. I definitely do not believe it’s client related at 
this point.

Regards,
Keith
O: (919)962-6564 M: (803)464-2397

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 on behalf of Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 11:45 AM
To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" 
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu



On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support the

RE: Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

>From my standpoint, it really isn't about having bugs. They will all have 
>them.  Its how the vendor handles the request when it comes in.

Extreme is a very good example of this.  While we have bugs, I know I can 
escalate it all the way to the C level of executives if I don't think an issue 
is getting handled quickly.  If I tell them a bug is critically important, then 
very soon we are on the call with a 10+ developers/coders/executives working to 
fix the problem.  While not everything has been perfect, I know that if I tell 
Extreme something is important, things get resolved.  I feel as though I've had 
to complain so much in the past two years over issues that I've become chicken 
little.  It should be obvious to an executive team monitoring an account that 
when you have significant bugs exceed 2-3 months, the wagons need to be 
circles.  It doesn't seem to be automatic.

So, in short, its not always the existence of bugs that is the problem.  It is 
the company's response to the problem.

Ryan

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Jeffrey D. Sessler
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:56 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago the Aruba 
folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various unresolvable problems with 
Aruba AP's, including one that required a weekly reboot of a particular model.

As Lee mentions, the grass isn't always greener, so expect that you're going to 
run into issues with any vendor. As such, it's going to come down to 
support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor.  Startups are great 
as they have a single product with a single code-train, so they tend to be 
pretty responsive at the start. Once they have a few years under their belt, 
and their code base starts to fragment, you'll get to the same point you have 
with the big incumbents i.e. too many code bases to support effectively.

Jeff


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:15 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>>
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?
All:

We've been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don't consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We've been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I'm fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I'm extra frustrated that due to issues we've seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don't want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba's credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I'm not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Max McGrath]

Ryan -

I can't speak to anything related to Aruba (except that we could never
afford ClearPass).

We've been running the WiNG platform (initially from Motorola then acquired
by Zebra now owned by Extreme) since 2011 and we've never been affected by
a bug in the platform (small or large).  With that said, the main WiNG user
interface is a bit lackluster and their feature set is likely less than
Aruba.  The combination of WiNG and PacketFence has served us well for the
last 8 years.

I will also say it doesn't seem to be a very popular platform based on the
strange looks I've received at conferences (people seem to be always amazed
if you aren't running Cisco or Aruba in higher ed).

Max
--
Max McGrath  
Infrastructure and Security Manager
Carthage College
262-551-
mmcgr...@carthage.edu


On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 10:15 AM Turner, Ryan H 
wrote:

> All:
>
>
>
> We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000
> access points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and
> downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I
> am considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The
> biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t
> consider appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the
> other, and my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith
> Miller) might as well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been
> doing for them to solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed,
> another one crops up.
>
>
>
> The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them
> deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are
> connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they
> are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their
> phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.
> Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and
> seeing a problem resolve.  Normally, if the users disconnect then
> reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think they end up connecting
> in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on this problem with them for
> months.  It always seems as though we have to prove there is a real issue.
> I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If we have a problem, 9
> times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem.  I’m
> extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train
> that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To Aruba’s
> credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around
> February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba
> bought back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I
> thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would
> be fixed by the time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.
>
>
>
> So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away
> from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are
> other bugs I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the
> switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted,
> what were your motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of
> course, this is a great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we
> have 3 choices….  Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped
> them for bugs), something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this
> makes sense), something from Juniper (Mist).
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ryan Turner
>
> Head of Networking
>
> The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
> +1 919 445 0113 Office
>
> +1 919 274 7926 Mobile
>
> r...@unc.edu
>
>
>
> **
> Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire
> community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the
> message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply.
> Additional participation and subscription information can be found at
> https://www.educause.edu/community
> 
>

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Michael Hulko]

May not be completely related, but we have had issues with newer AX chipsets 
that utilize NDIS 6.3 code set.  Some of the advanced features had to be turned 
off as a work around such as packet coalescing etc.

ALthough we have no 515’s in our environment, we are progressing to 8.6 (as per 
our SE) in the coming weeks and this does not make me comfortable.  Any issues 
with the 300 series APs and 8.5x? May rethink and downgrade to 8.3x as it also 
seems to only support the AP103Hs as well.

M

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:44 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu>
 wrote:

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w 
its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> 
On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: 
WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of the

Re: Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Jeffrey D. Sessler]

Our consortium had both Cisco and Aruba, and about 12-18 months ago the Aruba 
folks tossed in the towel and went Cisco. Various unresolvable problems with 
Aruba AP’s, including one that required a weekly reboot of a particular model.

As Lee mentions, the grass isn’t always greener, so expect that you’re going to 
run into issues with any vendor. As such, it’s going to come down to 
support/resolution and your relationship with the vendor.  Startups are great 
as they have a single product with a single code-train, so they tend to be 
pretty responsive at the start. Once they have a few years under their belt, 
and their code base starts to fragment, you’ll get to the same point you have 
with the big incumbents i.e. too many code bases to support effectively.

Jeff


From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:15 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU 
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?
All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices….  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

This isn’t the problem.  The drivers are updated.  Clients see the ssid.  Just 
periodically they stop communicating.

Ryan Turner
Head of Networking, ITS
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
+1 919 445 0113 Office

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Martin Reynolds  wrote:


Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba APs 
we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's.  This is 
not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well.  The following 
link is for the updated Intel drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/54799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were installed 
but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed.  By using a 
different adapter from what is installed in the hardware (example USB-and not 
Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs

Thanks,
Martin

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton 
mailto:dmor...@uw.edu>> wrote:
Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu

On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the ove

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Lee H Badman]

Interesting. I wonder- does Aruba consider any of these APs or code versions 
that you all are struggling with to be “bleeding edge” or is it all mainstream, 
supposedly stable product at this point?

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Martin Reynolds
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:48 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba APs 
we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's.  This is 
not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well.  The following 
link is for the updated Intel drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/54799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were installed 
but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed.  By using a 
different adapter from what is installed in the hardware (example USB-and not 
Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs

Thanks,
Martin

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton 
mailto:dmor...@uw.edu>> wrote:
Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran 

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

These aren’t device driver issues.  We have those two and it’s different.

Ryan Turner
Head of Networking, ITS
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
+1 919 445 0113 Office

On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:45 AM, Lee H Badman 
<00db5b77bd95-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu> wrote:


No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the hone

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Martin Reynolds]

Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba
APs we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's.
This is not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well.  The
following link is for the updated Intel drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/54799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html


In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were
installed but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed.
By using a different adapter from what is installed in the hardware
(example USB-and not Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs

Thanks,
Martin

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton  wrote:

> Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since
> installing 515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first
> step to any migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no
> connectivity. In most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I
> believe that I remain connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that
> 30 seconds to a couple of minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now
> deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of our residence halls so I am concerned
> about their experience as well. Just before the holiday break we had a
> series of very high-profile outages that impacted our students leading up
> to and during finals week. The issue got so bad that our CIO had to issue a
> letter to students explaining the problem and what we are doing about it.
> This is the first time that this level of communication was needed in my 15
> years at the UW using Aruba.
>
> We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo
> kit. We haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if
> things continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.
>
> David
>
>
> David Morton
> Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
> University of Washington
> dmorton @uw.edu
> tel 206.221.7814
>
> PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list,
> please direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu
>
> On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H  wrote:
>
> All:
>
> We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000
> access points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and
> downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I
> am considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The
> biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t
> consider appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the
> other, and my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith
> Miller) might as well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been
> doing for them to solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed,
> another one crops up.
>
> The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them
> deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are
> connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they
> are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their
> phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.
> Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and
> seeing a problem resolve.  Normally, if the users disconnect then
> reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think they end up connecting
> in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on this problem with them for
> months.  It always seems as though we have to prove there is a real issue.
> I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If we have a problem, 9
> times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem.  I’m
> extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train
> that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To Aruba’s
> credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around
> February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba
> bought back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I
> thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would
> be fixed by the time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.
>
> So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away
> from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are
> other bugs I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the
> switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted,
> what were your motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of
> course, this is a great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we
> have 3 choices….  Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped
> them for bugs), something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this
> makes sense), something from Juniper (Mist).
>
> Thanks,
> Ryan T

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Stephen Belcher]

Cisco shop here with around 5300 APs. We are looking to get away from Cisco 
because of bugs and poor support. I would be happy to go in more detail 
off-line.

Our fist choice is Mist. They are doing some amazing things but the price is a 
premium and we may not be able to afford them.

Our second choice was Extreme (we have one small site with Extreme wireless) 
but, we just found out yesterday that with the acquisition of AeroHive, all new 
wireless will be based on their AeroHive HiveManager cloud platform rebranded 
to ExtremeCloud IQ. We are doing a deeper technical dive for that platform to 
understand the new offering. That being said, does anyone use AeroHive in a 
large deployment?

Maybe it's just a problem with Wi-Fi in general...

Steve

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Davis
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:27 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into this 
possibility for
the same reasons.  While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6 
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have any 
greenfield
515-only deployments.

We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco as some 
existing
collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..


On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:
All:

We've been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don't consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We've been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I'm fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I'm extra frustrated that due to issues we've seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don't want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba's credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I'm not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community




--

 Mike Davis

 IT - University of Delaware  - 302.831.8756

 Newark, DE  19716 Email da...@udel.edu

**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the mes

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Lee H Badman]

No insult meant to anyone’s intelligence, but are you also looking at client 
device drivers etc in the context of these issues? Depending on which client 
NIC is in play, the device makers haven’t been doing us any favors of late. Is 
very possible for example that hundreds of AD-managed laptops may all have same 
bum driver.

Just asking…

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of David Morton
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:39 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu


On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices….  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so thi

RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Lee H Badman]

As you shop around, make sure you take a hard look at each candidate vendor's 
bug history by talking with other sites that not only have that other vendor, 
but who have a similar operational approach and size to your own as many bugs 
show only at scale. Look past the cherry-picked fanboi accounts, as you may 
find the grass is no greener depending on the vendor in play. Also, like with 
Cisco, make sure you are getting a clear read on what technology is in use as 
the WLCs/AireOS get long in the tooth and DNA-C/9800s feel kinda beta. Also... 
pay close attention to the licensing adventure that goes with each vendor as 
that can be wildly convoluted.

I realize this is probably nothing you don't already know...

Lee Badman | Network Architect (CWNE#200)
Information Technology Services
(NDD Group)
206 Machinery Hall
120 Smith Drive
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.3003   e lhbad...@syr.edu w its.syr.edu
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Michael Davis
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:27 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into this 
possibility for
the same reasons.  While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6 
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have any 
greenfield
515-only deployments.

We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco as some 
existing
collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..


On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:
All:

We've been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don't consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We've been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I'm fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I'm extra frustrated that due to issues we've seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don't want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba's credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I'm not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community




--

 Mike Davis

 IT - University of Delaware  - 302.831.8756

 Newark, 

Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[David Morton]

Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 
515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any 
migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In 
most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain 
connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of 
minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of 
our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just 
before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that 
impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so 
bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and 
what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of 
communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba.

We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We 
haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things 
continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look.

David


David Morton
Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture
University of Washington
dmorton @uw.edu
tel 206.221.7814

PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please 
direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu

On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H 
mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote:

All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices….  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


**
Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community 
list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and 
paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation 
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Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Michael Davis]

While not an answer to your request, we are also starting to look into 
this possibility for
the same reasons.  While we only have about 500 515s deployed with WiFi6 
extensions
disabled, we haven't seen tickets to this extent but we also don't have 
any greenfield

515-only deployments.

We will be looking at Mist, being a heavy Juniper shop, but also Cisco 
as some existing

collaborations may lead to cost effective transitions..


On 1/9/20 11:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H wrote:


All:

We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 
access points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups 
and downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the 
point that I am considering making the enormous move to choose a 
different vendor.  The biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and 
bugs that we just don’t consider appropriate to use in production.  It 
has been one thing after the other, and my extremely talented and 
qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as well be on the 
Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to solve 
bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.


The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have 
them deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that 
are connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the 
user, they are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they 
are on their phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything 
works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than 
switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve. Normally, if the users 
disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think 
they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We’ve been working on this 
problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to 
prove there is a real issue.  I’m fed up with it.  We are a 
sophisticated shop.  If we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we 
bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem.  I’m extra frustrated 
that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train that we 
don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To Aruba’s credit, 
we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around February).  
When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I 
thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues 
would be fixed by the time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.


So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move 
away from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  
There are other bugs I’m not even mentioning here.  For those of you 
that made the switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long 
the honeymoon lasted, what were your motivators, and were you happy 
with the overall results?  Of course, this is a great opportunity to 
plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices….  Something from 
Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), something from 
Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), something 
from Juniper (Mist).


Thanks,

Ryan Turner

Head of Networking

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

+1 919 445 0113 Office

+1 919 274 7926 Mobile

r...@unc.edu 

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--
 Mike Davis
 IT - University of Delaware  - 302.831.8756
 Newark, DE  19716 Email da...@udel.edu


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Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why?

[Turner, Ryan H]

All:

We've been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access 
points.  While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my 
frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am 
considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor.  The biggest 
reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don't consider 
appropriate to use in production.  It has been one thing after the other, and 
my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as 
well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to 
solve bugs.  Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up.

The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train.  We have them 
deployed in one of our IT buildings.  Periodically, people that are connected 
to these APs in the 5G band will stop working.  To the user, they are browsing 
a site, then it becomes unresponsive.  If they are on their phone, they will 
disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell.  Nothing makes an 
802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve.  
Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead 
(but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band).   We've been working on 
this problem with them for months.  It always seems as though we have to prove 
there is a real issue.  I'm fed up with it.  We are a sophisticated shop.  If 
we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a 
real problem.  I'm extra frustrated that due to issues we've seen in ResNet on 
the 8.3X train that we don't want to abandon our 6 train on main campus.  To 
Aruba's credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around 
February).  When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought 
back half of them.  I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for 
sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the 
time the 315s ran out.  Not looking to be the case.

So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from 
Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon).  There are other bugs 
I'm not even mentioning here.  For those of you that made the switch to another 
vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your 
motivators, and were you happy with the overall results?  Of course, this is a 
great opportunity to plug your vendor.  As I see it, we have 3 choices  
Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), 
something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), 
something from Juniper (Mist).

Thanks,
Ryan Turner
Head of Networking
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
+1 919 445 0113 Office
+1 919 274 7926 Mobile
r...@unc.edu


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RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Android Rogue Hunting App

[Voelker, Andy]

This application is the best application I’ve ever gotten for free on android.  
Ever.  Newer versions of android limit how often it can scan, so we have to 
worry about that a bit, but still… great app.


Andy Voelker
Network Administrator
Davidson College

From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv 
 On Behalf Of Hall, Rand
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 7:59 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Android Rogue Hunting App

We've had great success with Wifi 
Analyzer.
 It has a great beeping "geiger counter" feature that scares kids as you're 
roaming the hallways :-)

Rand

Rand P. Hall
Director, Network Services askIT!
Merrimack College
978-837-3532
rand.h...@merrimack.edu

If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the 
problem and five minutes finding solutions. – Einstein


On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 1:43 PM Gray, Sean 
mailto:sean.gr...@uleth.ca>> wrote:
Happy New Year to all you happy wi-fi people!

Does anyone have any Android software products they recommend for Rogue 
hunting? Unfortunately Ekahau Mobile Survey (EMS) has been canned, so we are 
looking for alternatives to put to use on an Android tablet. Ideally it should 
be something simple to use, that allows non-technical users to quickly narrow 
down the location of rogues.

Thanks

Sean

Sean Gray | B.Sc (Hons)
Voice, Collaboration & Wireless Network Analyst
ITS, University of Lethbridge


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Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Android Rogue Hunting App

[Hall, Rand]

We've had great success with Wifi Analyzer
.
It has a great beeping "geiger counter" feature that scares kids as you're
roaming the hallways :-)

Rand

Rand P. Hall
Director, Network Services askIT!
Merrimack College
978-837-3532
rand.h...@merrimack.edu

If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the
problem and five minutes finding solutions. – Einstein


On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 1:43 PM Gray, Sean  wrote:

> Happy New Year to all you happy wi-fi people!
>
>
>
> Does anyone have any Android software products they recommend for Rogue
> hunting? Unfortunately Ekahau Mobile Survey (EMS) has been canned, so we
> are looking for alternatives to put to use on an Android tablet. Ideally it
> should be something simple to use, that allows non-technical users to
> quickly narrow down the location of rogues.
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> *Sean Gray* | B.Sc (Hons)
>
> Voice, Collaboration & Wireless Network Analyst
>
> ITS, University of Lethbridge
>
>
>
> **
> Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire
> community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the
> message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply.
> Additional participation and subscription information can be found at
> https://www.educause.edu/community
>

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