RE: [WIRELESS-LAN] Aruba vs. Cisco - Bake Off!

[Phil Raymond]

Title: WIRELESS-LAN Digest - 17 Jan 2006 to 19 Jan 2006 (#2006-10)

I think you understand the importance of this based on your question but it bears repeating – if you let Cisco and Aruba come in and perform their own rehearsed dog and pony show, they will focus on their strengths and deflect from their weaknesses.   So how do you answer your question? It is quite complex. Hopefully some other institutions have performed a similar bakeoff and can offer insight on this forum. I would also suggest that you find some WLAN RFP’s that were written by knowledgeable folks. I have a couple that I could probably cut and paste some stuff from if you don’t get enough assistance elsewhere. They are probably too technical though and it is better that you listen to others in your situation.   Another thing to understand is what applications are you running on the WLAN? VoIP? Video? Will you require high mobility? Security capabilities?   If you are using for example Spectralink handsets, get a couple and perform some roaming and range testing. Make sure that Cisco/’Aruba show up with a setup that will enable 2 or more AP’s to simulate roaming.   Have a lot of clients on hand to stress out the AP’s with load balancing, etc. VoIP clients are good at this since they load up an AP fast (you might expect to get 10-12 handset conversations on an AP with no other data clients).   Typical tests are roaming/handoffs, load balancing, security, range. It really depends on the applications you will be putting on the WLAN. Just make sure you have those applications available during testing.   I think both vendors are high grade and will perform comparably. Many times it comes down to the uniqueness of your application requirements and who is tailored best to meet them, and price…   From: Landry, Michael [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 7:33 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Aruba vs. Cisco - Bake Off!   We’re coming up on a lightweight AP competition between Aruba and Cisco. Both vendors are providing hardware, an engineer to set it up, and some sort of “test steps” for us to use in our evaluation. I’m looking for guidance from this list if anyone has done the side-by-side real-world eval, what types of criteria you evaluated, speedbumps to watch out for, and what your decision was and why.   OK, so that’s a bit broad, but any info you’re willing to share is appreciated. I’m sure we all have a lot of free time on our hands… :P   Thanks! Michael Landry Quinnipiac University ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.