John, We are currently migrating from a combination of Cisco Aironet 1231s and Vivato wireless panels with Clean Access for NAC to Aruba AP-125s & M3 controllers with Aruba ECS (Bradford CM) for NAC. We currently have close to 550 APs deployed. We have deployed Airwave within the last two weeks to monitor the Aruba network. You cannot compare Aruba support with that of Cisco. If you have a major issue, you deal with knowledgeable engineers who have direct access to the developers. We sent Aruba some console output from a rebooting AP. They bound the software problem and I expect to get a custom software build within the next couple of days to address the problem until they out the fix in the next release. They are testing the build now. We could never get that level of support from Cisco. Feel free to contact me off-list for further information.
Thanks, Bruce Osborne Network Engineer Liberty University From: John Duran [mailto:jvdu...@unm.edu] Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 6:31 PM Subject: Multi vendor Environments We currently have the Cisco Unified wireless solution with ~800 access points and several WiSM blades. We are considering a move toward Aruba as the wireless solution to save dollars in the long run as we continue to grow our infrastructure. We have purchased the AirWave product to provide the management for both systems and because it seems to do a better job than Cisco’s WCS. My questions are: 1) Do you have a multi vendor WiFi environment and if so what are you doing to manage it? 2) Are you doing anything tricky with Mobile IP (or a similar protocol) to design for seamless roaming between the two systems? 3) What has your experience been in troubleshooting and maintaining a dual WiFi system: a. From a customer support standpoint b. From a technician support standpoint 4) Do you have any lessons learned to share? 5) Does anyone have experience with the Colubris (now HP Pro Curve) wireless solution and what is your opinion of the product? In addition are universities moving forward with 802.11N deployments or are you looking at other wireless solutions for clients such as 3G, 4G or WiMax? Thank you in advance for your time, John V. Duran Network Engineer University of New Mexico Information Technology Services Ph: (505) 249-7890 Fax: (505) 277-8101 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
