Hi All, Thanks for the great responses as per normal, always good feedback. Couple more products to add to the list to look at too.
HI Caston, Thanks for the detailed response, that's excellent. You've pretty much nailed it on the fighting for the same budget despite being more complementary than competitive. Ultimately we'll only be able to choose one product. It'll come down to cost and which one we feel will tick the most boxes. Regards Jason -- Jason Cook Technology Services The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005 Ph : +61 8 8313 4800 From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Caston Thomas Sent: Tuesday, 25 July 2017 7:28 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Nyansa vs 7Signal vs ? Hi Jason, Full disclosure: My company was one of the first resellers of 7Signal. We are also an early reseller of Nyansa. I have taken every precaution to make this informative with an iota of "vendor speak". (If I've failed in any way, my apologies in advance and I will ban myself from ever posting again!) :) I know three organizations that are customers of 7Signal that have also deployed or PoC'd Nyansa. Two are higher ed and one is not. (I am not at liberty to disclose the organizations, but can discuss offline.) 7Signal and Nyansa address two different use cases. There is some overlap in the business case that they make. I have no doubt that they will compete for the same budget allocations, even though they complement each other technically. Business Case... * Both aim to improve Wi-Fi performance. (Nyansa also addresses wired/uplink network performance as well. It examines switch/router/other components.) * Both can breakdown network performance to specific protocols/applications. Use case... * Both aim to improve network performance from the perspective of the user experience - but in two *completely* different ways. 7Signal does this with sensors - both highly capable (e.g. expensive) physical sensors that are deployed as an overlay to the Wi-Fi network, as well as "mobile sensors" and win/mac/ios/android agents. Those sensors can actively simulate ftp, smtp, and other common protocols. ("Simulate" is probably not the best word, but I can't find a better one at the moment.) * 7Signal provides a historical view into network performance with an emphasis on the contribution that RF quality has on the environment. It is a more proactive way to monitor & report on RF than a spectrum analyzer, but it does not completely replace the need for spectrum analyzers. The reports/displays from 7Signal are very powerful in the hands of an experienced Wi-Fi technical expert. * Nyansa has no way to address specific spectrum problems, but it can recognize characteristics that certain RF problems create. (In one case I experienced, it did a really good job of diagnosing far-end interference from the controller logs.) The KPI's that Nyansa displays/reports can be shown to a technical CIO/CTO who will be able to comprehend the information. Technical differences: * 7Signal has sensors that are deployed to monitor network traffic and RF spectrum. Nyansa extrapolates network performance based on advanced analytics by examining controller/AP/switch/router data, as well as network traffic via a TAP/SPAN/aggregation port. Nyansa does not examine RF spectrum, but does a good job of making recommendations at the root cause that may be creating the problem. At that point, 7Signal or a spectrum analyzer is useful (and sometimes absolutely necessary) to determine the contribution that spectrum issues may be creating. * 7Signal supports a number of Wi-Fi vendors. As of this writing, Nyansa supports Cisco & Aruba. (I am told that Ruckus is also supported, but I don't have personal experience.) * The 7Signal mobile product has some really good functionality. It was a really nice addition to their product set. Obviously, it can't do all that the full-blown sensor does. * Nyansa can be turned loose on the helpdesk. It has "common language" recommendations to address "root cause" of a user's giving problem. That helps avoid escalations to the network team. The alerts that Nyansa generates are "really actionable" according to one end-user who has used both 7Signal & Nyansa. * Additional note and really cool concept: Nyansa creates a baseline of "normal" network performance (as measured by the KPI's, from the perspective of both technical and user experience). It then monitors and alerts for deviations against "normal". It also shows those segments that are best/worst performers. From that performance comparison, the network team can determine the characteristics/settings on the controller/network/switch/segment that are contributing to the goodness or badness. Think of that metaphor where raising the level of the water causes all the ships in the harbor rise. Now the cool concept... Nyansa takes to KPIs and anonymously publishes them to the cloud console so that comparisons of those KPIs can be made with other Nyansa customers by industry/technology/size. So if you are a small college with Aruba controllers, Cisco switches and one location, you won't be comparing your network to a pharmaceutical companies with Cisco WLANs spread across hundreds of locations. Crowd-sourcing network performance improvements. To me, that's a simple but powerful concept. Caston Thomas InterWorks, LLC ctho...@iworkstech.com<mailto:ctho...@iworkstech.com> 586.530.4981 From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Kees Pronk Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2017 5:16 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Nyansa vs 7Signal vs ? Don't have experience with Nyansa, have experience with 7signal. IMO nothing beats 7signal in the radio / spectrum part of their *Wi-Fi* performance monitoring. It appears to me that this is the key difference. Regards, Kees On 25 Jul 2017, at 09:02, Jason Cook <jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au<mailto:jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au>> wrote: Hi All, There's been plenty of positives mentioned about Nyansa in recent discussions. I'm wondering if anyone out there has experience at both 7signal and Nyansa or any other systems that do wireless monitoring/alerting in a more detailed way than vendor provided gear. The approach for these 2 are obviously quite different with I guess varying advantages. Don't need much detail, just general thoughts is good. Regards Jason -- Jason Cook Technology Services The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005 Ph : +61 8 8313 4800 e-mail: jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au<mailto:jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au<mailto:jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au%3cmailto:jason.c...@adelaide.edu.au>> CRICOS Provider Number 00123M ----------------------------------------------------------- This email message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential and/or copyright. If you are not the intended recipient please do not read, save, forward, disclose, or copy the contents of this email. If this email has been sent to you in error, please notify the sender by reply email and delete this email and any copies or links to this email completely and immediately from your system. No representation is made that this email is free of viruses. 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