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I have gotten into a very strange scenario for IT, I have been given the task of look for replacement of the current setup for one of our company buildings Wireless APs and controller and literally I do not have budget limitations what would be your recommendations for high level Wireless infrastructure?

5 Spice ups
2

Can you define what you mean by best?

Longest range, most customizable, cheapest, most suited to a metal building or point-to-point etc.

What are they using now, to compare it with?

3 Spice ups
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it is a metal building and thick walls, so it has to be one with fastest speeds and best penetrations, no budget limits so no need to include the cheap or expensive into the equations, at we only need speeds , security and reliable connections, Multicast and TV streamings over the network.

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4

Is this what you mean by best? And what can be sacrificed if you can’t have all of these features/options?

Is security lower than speed or is reliability higher than speed.

What is the preference order.

Ruckus, might be worth looking at if you have no budget limits.

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5

well those don’t go together. If you want the fastest speeds you won’t get any penetration at all. If you want penetrations then you are limiting yourself to the slowest speeds.

2.4 GHz - Slow, interference prone, but longest range and best penetration
5.8 GHz - Short range penetration, less interference and decent speed
6 GHz - Fast this is where the speed is at, but 0 penetration. its line of site only, you will need an AP in each room

Unifi is my goto for equipment, but the equipment brand won’t change the above. If you truly want fast you need to move to 6GHz and put an AP in each room. You also need to ensure your client devices support it.

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What do you mean by high level? as in overview no detail? or to be installed at a high level? or do you mean high end product i.e. best in class?

Is it general wifi devices (phones, computers, smart devices, some IOT) or are there industry specific stuff - machinery, IOT, custom, etc.

For general wifi Cisco and Ruckus are market leaders with excellent product range with a wide network of partners.

i wold also recommend using a local specialist wireless supplier - they will survey recommend options, install configure and support.

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7

I would recommend getting a wireless map of your building then implementing some sort of mesh. I personally have had good results with Ubiquiti gear and would recommend them.

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When we do deployments or updates we start with heat maps to ensure coverage, because having an adequate number of optimally placed APs is more important than the AP itself. We have been using Aruba Instant On products for a while because they have a good free cloud management solution. If you need higher power APs Aruba has a whole line managed through Aruba Central

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9

It’s hard to go past Cisco (there are other good options that I have little or no experience with), whether their Catalyst or Meraki range.

If the building has a lot of metal, then expect to be putting APs in every room as penetration between rooms is likely to be an issue.

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Since you do not have budget constraints and need the highest speeds…why not just run 40Gbps “copper” with 100Gbps network switches to each of the points using LAN cables ?

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I recommend Meraki by Cisco. Easy to use, setup, manage, cost is very reasonable and they work great. As with any setup you have to learn all the in’s and outs, but Meraki support is easy to work with.

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With no budget limitations, I’d hire someone to do a thorough predictive survey with Ekahau or AirMagnet. A passive site survey could also be beneficial if the facility has other RF sources to share space with. The most expensive APs in the world are hardly better than the cheapest APs if they’re not planned/deployed properly.

To answer your question in more generic terms, I personally favor Ruckus APs. Other flagships are probably just as good, but Ruckus just makes sense to me and they have good support.

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13

those are actually the ones that we are having replaced, we got old versions of the 303 and 325s that are not really reaching the specs speeds and in general based in my previous experience with Cisco WLCs and Rukus Alcatel and Aruba feels a bit shaky often I have to reset APs that never happened to me before with Cisco unless there was a fault or an update.

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we do have a network heat map, so coverage is not the main issue here really, the roaming between APs and speeds the RF gives are really not up to the task in these old APs anymore hence I am looking into changing the hardware.