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I am trying to pick an enterprise wireless solution for my new building (66K sq ft). We currently have autonomous Cisco WAP and Ubiquity. Some of the areas will be classrooms, and we will also have a large ballroom type area as well. I have a quote from Cisco, which I still need to wade through. Aerohive is going over my floor plans to come up with a BOM. I have a quote from Ruckus Wireless that seems reasonable/fair if the number of APs is correct (16).

Is there any reason why I shouldn’t go with Ruckus and get on with all of my other stuff? My understanding is that they’re pretty top notch, and the pricing seems perfectly fine.

FWIW, for the same number of access points, the 7 year cost of Ruckus and Meraki is within a rounding error of each other for 802.11ac wave 2 WAPs.

3 Spice ups
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As an aside, I was quoted 40 Meraki MR42 vs. 16 Ruckus R710, do the proposed Ruckus solution is less than 1/2 the cost.

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If you have some Ubiquiti, why wouldn’t you put in more of that? I did a Ubiquiti system last year with 802.11AC standard. I would have cost more than 3 times what I spent on the hardware to pay for the first year of Cisco gear.

2 Spice ups
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Can the Ubiquity drop devices onto different VLANs based upon group ID assigned by RADIUS? I would like some more reporting than what I have found to be available from Ubiquity. Were are trying to step things up a notch, and the quote for the Ruckus is inexpensive enough that nobody is going to blink over it. It’s less than 10% of what I will be spending on switches and firewalls.

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The Ubiquiti can drop in to different VLANs. In the one I setup, I used a Windows NPS and certificate based auth. I pushed the certs out via group policy and it works really well. Company owned devices get the cert and the SSID config to connect to the SSID that puts them in the company owned device VLAN. There’s no password to get out out and their laptops automatically connect without the end user having to do anything.

For the rest of the setup I used HP PoE switches just because all my other switches are HP. The guest wifi goes on another VLAN to the SonicWall firewall. It’s all working really well.

I can’t comment on the reporting piece since I haven’t had a need for that.

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I am not talking about multiple SSID, with each one in a different VLAN. I am talking about keeping my SSID count low by having one SSID on multiple VLAN. The VLAN assignment is done by RADIUS group membership.

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 I am talking about keeping my SSID count low by having one SSID on multiple VLAN.

Why? What issue are you trying to solve?

Best practice says each VLAN/SSID should reside in it’s own layer 3 subnet.

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Get a WiFi preinstall survey.
Keep SSIDs to three or less to avoid beacon overhead.
Yes, each UBNT SSID can be assigned to a separate VLAN.
Don’t buy old gear. Make sure it’s 802.11ac.

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I am trying to keep my SSID count down, which requires more advanced features than traditional one SSID to one VLAN mapping. I am looking at one SSID to multiple VLAN. I already have Ubiquity, and while it works, I am looking for something more sophisticated. A little more enterprise, and a little less small business.

The WAPs I mentioned are both 802.11ac wave 2.

My quote for Ruckus is $20K USD. We are investing over 1 million in electrical infrastructure and labor. Really, the 20K isn’t a problem.

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Dynamic VLAN mapping (Tunnel-Private-Group-ID) is something that I understand is in Ubiquiti beta, so for you that takes them out of the running.

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I would highly recommend Ruckus. They are an excellent company with amazingly powerful access points. If you are happy with their prices then there is no reason that you shouldn’t go with them. Excellent hardware.

@Ruckus

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Why is it so important to keep ssid count low? You can just not broadcast it to keep the network list clean.

I don’t recommend having more then one vlan per ssid anyways.

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Ubiquiti is not actually enterprise class. They are a step up from the home market but in no way can they compete with any of the enterprise class wireless vendors like Aruba, Ruckus, Cisco or Aerohive when it comes to hardware, software, features and support. Ubiquitiis pretty good for simple wireless access for cheap. But take an Ubiquiti AP and a Aruba AP, for example, and even only by the feel and look you can see that Aruba is so far ahead of Ubiquiti.

If you have a choice between Ruckus, Aerohive and Cisco then Ruckus any day any time.

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14

I am told that the issue with multiple SSIDs is that adding them hurts performance. I have this from multiple wireless vendors, including Ruckus. Here’s an article why from Aruba. The issue is the same, even is the SSID is hidden.

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Hiding an SSID does nothing. In fact, a client that has knowledge of a hidden SSID can have performance issues when looking for it.

I do know SSIDs can be based authentication method. Inside the profile you base VLANs and other security based on the device fingerprint and / or password.

If budget isn’t a big deal, then look at the larger vendors. Talk to the SE in your area. Get in touch with user groups. Go see them in action. Do not base your decision on a social media site. This is a five year decision.

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If money is not issue go with ruckus, but make sure the wap count is right, that proper survey placement was done and there are no issues with signal penetration.

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Most of my deployments run 10 SSID’s with zero performance drop off. The vendor will tell you what the max number of supported SSID’s would be for each model AP you are using. Find one that fits with your plans.Either way having an SSID span Layer 3 subnets is a much bigger headache than having multiple BSSID’s which is what wireless is designed for.
Just how many SSID’s in total are we talking about here if you were to broadcast all of them?

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Here is a geat article on calculating the overhead on SSID’s. It adds up fast.

http://www.wlanpros.com/wi-fi-ssid-overhead-calculator-andrew-von-nagy/

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I currently have 5 SSID, which puts me beyond the Ubiquity limit of 4. That might also put me beyond the Meraki limit. Meraki recommends no more than 3, though with their group policy options you can put different filters and different VLANs while using just one SSID, so it is possible to collapse the number of SSID used.

There’s no need for me to have SSID span layer 3, which makes things easier.

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Be sure to check out Mojo Networks as well.