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This might be more of an info gathering versus a question. We are a small school distrcit, 587 students, one building, PreK thru 12. Looking to gather information on wireless throughout the entire building. I see probably more use of wireless on the High School side with roughly 260 students, but I may be wrong.

Can anyone share there thoughts on wireless, why you chose that brand, any pro or cons you had.

Just trying to find out about “after purchase” surprises, good or bad. Also, looking for “set it and forget it” configuration. Keep the students from constantly playing games on their own device during class. Also, BYOD and if there is anyway to let the students get to their network folder while keeping the network safe. Multiple SSIDs? one for Students, Guest, Teachers, etc… Timed wireless? I think it would be nice for wireless to shut down at a certain time in the night… maybe? Timed guest accounts? etc…

Also, if your school implemented any acceptable use policies for things you didn’t “expect” to happen with wireless and/or BYOD? Since we currently do not have wireless, except for school owned laptop carts, I’m afraid what we are in for with suprises.

Any info, tips, suggestions, thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I would like to have something to the school board within a couple months and I really want to get the wireless right the first time and not have to upgrade or replace in the near future. I do like the Rukus wireless from their website, but no one got back with me from that company. Aruba guys are meeting with us today. Meraki webinar maybe next week. Also, we are talking with other schools in our disctrict. Every idea, thought or comment will help!

Thanks again,

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We went with the HP line of wireless. An acceptable use policy is a must have as it gives administration something to go back to on discipline issues. We would only allow BYOD items to have access to the internet but no other network resources. It can be a esxpensive project and we have found out that for some areas like the science area with lots of copper, we needed to put an access point in each room.

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You are asking all the right questions. The biggest and earliest questions are all policy based, e.g. what devices are you going to allow on, when, how much bandwidth, acceptable use, etc. Make sure that those are answered at the proper level so that you don’t get second guessed later.

Then you have to address your own security needs. Students and guest devices probably should never have access to teacher networks. Will your security needs be met by multi SSID/multi VLAN configurations, or do you need physically separated networks? Multi SSID and VLANs are where most wireless devices either fall down or shine. It is a good early differentiator. The second is how cost effective their mesh solution is if they offer one.

We have used basic Linksys WAPxxx devices which provided none of the above. We started using Cisco WAP2000 which gave us all but the mesh capability. This caused us major problems where the signals overlapped. Then we started using a Cisco Aironet 1141 to see if that was a direction that we wanted to go in. It is a great device from a number of perspectives. The problem that we had is the cost of the mesh system from Cisco. Right now we’re doing a beta of Sonicwall’s Sonicpoints. It is still early, but I like the fact that you can manage them from the Sonicwall and you don’t have to buy another mesh device.

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Here is a webpage for you to look at. This is from the Church IT Roundtable, With most of the church listings there are church congregations that typically run 1000+ every weekend. worth a look… Plus you can find people that are actually using those products listed…

http://citrt.pbworks.com/w/page/7717479/Wireless%20Networking

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with out any doubt RUCKUS Wireless… We are in the process of deploying them in some local schools

This article sums it up

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Try Meraki.

They have really good equipment and it’s pretty simple to understand and setup.

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jratliff wrote:

Try Meraki.

http://meraki.com/

They have really good equipment and it’s pretty simple to understand and setup.

we gave them a good look, but in the reviews under a load when did not perform

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Just want to throw my hat into this. Please PLEASE do not touch Siemens equipment. I’ve deployed dozens of units, and I’ve never not had problems with them. APs would suddenly not work, or switch bands; configurations would suddenly dissapear, or changes wouldn’t commit; on top of all of that the cost is crazy.

3Com/HP is better by bounds, but (in the past) they always felt like they were behind the times and a poor value.

Cisco was the easiest to work with out of the major players, provided you’re up on your IOS commands. However, i’ve never had much success using Cisco equipment when linking buildings.

Personally, i think Astaro’s Wireless solution is clever and just works, but that would be a full infrastructure upgrade, so probably not your best bet.

As far as policy, run it by the big wigs, what they say is going to go. My suggestion is to hide the main SSID and keep the password strong. Student/Guest access should be broadcast with a simple password (not full open) and should be throttled to prevent that from consuming your bandwidth (i’d say keep it down to T1 speeds on the down, and as low as you’re comfortable on the upload).

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When I first started at the school I am at now, they had 16 wireless access points. Half of which was open to anybody. Some of them you could connect to and some of them you could connect and then get dropped.

We have 275 kids from K4 to 12. About 130 laptops and about 60 desktops.

I did some research on the wireless APs. And we decided on going with Meraki. We dropped down to 15 access point, and all of them are secure.

It was easy to set up and you can log in to the Meraki web sight and you can actually see what is going on with each access point, who is using it, what kind of applications they are running. And so much more.

I would go with Meraki.

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Good points from everyone. I appreciate your input lots and have already got my gears turning!

Policy and acceptable use questions is big and I’m trying to push the Superintendent to think about more in depth. The boards reason for wanting to put in wireless is “because all the other schools have it”. If that gives you any idea of what I’m up against. I can get wireless in no problem, just want the best and simplest system now while they are willing to pay for it. :slight_smile: However, it’s the after affects that I’m worried about. At least, when stuff happens, I can say, “I told you so”.

Another question is, do we initially install for Coverage or Capacity? I know in the beginning it is hard to determine capacity. One school in our area has had wireless a while now and is now having to add extra for capacity. He said when he is all through, they’ll basically have one AP in each room. Not sure what his capacity is, but that almost seems like overkill.

I’ll be curious to read into Meraki from B-Rads comment above. One school in our area, which is probably the most up n up on technology, has been using Meraki and they absolutely love it. I know the Rukus whitesheets had some pretty impressive comments from a school in Colorado trying to max out an AP.

Thanks again!

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another vote for RUCKUS, i have used it in a school environment in the past. Excellent product.

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I do IT for a K-12 charter school, 450 students, 120 laptops, 60 iPads.

I moved us on to Ubiquiti UniFi and am really happy with it.

UniFi will run multiple SSIDs and has a Guest Net feature.

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Another vote for meraki. They perform fine under load. My users hit them fairly hard. It’s also different users every day, transferring gigs of data, iTunes, torrent movies etc.

The reporting is awesome and you can apply policies/filters seperate from your firewall.

November summary for one location with 4 APs:
329 distinct clients transferred data over your Meraki network.
22 clients used your network on an average day.
61.97 GB of data was transferred.

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I’m normally a Cisco guy but I moved into the SMB market and got talked into trying a SonicWall and SonicPoint setup (Cisco is generally cost prohibitive in this market). I have had nothing but issues with SonicWall it and would not recommend them.

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We use Meraki exclusively now. They have blown away Cisco and Bluesocket in performance, price and ease of configuration. I highly recommend them.

About the only limitation is antennas, unless you get their ultra rugged outdoor one, you have no options, but that’s never been a issue fot us, just add an extra access point where you need it rather than “throw high gain antennas” at the problem.

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I don’t have this wireless system but Aruba Networks(http://www.arubanetworks.com/) is what a few schools around me have and they love them. They can do multiple SSIDs, one point of management, load balancing between access points, etc… Check out Aruba you might like it.

I have Trapeze Wireless which is now Juniper Networks, Juniper bought Trapeze. My system is ok, it could be better but it works.

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We have about 1200 student and staff accounts, and we usually don’t have more than 150 on wireless at any one time.

We use Cisco access points, and a Cisco controller.

All district traffic accessed wirelessly still hits our content filter and is handles according to established policies.

You have to have a network acocunt to get anywhere, and the technology staff sets up login passwords - we don’t give them out.

We don’t do BYOD.

We do have a separate wireless LAN for vendors, consultants, etc. It does not hit the filter, does not access our network resources, and once the need fo a specific access is over we change the password for the guest LAN.

Works just fine.

If we did not have anything at all right now I’d be considering Cisco, Meraki and Xirrus in no particular order.

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Darren9988 wrote:

I don’t have this wireless system but Aruba Networks(http://www.arubanetworks.com/) is what a few schools around me have and they love them. They can do multiple SSIDs, one point of management, load balancing between access points, etc… Check out Aruba you might like it.

I have Trapeze Wireless which is now Juniper Networks, Juniper bought Trapeze. My system is ok, it could be better but it works.

Another Vote for Aruba - I deployed this and have had great luck. Easy AP rollout, more features than I will use, and a single point of management for all APs.

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I use Enterasys for both wired and wireless networking. Very happy with Enterasys. Wireless works well.

I’ve also used Ubiquiti for bridge links, but I think they’re “broadcast” WiFi stuff is good.

If you’re in or near Louisiana, I can recommend a local reseller/installer who knows both product lines well.

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Whatever you go with, make sure that you block Facebook and other social sites or you will be dealing with it all day long. We have two wireless access points in our high school building. One of the access points is the teacher access point and has a very secure password. The student access point has password as the password. We take away cell phones that are out during class but we have no problem with them getting on their iPods, iPhones, etc before or after school. We have decided to embrace the internet. The parents are also allowed on the student access. We have been doing this for three years now and it hasn’t been a problem yet.

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