Enterprise wireless - Cisco vs Motorola

[acole1]

We are looking to replace our current wireless network with something much better.

How does a Motorola system with a controller and AP650's compare to Cisco's system with its controller and 1260's?

Our environment is very challenging (lots of metal). Would Cisco's ClientLink technology help significantly with multipath and G devices?

 

[drebo]

I'd take a close look at Ubiquiti's UniFi, honestly.

It's a fraction of the cost. Unless you really need L3 roaming or have some need for L2 roaming across broadcast domains, the UniFi solution is probably more than sufficient.

But, you haven't given us information about how many APs and the amount of space to cover.

UniFi works great in warehouses, btw.

 

[acole1]

Our corporate location is about 250,000 sq ft. We currently use twenty Cisco 1200 "thick" APs. There is a lot of roaming: forklifts with wireless computers, and scanners. We have four other similar locations, each between 50k and 150k sq ft. MPLS network between locations.

I have used Ubiquity's Unifi for a side job with 3 APs, and they did work well. Would you say they are enterprise ready at this scale?

 

[drebo]

Well, again, it depends whether or not you need the features provided by them (namely the L2 and L3 roaming capabilities).

Roaming between two APs on the same subnet in the same broadcast domain (same VLAN or whatever) doesn't require anything special.

I would not hesitate to use UniFi in a 20-30 AP deployment.

Just keep in mind the 4 SSID limit.

 

[kevnich2]

I second the unifi's. I am getting ready for a full deployment after doing a small scale test at two of our offices and they performed flawlessly, even with different broadcast domains. I simply setup dhcp option 43, configured my vlan info on the switch port, plugged in the AP, adopted it on the controller and the controller upgraded firmware, set the configuration and voila. Fantastic setup and couldn't have been easier IMO.

 

[sactwnguy]

At my last job we had a huge warehouse with a metal mezzanine. We started off Cisco but ended up with Aruba before I left. I personally ended up preferring Aruba over Cisco but Cisco was not terrible. The hardest part about setting up wireless in locations like that is antennae placement and power levels. I highly recommend doing surveys with something like AirMagnet periodically. We found that the warehouse management was constantly "improving" the layout of the metal bin racks which would drastically impact the wireless signal and the handhelds would drop off the network randomly.

 

[Cooky]

We've had Cisco wireless for about 7 years.
There have been a few bugs here & there, but overall it's performed very well across the enterprise (~2000 AP's, 12 WiSM's).
I have never used any other brands in enterprise setting, so can't comment on non-Cisco products.
The 1600's look very promising though (good balance between price & performance, features). If you decide to go w/ Cisco, I'd look into that, instead of 1260's.

 

[gordita]

Once you go meraki and cloud based dashboard, you won't go back.
trust me on this.
I've deployed them in a 1MM+ sq. ft warehouses and they are flawless.
no controllers to deal with.
no firmware upgrades to deal with.
The ease of online dashboard will get your mouth watering....

oh btw...meraki has been kicking Cisco's behind so badly, what did Cisco do? buy them last quarter....
)

 

[Lithium381]

I've done an Aruba deployment in a VERY noisy environment at a chip fab and gotten better results than the Cisco AP's they had in there previously..... the arubas offer roaming and they'll auto adjust themselves to fill the space properly.

 

[m1ldslide1]

Once you go meraki and cloud based dashboard, you won't go back.
trust me on this.
I've deployed them in a 1MM+ sq. ft warehouses and they are flawless.
no controllers to deal with.
no firmware upgrades to deal with.
The ease of online dashboard will get your mouth watering....

oh btw...meraki has been kicking Cisco's behind so badly, what did Cisco do? buy them last quarter....
)

The Meraki stuff looks cool, especially for commercial and SMB environments where you don't want to manage a controller and everything on-site.

Fortunately since they were acquired by cisco, you can talk to a cisco account team and find out which one is best for your environment. I've never heard of Meraki in an enterprise-sized deployment, but I'm sure its happened somewhere.

Edit: Also to answer OP question, yes ClientLink will help (esp 2.0) in this environment, and features like Cleanair might help depending on how much interference you encounter. Meraki management is cool, but their AP's don't offer these features. I'm looking forward to the day when you can use a Meraki-style cloud management tool to administer Cisco AP's. Might be a year or two away though.

 

[spidey07]

Cisco has released new controllers and integrated switch/controller to push the controller closer to the edge. IMHO, it's still Cisco or Aruba as the only gartner magic quadrant players.