# what is the best wireless product?



## eng_ahmedas (Dec 29, 2009)

Dear Friends
I wish u r all in very good health ..... I want to take your opinion about something .. My company will buy wireless APs .... I want to know how to arrange the following products from the best to the worest and if i want to give them marks from 100 , can you help me ???

The products are:

1)Cisco:

========>Access Points (AIR-AP1252G-E-K9 & AIR-AP1142N-E-K9)



2)HP

========>Access Points (HP ProCurve MSM410 WW)



3)Aruba 

========>Access Points (AP-121)
========>Controller (200-6-AOS-STD)


4)D-Link 

========>Access Points (DAP-2590/EEU & DAP-3520)


5)LinkSys

========>Access Points ( WAP4410N-G5 & WAP4400N & WAP200E-EU)



Thanks in advance


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## SirDice (Dec 29, 2009)

How many people will be using the wireless? How many floors? How big are the floors? What's the building like (reinforced concrete)?


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## phoenix (Dec 29, 2009)

If you are looking for centrally-managed wireless, then you want to make sure you get "smart" access points.

When I was looking into wireless 2-3 years ago, I found that pretty much every manufacturer of "centrally-controller wireless" products used "dumb" access points.  This meant that all wireless traffic went from the laptop to the access point, then to the controller for checking against policies, then back to the access point, and then out to the destination.  This means that to use a local printer, all traffic would go to the controller and back.  If the controller is in a different building or part of town, this means even local LAN traffic goes across the Internet.

Colubris (now HP ProCurve) was the only company with smart access points.  This means that the you configure everything on the controller, add the access points to groups on the controller, and then the controller pushes out the config details when the access point comes online.  Thus, local traffic goes from the laptop to the access point to the LAN.  IOW, local traffic stays local.  Even if the controller is in a different city.

"Smart" access points cost a bit more, but you can do so much more with them, especially if you want to use a single controller to manage wireless in multiple buildings, locations, cities, etc.

The other nice thing about centrally managed wireless is that you can configured multiple access points with the same SSID (network name) and the wireless clients will just attach to whichever radio gives the best signal, and will switch between radios as you walk around the building.  IOW, you can start with 1 access point, then expand to 10 access points, all with a single wireless network (SSID).  Something that is impossible to do with consumer-grade wireless from D-Link, Linksys, and Belkin.

Have nothing but good experiences with Colubris products.  These are now part of the HP ProCurve MSM series.

3Com and Cisco should be avoided at all costs.  The local university spend oodles of cash, and over 5 years to get a barely usable wireless network setup using Cisco products.  They like to promise features on paper, that never work in hardware "until next release".  The only reason the uni still uses Cisco is that they've sunk too much money into it to just start over with something that works.

D-Link and Linksys only provide stand-alone wireless products, which means you have to manually configure each access point, which becomes its own wireless network, with its own SSID.  Add second access point, and you have a second SSID to manage.  Add 10 more, and you now have 12 separate SSIDs to manage.  A management headache (one of our secondary schools did this ... the tech now has to enter 24 separate WPA keys for 24 separate SSIDs, requiring over 2 hours of wandering around the building connecting to each network).


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## SirDice (Dec 29, 2009)

That's why I asked how many people, floors, buildings etc.. 

It'll be the difference between something manageable or something chaotic :e


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## eng_ahmedas (Dec 30, 2009)

Thanks friends for ur replay ... I just ask about ranking products from best to worst accordng to the quality, the performance , the brand name  and the reputation of the AP ... So can u help me?


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## DutchDaemon (Dec 30, 2009)

Why don't you answer the questions? There is no way to simply rank stuff when there are no criteria to rank on. Under which circumstances will these products be used?


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## eng_ahmedas (Dec 31, 2009)

Dear Friends
Thanks to all of u for ur care

My case is that i working at company and we have bid requiring managable APs .... The companies offer the APss that i listed .... In our bid, their is degree on the reputation of the device .... Thats why i want u to help me ranking those APs according to reputation of the vendor and performance of the AP

Thanks in Advance


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## SirDice (Dec 31, 2009)

We cannot rank them because we don't know _how_ they're going to be used.

For instance, a small home office will do fine with a linksys or D-link. A SOHO will rank those higher then Cisco or HP.

A big office however will probably use the bigger equipment of Cisco or HP and rank the linksys and d-link lower.

So depending on the use the ranking will be different!


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## phoenix (Jan 1, 2010)

Why, oh why, oh why, do I bother writing so much, when no one actually reads it?


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