Best manufacturer for business networking

[TheBitFighter]

I'm designing the network infrastructure for a bigger area/organisation in the near future and I am searching for the best manufacturer of high class networking gear as the project will involve wired access for the office and public WIFI for a larger area as well as networking for some servers.

 

As far as my research goes, Ubiquity and Lancom are the two candidates for the WIFI for now. Do you have any personal preferences for AP and routers? How can I determine the type of AP that I will need? What is the best software to control the WIFI access (signing in on the network and bandwidth control for guest users)?

[SpencerBoughtAnXbox]

Well for most of it idk but my NETGEAR Nighthawk has built in quest wifi never really dug around it but i know i could set a login

[harrybamber8]

Meru/Fortinet are great wifi AP.

You can get access points and controllers with nice software

 

 

https://www.fortinet.com/solutions/small-business/small-business-security.html

https://www.fortinet.com/products/wlan-switching/wireless-lan.html

https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/solution-guides/deployment-guide-infrastructure-secure-access.pdf

[joshforester]

I recently installed a gigabit router & AC AP by Ubiquiti and they are top notch. I didn't get the top of the line ones obviously since I only needed to cover about 750 sqft of lease space. I've used TP-Link, Cisco, & EnGenius in the past, and by far Ubiquiti was the easiest to install & configure. Also super easy to configure public & private SSIDs.

[Lurick]

Meraki is pretty nice and straightforward. Not sure on their pricing though as I haven't been looking at that lately but the UI is very slick and easy to use and gives you plenty of options to configure different SSIDs, paid SSID access, control traffic and restrict bandwidth, segment traffic, etc.

 

I know if you sign up on the website you can do a free demo of the GUI and API and see what it's like to manage a network of gear.

[brwainer]

There is no "best" but here is some of my experience:

-lancom: literally never heard of them. But maybe they just aren't used in our market and region

-ubiquiti: I don't have experience with them personally, but I wouldn't say they are a bad choice

-Mikrotik: They make products geared towards WISPs, but they do make good indoor APs and have a management system called CAPsMAN. Mikrotik competes with Ubiquiti, and the comparison between them boils down to "Ubiquiti products are easier to set up, but Mikrotik products have nearly infinite setup possibilities". Personally I only use Mikrotik devices for wireless, and install them whenever I am doing a small job

-Ruckus: If you need the maximum number of users to have a good experience, versus a small number of users to get the best possible speeds, then you go with Ruckus. The company I work for only uses Ruckus when doing installs, and we are happy with the results. We easily have over 25000 APs from them, ranging the gamut of price and age. 

 

-any sort of cloud managed APs, like Meraki: We have tried several brands, and they are great when they work, but incredibly difficult to troubleshoot when they don't. We have a few Meraki installs, and we are generally happy with them

[Superspeed07]

we use meraki with all our stuff, it has been rock solid and their support is really helpful

[Guest]

Depends entirely on what you need to achieve. Beyond having a wireless network, what are you looking to get out of it? Statistics and analytics of users and locations? Your best bet is not to ask an enthusiast tech forum. Contact your local solutions provider for such things - qualified network designers and presales teams exist for a reason.

[Gaub]

Cisco/meraki is pretty much widespread in the business/enterprise market. It can get very expensive very fast but I don't think you can get better support and capabilities. Because of the certification system they have, the minute you have a problem you can call pretty much any IT service company and you will get support. The non-meraki stuff is pretty hard to setup if you don't have any certification/experience though.

[rcarlos243]

1 hour ago, TheBitFighter said:

I'm designing the network infrastructure for a bigger area/organisation in the near future and I am searching for the best manufacturer of high class networking gear as the project will involve wired access for the office and public WIFI for a larger area as well as networking for some servers.

 

As far as my research goes, Ubiquity and Lancom are the two candidates for the WIFI for now. Do you have any personal preferences for AP and routers? How can I determine the type of AP that I will need? What is the best software to control the WIFI access (signing in on the network and bandwidth control for guest users)?

2

 

Hands down Cisco due to security, reliability and performance.

I also suggest you take CCNA class and certification so you would really know what you are doing.

 

You can also use Cisco Packet tracer to make a simulated network infrastructure. 

[tt2468]

3 hours ago, SpencerBoughtAnXbox said:

Well for most of it idk but my NETGEAR Nighthawk has built in quest wifi never really dug around it but i know i could set a login

"Netgear Nighthawk" and "Enterprise Networking" do NOT mix well.

 

1 hour ago, rcarlos243 said:

 

Hands down Cisco due to security, reliability and performance.

I also suggest you take CCNA class and certification so you would really know what you are doing.

 

You can also use Cisco Packet tracer to make a simulated network infrastructure. 

Cisco routers nowadays are lacking. Better, more secure routers are sold now. TBH Cisco is overrated in everything but their switches. Meraki is ok, but Ruckus does it better.

 

I would go with Ruckus if the budget allows. Ubiquiti (It's spelled with an 'i', not a 'y') is not fully mature enough to go into environments where lots of wifi clients exist. Ruckus handles wifi way better. I think UBNT is currently just above prosumer level. Maybe small business class?

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, TheBitFighter said:

I'm designing the network infrastructure for a bigger area/organisation in the near future and I am searching for the best manufacturer of high class networking gear as the project will involve wired access for the office and public WIFI for a larger area as well as networking for some servers.

 

As far as my research goes, Ubiquity and Lancom are the two candidates for the WIFI for now. Do you have any personal preferences for AP and routers? How can I determine the type of AP that I will need? What is the best software to control the WIFI access (signing in on the network and bandwidth control for guest users)?

How big are you talking and how complex?

 

High end switching:

Cisco

Aruba/HPE

Huawei

Brocade

Allied Telesis

Dell (yes listed twice)

 

Middle tier switching:

Dell (yes listed twice)

D-Link

Netgear

Meraki

Cisco Small Business

 

High end wireless

Aruba (NOT! HPE)

Dell (Aruba & Aerohive OEM)

Ruckus

Cisco

Huawei

Areohive

 

Middle tier wireless

Meraki (almost high end, personal hatrid of cloud controllers makes me put it here)

Ubiquiti

D-Link

Allied Telesis

Netgear

 

 

Just keep in mind I've not listed many options, some decent, just one I personally know and can talk about. Lists are also mostly not ranked.

[Erkel]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

High end switching:

Cisco

Aruba/HPE

Huawei

Brocade

Allied Telesis

Dell (yes listed twice)

You forgot about juniper, but some would debate the high end part, as they are still not as mature as the likes of Cisco. ( not handling multicast storms well among other issues)

 

Allied Telesis?  The people that I know who have to put up with it would disagree, They run it because the government wants to throw it at them for basically free.  The joys of "preferred" suppliers when dealing with the NZ Ministry of Education.    They willingly buy it unsubsidised???

[Falconevo]

For public Wifi, would be looking at Aruba or Meraki stuff, if budgets were tight or I was looking at point to point WiFi then it would be ubiquiti just from personal preference.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Erkel said:

You forgot about juniper, but some would debate the high end part, as they are still not as mature as the likes of Cisco. ( not handling multicast storms well among other issues)

 

Allied Telesis?  The people that I know who have to put up with it would disagree, They run it because the government wants to throw it at them for basically free.  The joys of "preferred" suppliers when dealing with the NZ Ministry of Education.    They willingly buy it unsubsidised???

I didn't include Juniper as from what I know they don't do traditional campus/edge switches?

 

I've actually found Allied Telesis very good in features, reliability and support. Sure SNUP installs only cost 20% for state integrated schools but we were selling Allied Telesis before then and full cost to schools, not cheap stuff.

 

D-Link used to be the SNUP supplier but they are bloody horrible, I'm extremely glad they changed to Allied Telsis even if they are a literal Cisco clone.

[Erkel]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I've actually found Allied Telesis very good in features, reliability and support. Sure SNUP installs only cost 20% for state integrated schools but we were selling Allied Telesis before then and full cost to schools, not cheap stuff.

Just watch out if trying to put layer 3 ACL's on them, Some of them are rather limited in how many ACL they can support in hardware.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Erkel said:

Just watch out if trying to put layer 3 ACL's on them, Some of them are rather limited in how many ACL they can support in hardware.

Shouldn't be too much of a problem, moved jobs since then .

 

Where I would have wanted/needed to use L3 ACLs I designed around that so it wouldn't be an issue. That sort of thing is done on for example the Aruba controller and I terminate the wireless VLANs on the controller and setup OSPF routing back to the core, similar setup with the firewall.

 

Then for all wired connections I setup 802.1X wired auth, more for radius single sign on for FortiGate firewalls than anything else as I have found that is by far the best authentication method for those firewalls especially in a mixed Windows and Mac network.

 

Don't like to make schools too complex in network else it's harder to support, not everyone is a network expert and would know where to look. Schools simply aren't that complex and you can be more than adequately secure without going too far down the network ACL path.

 

Heck my home lab is more complex and has more resources than almost every school in NZ lol. 

[Erkel]

Back to the original question, comes down to scale and budget.

 

Small to medium, Ubiquiti  (less than 500 users, but can scale that up if budget is an issue, but would hate to be responsible for anything with more than few thousand users)

 

Large to enterprise, Cisco (more than 500 users)

 

Or what I do at work is secondhand cisco switchs, with ubiquiti wifi.