[Technical] DLink Business Grade Wireless?

[Peter Dwyer]

No experience with DLink but use Xirrus. It is pricey but Xirrus does offer
Education pricing which is a sizeable reduction in price. I'm also surprised
at your comment about Xirrus central management. They provide a central
management console which controls everything. Before installation, Xirrus
run a site survey and specify placement. Of course in older schools (ours
included) the placement of arrays to get full coverage can be tricky but
they do try to work around obstacles, such as mounting arrays vertically
rather than horizontally, etc.

I realise that Xirrus isn't the be-all and end-all and that there are a
number of emerging products from other manufacturers I'm sure that other
contributors will have different ideas.

Peter Dwyer, St Kevins College

On 13 May 2010 18:56, Paul Williamson <paulw at huntingtower.vic.edu.au> wrote:

>  I’m just wondering if anyone has experience with DLink’s DWL-8600AP’s and
> Unified Wireless switch (DWS-4026)?
>
>
>
> We’re looking at upgrading our entire wireless network and they have come
> back with very attractive pricing. (around $615 per access point)
>
>
>
> My personal experience with DLink has not been good, however my only
> experience is with their consumer-grade products. The issue was the power
> supplies always failed and products were flaky- had to be rebooted
> regularly.
>
>
>
> Naturally DLink agrees that the consumer grade products are pretty rubbish,
> the main thing they cut cost on is the PSU. But these are supposedly
> ‘business grade’ so should be fine. There is a limited lifetime warranty
> (supported until 5 years after the products EOL).
>
>
>
> We’re also looking at Xirrus. We currently have 3x XN4 units (4 radios)
> working fine, but we don’t have central management of them, and they are
> bloody expensive. $18,000 for 3 of them. The other issue is they are
> directional and where we need to provide G and N wireless, if you are not in
> the right quadrant of coverage, too bad.
>
>
>
> Open to thoughts, and maybe any other centrally managed wireless solutions
> we should look at.
>
>
>
> Many thanks and best regards,
>
>
> *Paul Williamson** *ICT Manager
> [image: Huntingtower School]
> *T* +61 3 9831 9463   *F* +61 3 9888 1089
> *E* paulw at huntingtower.vic.edu.au
> *W* http://www.huntingtower.vic.edu.au
> 77 Waimarie Drive, Mount Waverley, Victoria 3149, Australia
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