Trialling 3Com equipement at Work

Discussion in 'Wireless' started by Kitkatninja, Jun 23, 2007.

  1. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    Hi All,

    OK, like the title states, I'm actually going to start trialling a wireless solution for my work place. We got several quotes in for external companies to come in to supply and fit a wireless solution, the quotes started off at just over £15,500 for a un-centrally managed solution to over £90,000 for a centrally managed solution. Since upper management was pushing for a wireless solution (we're a Computing Specialist School) and part of my job is to offer alternatives, I gave them an alternative: we buy the kit, fit the kit and then trial the kit (we decided to trial and support wireless on 2 floors - 1 floor in 2 buildings). It's either that or something else won't be bought :(

    The kit that I found to be reasonably priced was the 3com kit (Centrally managed wireless switch and the WAP's to go with it). We've bought the switch and 6 access WAP's, I've set 1 up and found it to be very good. However testing one is always going to be very good (we did the same with netgear products and DLink, testing 1 was always great, deploying multiple always caused a bit of a bother [​IMG] ).

    Now on to my question... has anyone else used/trialled their equipement? Did you run into any problems? How do you rate the above equipement? I guess I would like to know before hand of any problems that other people have had, it's too late to stop the purchase of the equipement (since it's in my office already), but I would like to be prepared for any problems during the trial. I've already had to update the software on the switch itself as 3com gave a warning stating that the version of software on the switch actually led to the switch rebooting the WAP intermittantly (the upgrade fixed this).

    -ken

    P.S. Another plus of using 3Com is that they have the 3Com Certified Wireless Expert cert, to go with their equipement (I might as well mention with as this is a certification site [​IMG] ).
     
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  2. simongrahamuk
    Honorary Member

    simongrahamuk Hmmmmmmm?

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    Never used the 3Com wireless stuff, but we did have 3Com switches here for a while.

    I found that the fans in the broke not long after the warranty had ran out (3 seperate switches).

    We switched to a HP infrastructure not long after.
     
  3. Kitkatninja
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    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    The school I work for use to have 3com switches (10mb ones) pre the 10/100mb (let alone the 1000mb ones), didn't have any problems with them - just very slow. Lets face it judging equipement based on 10 year old technology won't be a fair assessment :)

    Wanted to go down the HP route, but price was out of budget :(

    -Ken
     
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  4. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    I had 3Com 10mbs as well Wagner!

    Damn I remember the first time I put in a bunch 3Com II superstacks running at 100mb - it was like watching a formula one race after years of go-karting :biggrin

    Now when I think back to the 10Mb hubbed days it's like networking with yoghurt puts and wet string!!
     
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  5. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    I used 3Com back in the dark ages... had ports go bad quite often. I'd not use them for anything other than a home network. Then again, they may have improved in the past few years.
     
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  6. Theprof

    Theprof Petabyte Poster

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    We use 3com switches at work and they are working very well for me. I have them as single and as stacked setups in both cases they perform excellent. Even the POE ones that I recently setup. I had one 3com switch die on me but it was used for 6 years before it died.

    As for wireless we use Juniper netgear access points. Those function very well.

    I've heard lots of good reviews about 3com products and I would agree with them because we use it at work everyday and never gives us any trouble, and mind you the company is big.
     
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  7. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    When did Juniper buy Netgear?

    Or do you mean NetScreen?

    Also, I wasn't aware that Juniper made WAPs - I thought the lowest-end device they did was a 5GT - which is a fully-fledged router & firewall (I have one protecting my connection at home)

    I'm confused!
     
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  8. Theprof

    Theprof Petabyte Poster

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    Zeb you are right I meant to say its a NetScreen not netgear. As for the WAP I would have to check on Monday. I wasn't the one that set that up so I don't know what model it is or if its a wireless router, but I'll check. Sorry for the confusion:oops:
     
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  9. Theprof

    Theprof Petabyte Poster

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    Ok so I looked at the model and it is a netscreen wireless router and the model is a 5GT.You are right Zeb, my bad.
     
    Certifications: A+ | CCA | CCAA | Network+ | MCDST | MCSA | MCP (270, 271, 272, 290, 291) | MCTS (70-662, 70-663) | MCITP:EMA | VCA-DCV/Cloud/WM | VTSP | VCP5-DT | VCP5-DCV
    WIP: VCAP5-DCA/DCD | EMCCA

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