School UFB routers

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wsnz

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#148625 25-Jun-2014 11:51

What make/model of UFB routers are typically being deployed in moderate sized School environments (around 300 users)? I've got a colleague who has (despite my warning) put in a consumer grade device that only has a relatively slow processor and a low 32MB of RAM which is dragging down performance.

Although there are a large range of devices that meet the spec's for that, it's useful to know what seems to be working the best in a real-world environment.

Coil

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#1074110 25-Jun-2014 11:53

Well anything would work really. You should be running DHCP from a server and really the router will just be passing traffic to the WAN. (BTW, A huge amount of consumer grade devices only have a 255.555.255.0 subnet and cant expand. So that would only give you a possibility of 253 IP's.)

Cheers

clinty

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#1074118 25-Jun-2014 12:04

Most schools are likely to join N4L. In that instance N4L supply a good quality (usually Cisco) router that is spec'd for the school

Clint

insane

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#1074153 25-Jun-2014 12:26

clinty: Most schools are likely to join N4L. In that instance N4L supply a good quality (usually Cisco) router that is spec'd for the school

Clint

You're dead right, however the schools need to meet certain criteria to be connected sooner rather than later to their managed network. Perhaps they should contact N4L for advice which may help them transition easier later.

jnimmo

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#1074155 25-Jun-2014 12:30

I feel like I'm blowing the Meraki trumpet today (they should be paying me), if I wasn't going the N4L way, I'd look at the Meraki MX80 for a school of that size; assuming it was going to be a maximum 100Mbps connection for the next while. Build in caching, content filtering, etc. Perhaps put in a backup ADSL connection for automatic WAN failover. Good discounts for education.

If reliable and high performing content filtering was already in place, perhaps a Cisco 897.

I'm using MX60 in a smaller school, but will need to upgrade to the MX80 when we get UFB (fingers crossed soon).
Wife is a teacher so I know how important it is to have a fast and reliable internet connection.