Migrating from Avaya a/b/g to Avaya or Juniper a/b/g/n

[brazenhead]

Has anybody out there been through a move from 802.11 a/b/g to a wireless-N solution? I'm really only interested in the advice/experiences of anybody that has changed from an existing Avaya 2300 series system to either an Avaya 8100 series or a Juniper solution because those appear to be our two options that make the most sense. A bit hard to summarize quickly … but here's why:

Juniper bought out Trapeze, the manufacturer of the 2330, 2332 Avaya ap's. These 2300 series ap's can be used on a new Juniper system during the transition to wireless a/b/g/n, or kept in service permanently for that matter. The Nortel 2380 controllers will be junk, but the Nortel 2382's can be re-flashed and used as Juniper controllers with both the old and new aps. Supposedly the (old Avaya) 2332 and newer Juniper ap's can do layer 2 (or 3?) separation on the Avaya edgeswitches where the user traffic is separated at the edge and only the control traffic makes its way back to the controller .... anyone have experience with this? During the full (or partial) transition to wireless-N, all ap's, a/b/g and a/b/g/n, are managed under a single management system. Also, with this new Juniper system, roaming wireless devices will supposedly be handed-off from an old Avaya a/b/g ap to a new Juniper a/b/g/n ap seamlessly.... that is my understanding anyway.

If we stick with Avaya ap's, we will have to run two separate wireless systems - the old 2300 series a/b/g equipment in conjunction with the new Avaya 8100 series a/b/g/n equipment while we rollout wireless-N in a phased approach. Eventually we will need to replace all 2300 series ap's as they become EOL/EOS and to get to a single management system. I don’t think roaming wireless devices will work as easily if they move from an old Avaya a/b/g to a new Avaya a/b/g/n system. An advantage of going with Avaya is the wireless split-plane architecture that is being developed and is already available in the 8600 7.2 code (I think) and 4800's ... later in the 5800's. The wireless controller appliances will actually become obsolete as they will be moved to VMWare, which is another bonus in my mind.

Juniper almost seems to be the no-brainer here. Any thoughts? Experiences? Opinions? Thanks in advance.

[Jeroen]

Hi,

I'm in the same situation. At this moment using the WLAN2380's with 2330's and 2332's for several years now. They need to be replaced and I'm also looking into two future solutions; Avaya 8100 or Juniper WLAN.

Because we do encourage one vendor becasue of standarisation and integration reasons, the Avaya 8100 solution would be the most obvious choice.
I'm testing this solution for a couple of weeks now, but I haven't been really convinced so far. the concept Avaya uses is nice but in practical I have found it pretty difficult to setup. This partly was due to a mismatch in documentation and switch configuration commands, dhcp configuration and linking profiles. Before I had the WLAN2300 soltion up and running in no time. You will need more time and testing to figure out how the Avaya WLAN8100 solution works. while a normally setup networks myself, I had to contact Avaya and had an engineer can over to help me out in some issues I ran into. This engineer also had to contact different persons to solve some issues I was facing.
When testing the Avaya 8100, I got the feeling this solution isn't really mature yet. The EDM switch software is terribly slow, profile selection/links are not user friendly because of selecting numbers instead of names, config syncs that aren't applied on the member switch, and a pretty difficult way of configuring the dhcp options (especially in comparison with the Trapeze solution).

I like to split plane architecture they are developping, however we do prefer this feature on our 8600 and not on a separate wlan switch. The support of local switching on the ap itself is more convienent from my point of view in regards to traffic 'offloading'. The Avaya solution doesn't offer this at the moment (current release 1.1). also they lack the virtual cluster feature which I really like about the Trapeze/Juniper solution. This allows for maintenance during daytime and now service degration if a controller should fail.

Next week I will have a meeting with Juniper to see what they are up to and see when I can test their equipment as well. I already noticed ringmaster (WMS) and smartpass which are pretty much the same as the former Trapeze solution. This also makes implementing and migrating towards 801.11n a lot more easy.

My planning is to build op the new WLAN solution separated from my current one and migrate on a per office base. So I've no specific ned for the new WLAN solution to be integrated into our current one for migration reasons.

I really like the idea of the Avaya solution and it would nicely integrate in our current Nortel/Avaya infrastructure, however from my point of view the Avaya 8100 solution is not the best WLAN solution for me to implement at this moment in our production environment. Probably I will use Juniper's solution for the next couple of years and see how Avaya will be progressing their solution.

Ofcourse these are my findings and experience. I know some companies are are using the Avaya 8100 solution and are satisfied. They all had Avaya engineers setup their WLAN.
You can contact Avaya and ask them to take take part of their 'Try & Buy' offer to see if this solution meet your needs.

[brazenhead]

Hi Jereon,

I just had a meeting with Juniper yesterday which is what prompted me to post this message. I also just had a meeting with our Avaya recently. Avaya will offer the split-plane architecture in 8600 code 7.2, they will also offer it in the ers5800 series switches like they do the 4800's, and they will be able to provide virtual clustering of the controllers in VMWare (no physical controller needed) ... all of this will be in the future, supposedly sometime this year.

Juniper already supports local switching on the ap (2332's or newer) but I think we need to implement a flat vlan(s) that spans from controller to every ap to get it to work - not 100% sure. What really sells me on the Juniper solution is the ease of migration to wireless-N - All existing Avaya 2330 and 2332 aps can remain in place temporarily or permanently, while we add wireless-N ap's as needed, all managed by a single WMS. And the more I talk about it, the more obvious the choice of vendor becomes. i guess I'm just waiting to see if anybody brings up a compelling arguement to make me to stick with Avaya wireless as we move forward.