James thoughts on Network Upgrade Option

Bella,

Thank you for calling. We are putting together the recommended network design, I will forward it to you by email as soon as it's done.

Regards,

Fred Ogg
1300 N. Florida Mango Rd.
Suite 11
West Palm Beach, FL 33409

Quote for PB Network is attached

Thank you,

Bella

Good afternoon,

I've attached our recommendation for the network upgrade. Normally, it takes about two weeks to get all of the material, then the installation will follow shortly after.

We'd need the down payment before we can order anything. I can pickup a check, we can arrange a wire transfer, or we do take credit cards but there is a 3% service fee. Let me know what works best for you.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,

Fred Ogg

I'm hesitant to offer opinions since I don't know this vendor or their reliability and my expertise isn't in enterprise WiFi solutions like Ruckus (though Bruce can manage them at Zorro, so they can't be too difficult).

My instinct is to be hands-off since there's very little I can do to help from up here, but I know no matter what gets installed, I'm going to end up supporting it, so....

1. We still have no answer as to what is causing the internet to drop in and out in PB. They're offering a solution of essentially ripping the entire network out and starting from scratch — which MAY be the correct way to go — without giving an actual diagnosis. The Cisco & AirPort setup has always had its coverage gaps, but instability wasn't an issue.

Are we replacing everything for the sake of "upgrading" or is there an actual problem / solution plan here?

2. I still don't know where that firewall came from, who installed it, when it was installed, or what it's configured to do. That it just showed up out of nowhere and now we have all these problems makes me wonder if it's just not setup correctly.

3. You're right. Their prices are inflated: Ruckus 901-R710-US00 Their price: $1,295 ea. Amazon: $750-830

4. They're including a $593 annual monitoring fee, on top of their $1890 installation fee AND their $2945 configuration fee. Plus $420 for "project management".

I'm seriously underbilling.

5. Their plan includes "several separate v-fans" with managed switches... By JEE standards, this house is not that big square footage wise, at most there will be what 5-10 people there?

What POSSIBLE need would there be for "several" separated virtual local area networks??!! In other words they want to have more than three networks completely isolated from each other, to support MAYBE a dozen devices.

I can see a case for separating the phones from the rest of the network, but when you start dividing WiFi from wired, you have all sorts of unintended problems — suddenly the printers don't show up if you're not on the correct wireless network, and the boss can't stream music from his iMac to the speakers by the pool anymore. Terrible idea for how his networks are used.

I haven't had any free time this week at all, but as soon as I can steal away a few minutes, I'd like to research the difference in usable range of ruckus vs. unifi vs. Netgear's Orbi vs. Apple AirPorts vs. eero.

In 2014 there were 9 airport devices driving the PB network; today there are 7. The Ruckus are supposed to have dramatically wider range, so I'm wondering why we'd need 9 of them to cover the main house, cabana and staff house.

Thank you,

James Ce

your Personal Genius

Certified Support Professional 10.6

please review and lets discuss like ruckus but think quote is overpriced by 25-30%