Security

Hello's,

I used Clearplass/Amigopod at my previous job and loved it. I moved on to a new gig where the client deployed instants and meshpoints and was looking for a way to enhance their Guest access experience. I pitched ClearPass as a solution but the cost has proved prohibitive. It's a small organization and ClearPass I did not realize does not scale down as well.

What other options exist for folks who want a more "advanced" Guest splash screen than what is offered by the Instant Guest screen?

Thanks much for your time,

Blue.

Hi Blue,

I have customers that have used Cisco ISE, Nomadix, and Chilispot captive portal pages. Funny enough, the following Wikipedia article also has a pretty good list of software captive portals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal#Software_captive_portals. I setup an Untangle box a lifetime ago and it was a pretty cool inline solutions for a fraternity.

Question for you about how Clearpass was positioned: was it positioned as the whole kit and kaboodle right out of the gate? I have some customers that have been approached in the following manner. I have found that you can perform a "beachhead" install of Clearpass by just setting up the RADIUS / TACACS piece of the equation. From there, you can start to generate Insight reports on the wired and wireless network, something the other vendors solutions do not offer. Next, the ongoing maintenance and support of a separate TACACS and RADIUS environment can be shown to be more expensive than the combo install of those same services in Clearpass. The value of the product then becomes much more clear as the Guest and OnBoard pieces are demoed, deployed, and compared to previous solutions. Just my two cents.

-Mike

I'm suprised about that.

The small VA and properly sized licenses for guest only purposes should be quite competitive.

It's corporate RADIUS scaling and licensing requirements that doesn't usually work for people.

What were you getting costs for specifically, and what discount were you getting? Was it a good deal from the reseller?

If it is a guest only solution, you could have a small controller and GRE tunnels from the instants to the controller.  All the traffic would then hit the controller and you setup so the portal from the controller is presented.

Not sure if that will work with mesh points though.

Thanks all for responding.

The client is a manufacturing client with not too many access points - 20  - and 3 mesh points to connect remote buildings. The mesh points are IAP-175's so end to end install is instant. 

Guest services is all the customer wants enhanced.  The price point to get the solution, virtual or physical was between $5,200 and $8,000 respectively and additional cost for "Guest license 100 endpoints" $2,400. Is this the going rate and if so, what alternatives exist?

Thanks much,

Blue.

In fairness, that's a pretty small wireless network so I can see the cost of Clearpass (even just guest) might look heavy relatively speaking.

I don't want to get too commercially controvertial, but on the face of it that $ price looks a bit high? I'm just basing that on looking at my UK RRP prices and a loose understanding of discounts.

I recommend you disucss it with your regional Aruba representative and explain the situation. Maybe ask them for a few different partner companies who can quote you? If you can use the virtual version (assuming you have a vm host) I'd recommend that for sure.

I wouldn't want to recommend an alternative as all I can think of are either terrible, or more expensive!

Good luck!

Thanks for your response. And that's the gotcha. It's a small install for a large manufacutring company in their warehouse district. They are having a hard time justifying the cost of the solution as its almost 50+% the cost of the wirelesss. :(