Controllerless Networks

A friend has asked me to "sort out" their wireless network. The use case is a mixed office and residental town house building, spaced out over five floors. At the moment there are a bunch of soho routers deployed in the building, there is a "central" router connected to the ADSL line then 3 further soho routers acting as bridges broadcasting the same SSID for the residential service, and 1 other soho router in the office space acting as a router with a different SSID and doing DHCP for that network to give some protection to the office environment. As the RF is not co-ordinated there are issues with handover between APs, etc. Network authentication is via a PSK.

It seems that the Aruba Instant products (something like the AP103) play in this space, but I'm struggling to understand a few points, espeically the demarcation between InstantAPs on their own, and InstantAPs with Cloud.

1. Do I need a support contract in order to get firmware updates?

2. It seems I could set up 2 SSIDs (residents and offices) each with a separate DHCP pool controlled by the instant APs and for traffic to then be sent onto the ADSL router. The ADSL router would give out addresses for the APs but not for the wireless/network clients.

3. In the office space could wired network clients could they get a network connection in the same L2 network as the office wireless clients?

4. Is there any opportunity for further network authentication with just Instant APs (no cloud) beyond a PSK - for example a basic captive portal? There's no equipment locally within the building to host a webpage, etc. and although you could do this with a Rasberry PI I'd rather not go there.

5. Can Instant APs report on who is using up all the bandwidth?

I guess the other question is whether Aruba InstantAPs are the right fit for this kind of requirement. The business owner would like something that they just buy with low/no ongoing recurrent costs. If Cloud was to be desirable to get some more features, how much does that cost, and how does a JoePublic buy it?

Thanks

1.  You do not.  You can get updates for GA code with instant

2.  You could do that, yes.

3.  Yes.

4.  Yes, you can, but the internal instant webpage is rudimentary.  You can host a public web server if you want something more advanced.

5.  Yes, it can report on that at the time.  If you want any historical information, you will need Airwave or Aruba Central.

You should get an Aruba Partner or consultant to work out the details for you to see if indeed this is the right fit for your organization.  I answered yes, so your questions, but it does not answer "how" or "if" this can be done...

1.  You do not.  You can get updates for GA code with instant

2.  You could do that, yes.

3.  Yes.

4.  Yes, you can, but the internal instant webpage is rudimentary.  You can host a public web server if you want something more advanced.

5.  Yes, it can report on that at the time.  If you want any historical information, you will need Airwave or Aruba Central.

You should get an Aruba Partner or consultant to work out the details for you to see if indeed this is the right fit for your organization.  I answered yes, so your questions, but it does not answer "how" or "if" this can be done...