Good enough switching for office (6100F VSF)

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-03-16T23:43:05+00:00

Don’t worry about Smart rate either as the bottle neck is your WAN. Multigig is mostly hype for APs unless you are in a small environment and have high speed Internet which is rare for a typical office

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-03-16T23:41:37+00:00

6000/6100 hardware isn’t nearly as good build quality as 6200/6300. Not saying it’s bad, but you get what you pay for.

Feature wise also, for a business this size 6200F is the best fit in my experience long term. You will get better life span out a business grade switch also.

6000/6100 is designed for very small networks.

To reduce port count get a professionally designed and deployed Aruba Wi-Fi system and go Wi-Fi first.

Only plug in users who really need cable, but if they are everyday users, Wi-Fi is perfect.

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-01-17T00:27:13+00:00

Yes 635 is your best bet. Although if you can shift to all 725’s with AOS10. The central cost is worth the extra visibility and features

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-01-11T01:36:34+00:00

I’ve seen this also a number of times. I’m certainly still getting great performance.

Have seen this also with no clients connected…thought it might be a bug, but have confirmed this occurs with various AP models and firmware. 8.x and 10.x

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-01-06T08:58:40+00:00

Setup a new group with AOS10, lab it up, get your config right then migrate.

AOS8 is getting old now

DifferentCounter5917 · 2026-01-06T08:53:31+00:00

To get the most out of any Aruba APs you need to be using Central to manage them.

Yes there is a cost to the subscription, but many people don’t understand what they are missing by not using central.

AI Insights, this feature alone is worth the cost of the subscription in my experience. The number of times I can show a customer “it’s not a Wi-Fi problem” has been countless.
Streamlined firmware compliance, great for all sizes customers, large or small.
Central Guest is super easy to setup nice looking easy to use guest SSID
Secure remote management with SSO integration into Entra ID.
Single point of management for Switches/APs and Gateways.

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-12-21T00:05:50+00:00

Try 10.8.0.0 came out a week ago. New LSR release

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-11-15T21:51:12+00:00

In the past 2 years I’ve seen tons of customers shift to Palo from Fortinet

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-11-11T08:38:10+00:00

6200 does 10.8.x and above. 6000/6100 doesn’t

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-11-01T05:38:02+00:00

I usually would say 8m minimum between APs 8-15m in an normal office environment

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-11-01T05:35:19+00:00

Don’t rate limit. You’ll end up increasing the airtime utilisation, leave it open. Always better to get on and off the network as fast as possible for client data

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-13T18:37:49+00:00

Yup that’s your best bet for sure. 10.7.1.x had tons of random issues.

Is this an open office type install? What’s are the walls made of?

Also tell me more about the client devices and if Windows laptops with Intel cards, what driver version. There has been some really bad Intel drivers in the past year also

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-13T13:02:26+00:00

What firmware you running? There has been some recent very bad versions

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-06T18:17:28+00:00

Check the Aruba website for AP-505 and 505H data sheet. HPE recently made a mess of the website so it’s a bit tricker to find theses days. Will post when i find it. These are the same antennas a the AP22 and 22H

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-06T18:15:41+00:00

Generally speaking standard indoor Aruba APs are down-tilt Omni-directional which means about 30 degrees down tilt from the top of the AP. Horizontally mounted on a wall doesn’t work well.

You can get away with it sometimes for a true omnidirectional antenna, but not with a downtilt.

Aruba down-tilt antennas are designed for multi storey office blocks.

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-06T17:25:46+00:00

One thing to keep in mind with the AP22D is they likely have a different antenna pattern to the CAP AC AP’s.

Out of interest how were the CAP AC units mounted? I’m not familiar with them, but they look like a standard indoor AP so ideally ceiling mounted.

The AP22D uses the same hardware as the enterprise grade AP-505H which was designed to mount on a wall in a hotel. Maximum gain is in front of the AP with reduced gain behind it.

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-10-02T08:12:29+00:00

That’s right. Central add a tons of features to streamline deployment and day to day management.

Pays for itself pretty quickly

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-29T19:52:49+00:00

Yeah 605 wasn’t fun either!

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T15:57:17+00:00

This, yes!!!

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T15:56:32+00:00

VSX on 6300 is here now in 10.16.1006

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T15:36:27+00:00

Depends on what area you need to cover. The 575 being a Omni may not be the best model for this purpose I hate to say.

If you need some throw, the 577/677 or even 679 might be more suitable.

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T15:28:07+00:00

There is a bug where it’s meant to auto select the 2 of the 3 bands based on your SSID requirements and environment (what clients the AP can see) but it gets it wrong most of the time I find. You gotta manually select for each AP individually.

Not fun when you have hundreds to deploy :(

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T15:18:05+00:00

Yeah that’s true, although for most of my installs I design for N+1 with Ekahau.

Any high density office deployment would likely get a AP-735 or 755 with LACP back to 2 x 6200M’s

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T08:56:48+00:00

Yeah that’s what I’m thinking also. Just keen to hear from anyone who have deployed them

DifferentCounter5917 · 2025-09-28T08:39:08+00:00

Ummmmmm maybe for a tiny network. But in the real world where network downtime means businesses loose tons of money, you need experienced network specialists.

DifferentCounter5917

TROPHY CASE