I have quite a bit of Aruba Instant On switches and Access Points. 1x 1930 24-port 195W, 2x 1930 8-port POE, 1x 1930 8-port NON-POE and 1x 1830 8-port POE powered desktop. Then an AP22 and an AP12.
Mid-summer last year, with HPE (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) trying to acquire Juniper Networks, the DOJ is requiring them to divest the Aruba Instant On line. It is kinda up in the air as to who will acquire the line, and what might happen to it. With that coming down the line, and me having some weird controller issues as of late (trying to commit changes on the main 1930 that would error out and leaving certain ports wrongly configured), I wanted to sell off this infrastructure stack while it still holds some value.
I did try managing the AIO switches locally, but was not pleased with how slow they were to manage locally.
A friend mentioned he had two Cisco Catalyst 3850s that were recently decommissioned that were mine if I picked them up... OKKK! So I picked up a 12-port 10G SFP+ Catalyst WS-C3850-12XS and a 48-port 1GbE POE Catalyst WS-3850-48P. I have them stacked with StackWise 480 cables and stacked power. Each switch has one PSU.
Replaced the Attic 1930 8-port with a Catalyst C3560 WS-C3560CX-8PC-S uplinked by 2x OS2 SMF with 1GB LR transceivers. Replaced the Aruba Instant On AP22 with an Aruba (Enterprise) AP535 running in Instant mode with ArubaOS 8.
I have another 1930 8-port in the shed that will need to be swapped out. I have to find it, but I think I have an ancient 8-port 10/100 2960 in my attic that could serve this shed well as it's uplinked by a Ubiquiti 2.4GHz NanoBeam and truly only serves to uplink 4 POE cameras and my shed iMac. Usual throughput in this shed is 70-80Mbps, which is more than fine.
My desk switch will be replaced with another C3560CX.
Routing wise, I have been wanting to get rid of my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP for some time in preparation for Spectrum's eventual high-split symmetrical Gigabit service and enact some QOS. That was replaced with a Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny (9th Gen i5, 16GB of RAM and 512GB NVMe) with a 10GB Intel X710-DA2 SFP+ network card running VyOS. Very similar in configuration to the EdgeRouter being so close to Vyatta. WAN in comes via SMF to one interface, uplinked to the 10G 3850 via MMF. Also bought another Intel X710-DA2 FlexLOM NIC to replace a 4x1GB FlexLOM card in the HP DL360 G9 and uplinked my Hyper-V host via 2x10G over MMF with both interfaces in a SET team.
VyOS is setup as zone based, all LAN/trusted networks routed at the 3850 stack, DMZ, Camera and WAN zones routed at the VyOS router, with static routes on the 3850 core and in the VyOS router to tell where each network lives. Also implemented a transit network so traffic does not go over the Management VLAN.
This is truly my first time diving into Cisco switches. Every organization I have worked at has always had Cisco switches, but their management has never been my responsibility. Configuring them is not hard and pretty easy to pickup. What I like is how instant they are. I can shut, no shut a port in seconds versus waiting on the Aruba Instant On cloud controller to take minutes to re-sync the changes. Just a prime example of SMB/SoHo vs Enterprise class equipment.
I can definitely tell the Aruba AP-535 having 4x4 radios and higher bandwidth channels over the AP22 2x2 is easily performing better. I'd usually be able to pull 400-500Mbps off of the AP22 with the amount of wireless clients. The AP-535 will easily hit 800Mbps+.
So I'm very pleased, this will serve me for quite some time. I will say the placebo effect is in full swing as the network feels "snappier". Speedtests on Apple TV which has a direct Cat6 run back to the 48-port 3850, and a Gigabit NIC seem to "saturate" the line speed of my Spectrum Gigabit service instantly. Where as, during previous Speedtests on the AIO equipment, would take a little time to get up to ISP line rate and almost "buffer".
This stack will eventually all go into a new 42U basement rack when we build our new house in a few years. Also... cheap. The AP-535s are $50-70 used. Enjoy some pics.
Mid-summer last year, with HPE (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) trying to acquire Juniper Networks, the DOJ is requiring them to divest the Aruba Instant On line. It is kinda up in the air as to who will acquire the line, and what might happen to it. With that coming down the line, and me having some weird controller issues as of late (trying to commit changes on the main 1930 that would error out and leaving certain ports wrongly configured), I wanted to sell off this infrastructure stack while it still holds some value.
I did try managing the AIO switches locally, but was not pleased with how slow they were to manage locally.
A friend mentioned he had two Cisco Catalyst 3850s that were recently decommissioned that were mine if I picked them up... OKKK! So I picked up a 12-port 10G SFP+ Catalyst WS-C3850-12XS and a 48-port 1GbE POE Catalyst WS-3850-48P. I have them stacked with StackWise 480 cables and stacked power. Each switch has one PSU.
Replaced the Attic 1930 8-port with a Catalyst C3560 WS-C3560CX-8PC-S uplinked by 2x OS2 SMF with 1GB LR transceivers. Replaced the Aruba Instant On AP22 with an Aruba (Enterprise) AP535 running in Instant mode with ArubaOS 8.
I have another 1930 8-port in the shed that will need to be swapped out. I have to find it, but I think I have an ancient 8-port 10/100 2960 in my attic that could serve this shed well as it's uplinked by a Ubiquiti 2.4GHz NanoBeam and truly only serves to uplink 4 POE cameras and my shed iMac. Usual throughput in this shed is 70-80Mbps, which is more than fine.
My desk switch will be replaced with another C3560CX.
Routing wise, I have been wanting to get rid of my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP for some time in preparation for Spectrum's eventual high-split symmetrical Gigabit service and enact some QOS. That was replaced with a Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny (9th Gen i5, 16GB of RAM and 512GB NVMe) with a 10GB Intel X710-DA2 SFP+ network card running VyOS. Very similar in configuration to the EdgeRouter being so close to Vyatta. WAN in comes via SMF to one interface, uplinked to the 10G 3850 via MMF. Also bought another Intel X710-DA2 FlexLOM NIC to replace a 4x1GB FlexLOM card in the HP DL360 G9 and uplinked my Hyper-V host via 2x10G over MMF with both interfaces in a SET team.
VyOS is setup as zone based, all LAN/trusted networks routed at the 3850 stack, DMZ, Camera and WAN zones routed at the VyOS router, with static routes on the 3850 core and in the VyOS router to tell where each network lives. Also implemented a transit network so traffic does not go over the Management VLAN.
This is truly my first time diving into Cisco switches. Every organization I have worked at has always had Cisco switches, but their management has never been my responsibility. Configuring them is not hard and pretty easy to pickup. What I like is how instant they are. I can shut, no shut a port in seconds versus waiting on the Aruba Instant On cloud controller to take minutes to re-sync the changes. Just a prime example of SMB/SoHo vs Enterprise class equipment.
I can definitely tell the Aruba AP-535 having 4x4 radios and higher bandwidth channels over the AP22 2x2 is easily performing better. I'd usually be able to pull 400-500Mbps off of the AP22 with the amount of wireless clients. The AP-535 will easily hit 800Mbps+.
So I'm very pleased, this will serve me for quite some time. I will say the placebo effect is in full swing as the network feels "snappier". Speedtests on Apple TV which has a direct Cat6 run back to the 48-port 3850, and a Gigabit NIC seem to "saturate" the line speed of my Spectrum Gigabit service instantly. Where as, during previous Speedtests on the AIO equipment, would take a little time to get up to ISP line rate and almost "buffer".
This stack will eventually all go into a new 42U basement rack when we build our new house in a few years. Also... cheap. The AP-535s are $50-70 used. Enjoy some pics.
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