Previously, we used Cisco Aironets at all of our campuses and managed them individually.  I’m not going to delve too far into it’s setup as it’s not fully relevant.

Why Ruckus

Originally, we had planned on continuing using Cisco gear. My boss, as some people know, is a Cisco zealot at times.  We got a quote for N-radios, two controllers and whatever Cisco licensing was needed (depending on their day of the month).

First thing was price, overall price was attractive, not the only reason but it did help. The biggest win of Ruckus is their features.  We looked at Ruckus’ 7962 APs and ZoneDirector 1050s.  Some of the features include

• Dynamic beam forming
• SmartMesh
• Dual-band support
• Lots of antennas inside each radio
• AD/Radius support
• Multiple VLAN support

The list goes on.

The third reason for Ruckus is the ease of use.  Their interface is easy to use. Setup is simple.  Literally to unbox and setup one AP and controller was somewhere near 30 minutes.

What’s the Setup?

Ruckus install was set for our Central/Edmond facility and our Oklahoma City Campus where we do most of our broadcasts. The goal was to provide stable, secure and smart WiFi that covered every inch of our facilities.

Layout: We purchased 25 7962s and 2 ZoneDirectors.  We ended up with 16 APs and 1 ZoneDirector at Central offices and 9 APs and 1 ZoneDirector at the Oklahoma City Campus. I’m almost positive we could do with less, but I’d rather be sure.

SSIDs: We currently have 3 SSIDs setup for use.  We created a public SSID, Staff SSID, and Voice SSID for wireless Cisco phones.

Authentication: Public WiFi has no authentication, but you are taken to a Legal page before you are allowed to view anything. The ZD handles this for us. The new Staff WiFi uses 802.1x RADIUS Authentication to local Windows AD Domain Controller.  This allows secure connection and easy revocation of access via certs and Active Directory users. Our Voice is hidden and mac address based.

Network: At LifeChurch.tv, we VLAN everything. So without much detail yet, the ZoneDirectors sit in a subnet and VLAN with the APs for management.  The data traffic VLAN is dependent on physical location, i.e. OKC or Central offices, and which SSID. That is one feature that is very handy and easy to set up.  Each AP has a direct home run to a PoE switch in most cases.  On older Cisco 3550 switches, we had to pull out power supplies or PoE injectors.  Cisco 3524 switches we had nothing but issues, so beware if you have them still in use.

Next post we’ll start talking about initial setup and configurations.

What questions do you have or would like to see answered?

My boss, Daryl Hunter, has recently requested that me and our new team member, AJ Bourg take some time to blog things we’re working on, steps for upgrades and installs, and other various items. So I’m starting to test what that is going to look like.  I’m really not for sure if I’ll keep my blog here or move it to my main personal domain..

I really like Windows Live Writer so part of this post is testing to make sure it’s working =]

Here’s a picture to look at =]

What kind of posts would you all like to see?

After 3 years of employment at RHEMA Bible Church/Kenneth Hagin Ministries and 13 years growing up in the church, I am leaving to take an IT position at LifeChurch.tv.

I leave Rhema with much affection and still plan on being involved as an alumni of Rhema Bible Training Center. I’m going to miss my good friends and co-workers, but the internet will help with the distance.

My transition will take place over the next four weeks and I will start down there mid-July. Looking forward to new adventures and new peoples.

I’m both excited and scared as this is the first real time away from home. Good thing is, it’s not too far from home!

More later. If you aren’t, follow me on twitter..

Pike’s Peak, originally uploaded by churchiee.

Ok bad pun, but alas I do work IT..

This is a picture I took this past summer while in Colorado Springs, CO looking towards Pike’s Peak.

I had this big post about strategic planning and thoughts about looking forward but.. I lost it.. I’ll have to do it later.

Enjoy!

*Edit* Oh and go check out Derrick Henslee’s blog.  He is the worship pastor for Tulsa’s Lifechurch.tv’s campus.

Will work more on tomorrow.

My plan is to be able to just have to do any troubleshooting on Monday, besides switching over to the new Cisco 3560 I have in to replace an old Dell 12-port gig switch and a Cisco CE 500 12-port gig.  This will give me more control and features..

Thanks to Dave Mast and all the other citrt guys on the idea of how to deploy the DC’s among the other help..  VM here I come!

Happy New Year to all.

I was hoping that this new year would start out alright, but the Buckeyes didn’t feel it was a good year for that.  Granted, they weren’t supposed to have gone anywhere this year, so I still have to give them some credit there.

I am currently in Peoria, IL at the Sharepoint training that Mindsharp is doing for the Church IT Roundtable.  Jason Lee and the Northwoods Community Church staff, as well as Fady from Willowcreek,  have done an amazing job on getting this set up and hosting. More on this later.

Here are some pics:  Justin Moore’s Set

Anyone know of a like widget to post directly into WordPress?  

Today, I was forced to deal with Spanning Tree Protocol errors across the main core switches, therefore, cutting off access to the users to the entire network.  The issue with these cheap switches is there is only a web-based gui and no console, so if your network goes down, you have no way to gain access to the error messages.  Beyond that, in our case, with STP, we cannot see which port the error is on or what MAC address is causing the issue.

So after a largely frustrating day with no idea of what is causing the fluctuations of up and down, I regret our purchase of low-end switches and will hope to slowly at least replace all core switches with 3560′s or higher. I’ll start digging into it more tomorrow on an off-day.

If anyone has any ideas, do let me know.  How many others have done the buy cheap now and had to pay for it later?

 I’ll try and get some pictures up..jeremy…

Due to the heavy ice formations on lines and trees, power is out at my house and caused a lot of outages across Green Country (This part of OK is called that for some strange reason.. haven’t figured it out yet…)  My house is actually without power..I’m typing this from a friend’s house.

My Cisco Callmanager and Unity servers took a beating too.  The UPS overloaded last night causing the servers to fluctuate many many times and it corrupted the OS.  I ended up having to call in a brilliant Cisco Engineer to help keep us back online as we had no outside phones….  

Anyway, I need to go so keep this part of the county in prayer as well as the terrible atrocities that have happened in Colorado.

I am going to be talking about technology in ministry, specifically for new church plants and new ministries. I’m coming with the mindset that they don’t have resources for a tech staff and aren’t extremely proficient in technology anyway, beyond normal surfing and word usage.

I want to provide them with a good overall view of some areas of technology that could help them in productivity and accessibility. Some ideas are hosted applications (Google Apps, 37signals), the use of blogs, hitting the idea of ChMS, free hosting (dreamhost.com)..

I don’t want to overload, but I don’t want to let them go away without some great resources.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Side note: Cat chases bear up a tree! Thanks to Jeremy Marx for the link… go encourage my fellow Database Admin to start blogging!

Finding that blog and then the Church IT Roundtable set off a series of discovering a whole world I never thought to look for. I have since found and added to my RSS reader numerous blogs from IT and communications staff members, leaders, and pastors. Many of which can be found on the blog roll on the right..

Well to list some of the projects I am immediately engrossed in, here we go.
PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM
ChMS Selection
SAN Storage and Consolidated Backup Selection
Complete website redesign and backend creation
Collarboration Software Selection

Again, going through some of these now, knowing there are others who have gone before us and have graciously offered insight into their experiences is going to be a very valuable and helpful asset.