Wireless LAN Vendors – Tiers?

Someone asked me about Wireless LAN Infrastructure Vendors and I put them in the following Tiers. It’s not some ‘Gartner Magic Quadrant’ type thing. It’s just my personal opinion of where these fall. Not a ranking by quality, or by technology… just a ‘gut feel’ from what I see out in the marketplace. They are just random inside the Tiers.

I would love to hear what you think. Did I miss any major vendor? Any of these placed in the wrong Tier?

Tier One

  • Cisco
  • Aruba
  • Motorola

Tier Two

  • Meru
  • HP
  • Enterasys/Siemens
  • Ruckus
  • Aerohive
  • Trapeze
  • Xirrus
  • Bluesocket
  • 3Com
  • LANCOM
  • Extricom
  • Proxim Wireless

Tier Three

  • Senao/Engenius
  • Ubiquiti
  • D-Link
  • Proxim
  • Belkin
  • Linksys
  • Netgear
  • Meraki
  • Fon
  • SMC
  • RealTek
  • TrendNet
  • ZyXEL

4/9/2010 – Update

I think I need to re-visit this list based on a bunch of feedback. Folks would like to see them ‘ranked’ (no, not going to do it) and add a different category for Mesh/PtP/PtMP kind of stuff. I personally don’t have a lot of experience there. Anyone want to tackle the job?