Wireless is all BS

M

marley1

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 18, 2000
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Okay so I dont know how you other consultants feel but wireless is such a pain in the ass and I hate doing it.

Recently we got some jobs that require distribuiting wireless in a 2 story condo complex thats 400 feet wide, or doing a 30 ft site to site bridge, or just wireless in big houses.

I have to say all these higher end/more powerful wireless access points, all perfom the same as say a WRT54GL.

I got a stack of 10 Ubiquiti Pico HP2, 1watt units, had some Pepwave Office Point 400mw, and I swear walking outside they both had the same range.

I dont really get wireless.

I hate it, pain in ass.
 
cisco isn't in the budget of most of the clients we deal with.

antenna may be the solution, just odd how any of these devices really dont do much more than one less expensive.

what antenna would be good for omni directional? I would imagine just adding a bigger antenna can be harmfull too right, wouldn't you need the power to spread the bigger antenna?
 
marley1 said:
I got a stack of 10 Ubiquiti Pico HP2, 1watt units, had some Pepwave Office Point 400mw, and I swear walking outside they both had the same range.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they probably did, because the radio in the client station is almost as important. Changing only one of the two radios will have minimal benefit (though some high-end radios have higher sensitivity that can help).

Using the right antenna means you're directing the available power more efficiently for your situation. A higher gain omni antenna will 'flatten' the coverage area (less up/down spread), and direct the power in a flatter plane, and help reception of end-station data in the same fashion. It doesn't need a more powerful radio.

And even though it's just a 30ft link, I'd suggest using directional antennas on both sides. You'll keep power levels down, data rates high and reduce the opportunity for interference and interception.

And yes, doing wireless well is a pain in the ass.
 
the bridges were directional, had some issue gonna try something else.

what is a good site for antenna?
 
don't give up, its monday, smile nod walk away go drink a beer then think about it just like i do LOL!
 
Is Proxim in budget? I suggest them for wireless equipment, they used to be Orinoco. They provide pretty good TX and RX power so as to not come up short in the connection. They also do good as to not bleed into other APs of yours if you set it up with multiple APs in the same area.
 
At my company I just can not stand wireless. Sadly our president loves it so it is not something we can really phase out. For most users I did push them away from it luckily.

Our new issue with it is that in W7 you can just select a checkbox and see the wireless key. Since my company will only buy me linksys home access points ha
 
When talking about the home/consumer grade products versus business/enterprise grade products, where you will see the differences is when things are under load.

Yeah for a couple or several laptops users just doing e-mail and web surfing, you won't see a difference from your Stinksys wrt54 versus something nice like an HP ProCurve or <insert your biz grade product here>

Where you will see, without question, a huge difference....is when you're having large amounts of traffic go over wireless. Do some LAN file transfer of a file that's at least several hundred megs, or have a bunch of laptops at the same time run a networked application. The consumer grade router will bomb out...you'll see the connections drop and reset...causing frustration from the end user(s). The solid business grade router will handle that load without breaking a sweat, and without frustrating the end user(s).

I have no problem using the little Stinky routers for light setups. Just yesterday we did a hell of a difficult wiring job out on an island, this ancient..huge...sprawling family "compound/estate/mansion" that was the summer home of a big whig oil exec that ran one of the larger gulf oil exploration companies. This was their "summer place". Been in the family for generations...very old, I'm sure lots of mods and additions and decades and decades of "built it on top of prior whatever" stuff. Old lathwork walls, plaster walls with the steel mesh inside, brick walls, hundreds of miles of old romex wiring and duct work, etc etc. Nasty crawlspaces and funky attic spaces and all sorts of hollow spots in the walls and attic and under floors...we had to turn ourselves into contortionists to run that wiring.

They wanted full coverage, including outdoor buildings that were 4x apartments for the full time help to live in.

What did I use? For this place..just old Stinky wrt54gl flashed with Tomato firmware, running on the 9db high gains from http://www.fab-corp.com/ The GLs flipped to AP mode, running behind an RV082. And since this place has a history of lightening hits due to being up on a hilltop, all runs protected by APC NetArrest. All units plugged into an APC ES350 for smooth power.
 
if you don't want to use Cisco, try HP MSM310's, I've deployed a bunch to smaller branch offices ~50 employees. they have pretty good coverage, the configurations are pretty flexible, and they are a sturdy little unit, metal casing, which is nice.
 
If ya don't have the budget for real commercial gear then load up tomato or DDWRT onto a decent box, bigger antenna, up the broadcast power. I've had good results with that as long as you don't push the power up to much.
 
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