[TriLUG] [Slightly OT] Wi-Fi Consultant?

[Greg Brown]

No, wireless does not suck.  I have several commercial wireless
networks deployed with great success.  It just takes a bit more
planning and perperation unboxing an AP/router and plugging it into
the network.

Besides, most of the 'suckiness' from 802.11 comes from the hardware
selected and deployed.  Here is a breakdown of my expirences with
wireless hardware, and, again, this is just from my expirence:

linksys 802.11b - total junk
dlink anything - absolute crap
linksys 802.11g WAP54G access point - good in stock form for an access point
linksys 802.11g WRT54G router - good in stock form, excellent with
loaded with OpenWRT
Orinoco AP-500 802.11b access point - by FAR the absolute best 11b
access point ever created by any company at any time (until the Cisco
AP1200 came out, and then it's still a close race).  A tad expensive.
Cisco 1200 - have worked with the a/b/g units in large commercial
enviornments.  Nice units.  Very expensive.  The absolute best
all-around access points on the maket.  They support everything:
radius, tacacs, crap I've never heard of, WEP, WPA, accounting, etc,
etc, etc.  They also have two nice anntenna jacks for installing
external antennas.  Plus a ton of other stuff I haven't even touched
on.  The Aironet 1200 also has a web configuration interface where the
Orinoco requires a windows program for configuration.  So, with that,
the Aironet 1200 gets my nod as the best pure access point on the
market for anything from large commerical to SMB.  For home use I'd
still take the WRT54G running OpenWRT, though (the WRT54G/OpenWRT also
gets my nod as the unit of choice for point-to-point links as the VPN
modules seem quite attractive - I have yet to try them out, but I will
shortly (i.e. this weekend)).  All THAT said, a cheap ebay AP-500 for
home or office use would be much less expensive and equally as
reliable as the cisco.

Cisco 1200 units run WindRiver vxworks OS - the same OS that runs
satellites, etc.  Very reliable, even more so then OpenWRT.

So those are my thoughts.  Oh, if you are looking for commerical
antennas for point-to-point or very high gain antennas look at
http://www.fab-corp.com.

Greg


On 5/26/05, Brian Henning <brian at strutmasters.com> wrote:
> So wireless really does suck and it's not just me doing something wrong
> that makes my "Signal Strength: Excellent" connection drop, and not come
> back for 5 minutes?
> 
> ~B
> 
> Kevin Otte wrote:
> > Jim Ray wrote:
> >
> >>i gave away my wireless stuff and use copper.  with all the spurious
> >>electromagnetic radiation in this neighborhood, i gave up on reliable
> >>email via wireless.
> >
> >
> > Mr. Ray,
> >
> > I believe everyone on this list is now intimately familiar with your
> > unique problems in deploying wireless.  I cannot speak for others, but I
> > have maintained successful wireless deployments at two employers and at
> > my home.  Unless you can offer constructive assistance in solving the
> > problem being inquired about, may I suggest that you need not remind us
> > for the umpteenth time that "wireless sucks"?
> >
> > -- Kevin
> >
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