802.11g bridging -- how many supported clients?

I've seen many companies with supposed "Wireless Bridging", such as
the Linksys WET54G, Netgear WGE101, etc. but I an unable to find any
information on how many wired clients these products support.

I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
invest $1500 for a 54mb when there are $200 products that may do the
same thing. Currently, I am using a Cisco Aironet 350 AP on one end
and a laptop running XP with a wired and wireless PC Card (Aironet
350) in bridge mode (which works great, never hangs up). This gets me
a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.

But with the 54Mb out there now, I am positive I can get a good signal
strength with much less power and get much greater speed, but I need
to support over 100 clients on each campus.

Anyone know of a resource that provides the number of clients (wired)
that these new bridges support? I am sure Cisco is in the works for a
real $1500 54Mb bridge, and for our longer links, that may be the best
route, but for this short hop, I don't need 100mW outputs that the
Aironet 350 provides...

Thanks,

Michael

200 m is feasable on direct sight.

most routers can handle up to 253 clients. 192.168.0.1 ~ 192.168.0.255 for
example!

bye

Michael Burkey wrote:
> I've seen many companies with supposed "Wireless Bridging", such as
> the Linksys WET54G, Netgear WGE101, etc. but I an unable to find any
> information on how many wired clients these products support.
>
> I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
> invest $1500 for a 54mb when there are $200 products that may do the
> same thing. Currently, I am using a Cisco Aironet 350 AP on one end
> and a laptop running XP with a wired and wireless PC Card (Aironet
> 350) in bridge mode (which works great, never hangs up). This gets me
> a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.
>
> But with the 54Mb out there now, I am positive I can get a good signal
> strength with much less power and get much greater speed, but I need
> to support over 100 clients on each campus.
>
> Anyone know of a resource that provides the number of clients (wired)
> that these new bridges support? I am sure Cisco is in the works for a
> real $1500 54Mb bridge, and for our longer links, that may be the best
> route, but for this short hop, I don't need 100mW outputs that the
> Aironet 350 provides...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael

> I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
> a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.

700' with 24dBi antennas?!!! You could probably do it with a bit of
coax stripped bare with the centre 31mm long and the foil folded back
instead.

> 200 m is feasable on direct sight.

With the antennas that he has he should be able to get something like 20
miles.

> most routers can handle up to 253 clients. 192.168.0.1 ~ 192.168.0.255 for
> example!

That doesn't help because the units are bridging NOT routing

David.

David Taylor <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..
> > I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
> > a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.
>
> 700' with 24dBi antennas?!!! You could probably do it with a bit of
> coax stripped bare with the centre 31mm long and the foil folded back
> instead.

I know it was overkill, but the 24dBi antennas were only a bit more
than other outdoor antennas, but given the problems we've had with 2
ISP blanketing the area with 802.11, I wanted to guarantee that I
would blast out any interference and have the highest possible
throughput. Which is exactly why I am looking at 802.11g, which only
requires an upgrade to the radio.

Thanks for the other post...and for actually reading my post. I guess
some guys think they know all the answers -- whether they apply or
not.

Michael

> Thanks for the other post...and for actually reading my post. I guess
> some guys think they know all the answers -- whether they apply or
> not.

No problem. I didn't answer the other part of the question because I
don't have a precise answer but my feeling would be that the answer is
not cut and dried. You could probably have as many clients as you want
on each side, it's more down to precisely what you want to drag across
the bridge.

My experience of the low end bridging units is that it seems that they
can become overwhelmed, maybe it's a heat thing or software issue i'm
not sure but manifests itself as an AP reset. For a while, you'll see
timeouts then back to data transfer.

In my case, I see this if trying to transfer a large amount of data, for
example a CD's worth in one hit. Typically the transfer will fail at
some point.

On the other hand, if you've got a nice tidy SQL database on one side
and some nice clients on the other side that aren't doing SELECT * FROM
<the whole database> then you might be very happy with a large number of
clients.

This is subjective and you might have no problems at all. Just
something to bear in mind perhaps?

David.

Michael Burkey wrote:

> David Taylor <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..
>> > I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
>> > a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.
>>
>> 700' with 24dBi antennas?!!! You could probably do it with a bit of
>> coax stripped bare with the centre 31mm long and the foil folded back
>> instead.
>
> I know it was overkill, but the 24dBi antennas were only a bit more
> than other outdoor antennas, but given the problems we've had with 2
> ISP blanketing the area with 802.11, I wanted to guarantee that I
> would blast out any interference and have the highest possible
> throughput. Which is exactly why I am looking at 802.11g, which only
> requires an upgrade to the radio.

Remember that 11g and 11b share the same channels. Its only 11a that
is on a different frequency. So if you have interference from other
users (or ISPs) using 11b you will get exactly the same on 11g and what
is worse the 11g kit will run in 11b compatability mode thus loosing you
the speed gain.

David

>
> Thanks for the other post...and for actually reading my post. I guess
> some guys think they know all the answers -- whether they apply or
> not.
>
> Michael

"Michael Burkey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) m...
> David Taylor <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..
> > > I have two schools that are 700 feet apart, and frankly don't want to
> > > a solid 6Mb with 100% signal strength using two 24dBi SPG antennas.
> >
> > 700' with 24dBi antennas?!!! You could probably do it with a bit of
> > coax stripped bare with the centre 31mm long and the foil folded back
> > instead.
>
> I know it was overkill, but the 24dBi antennas were only a bit more
> than other outdoor antennas, but given the problems we've had with 2
> ISP blanketing the area with 802.11, I wanted to guarantee that I
> would blast out any interference and have the highest possible
> throughput. Which is exactly why I am looking at 802.11g, which only
> requires an upgrade to the radio.
>
> Thanks for the other post...and for actually reading my post. I guess
> some guys think they know all the answers -- whether they apply or
> not.
>
> Michael

Just replace the radio units. If you need more bandwidth than the one PtoP
will allow, simply add two more bridges. Or Four more if you need it. .11g
is the same deal as 11b. 3 non overlapping channels, so for G, 162 Mb
aggragate bandwidth. More like 66-75 realistically but still plenty of pipe
for pretty much anything you need to get done. You definitely don't need
that much juice on the antenna side though. For 700 feet line of sight, two
5dBi yagi's would be plenty, assuming a short, low loss tranmission cable
run.