Hi,
We have a setup with 900 users accessing a fiberconnection in Denmark. We
extend the range of the accesspoints by antenna amplifying and have good
results with that. We may generally cover a radius of more than 1,5km and
often even twice that, all within the Danish rules of broadcasting (100mW).
The network is an uncommercial social activity that is rapidly growing
(0-900 in half a year).
LinkSys was chosen from a cost only perspective as we are able to import
them directly and therefor very cheap.
We have choosen a setup with LinkSys WAP11 - or occationally WAP54G in
accesspoint mode in the "upstream" end and LinkSys WAP11 in client mode for
all users. This allows us to be able to offer some kind of "Hotspot" in the
coverage area - if you can rescieve the signal of cause. All in all this is
our favorite choice instead of bridging mode.
HOWEVER there are some issues that constantly puzzles us, thus this posting:
1. LinkSys WAP11 drops out periodically, requiring a power cycle to
continue.
2. LinkSys in "client mode" may only access other LinkSys.
Lets start with the latter first as this is the shortest:
On the setup.htm page of the LinkSys WAP11 it states that the device will
work only with another LinkSys product in Client, Bridge and Repeater mode.
This is a truth with so far only one extention. It also works with D-Link
AP900+. This makes me wonder what special protocol extentions they have "put
in" the firmvare. And why may D-Link communicate but not eg. Avaya or 3Com?
The dropout issue is a real pain.
Occationally the cells dies of no apperant reason. It just stops. No matter
what we try, the only solution that seems to work is a power cycle. This led
us to create convenient inventions including timers, cell-phone or
parallelport activated relays that may cycle the power on the distant cells
from our survaliance center. However it still is a pain in the neck that the
users have to dial in every now and then. Some are more unstable than
others, no apperant reason seem obvious.
I found articles on Seattle Wireless from 2002 indicating that this might be
because of intolerance of spontanious fades in the signal - this WILL occour
in the type of net that we are building, however it was related to version 1
and maybe 2.2. We use version 2.6 only.
LinkSys however ignores any and all replies relating to this issue. This
regardless of our status as direct importers.
When a cell dies, all accesspoints in this cell seem to die - AP as well as
clients. We do not exceed the recommended maximum of 32 users in a cell so
that should not be the issue here. We also complies to only using the
channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 to ensure the recommended spacing between channels.
Now the obvious solution would be simply to switch to another product.
However the only products within range of our economy is either LinkSys or
D-Link. We do not have good experiences with the D-Link either and
eventhough the signal strength is higher on the D-Link, the bandwidth seems
to be better on the LinkSys.
If we where able to break the "LinkSys client exclusivity" issue, we now
have samples of a much more attractive product, a Linux based Accesspoint
from a German company, 3-D systems. We are betatesting this product for them
with MESH technology within range. We could then live with that the users
should recycle their WAP11 to get a connection (not MESH of cause - but as a
stable AP upstream). Only it will not communicate with the WAP11 either.
Any and all input are welcome to
(E-Mail Removed)-spam - please remove "spam"
before mailing.
Hope to hear from others with some experiences with LinkSys. More details of
our project (in english) may be found in the PowerPoint presentation here:
http://www.djurs.net/biblioteket/int...esentation.ppt
Cheers
/Niels - DjurslandS.net - Denmark
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