Question regarding small network w/ 2 WAPs

Hi all..

For a remodel at home that I'm working on, I was thinking of moving from a single generic wireless router I'm using now to a pair of Cisco Aironet 1242's (or one of its cousins) -- one at each end of the house to give strong coverage at both ends (it's a single story, long house). To that end, in reading up what little I can find on some of these, I'm wondering if I were to have two of these WAPs in my house assigned with the same authentication scheme, same SSID, etc, and if someone were to roam a laptop from one end to the other pinging a host continuously, would the laptop move seamlessly between the WAPs or do I need something like one of Cisco's small wireless lan controllers (e.g. the 2100 series) or something else? I'd just hate to setup something like this and find that it doesn't seamlessly jump between the two WAPs as someone moves around the house.. If it matters, I was planning on using a gigabit smart switch to connect the multiple WAPs together.. Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.. Thx!

Reply to
Rick F
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Or get a single AP that support external antennas and go with a high- gain omni

check out Hyperlink Technologies @

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Reply to
Merv

Reply to
Merv

@

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Hmm.. I hadn't thought of that.. I guess I could put one Aironet 1242 in the attic (assuming I check heat restrictions), and use the 4 antenna plugs (2 for each radio IIRC) on it to install two antennas at each end of the house..

Reply to
Rick F

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You have to be very careful about the length of cable for external antennas.

Use low loss cable and keep length to a minum to minimize signal loss.

Reply to
Merv

I would still go ahead with pulling in high quality CAT 6 cabling to the locations where you thought you would place the two AP if you go that way.

Cat 5e: Currently defined in TIA/EIA-568-B. Provides performance of up to 100 MHz, and is frequently used for both 100 Mbit/s and gigabit ethernet networks.

Cat 6: Currently defined in TIA/EIA-568-B. It provides performance of up to 250 MHz, more than double category 5 and 5e.

Cat 6a: Future specification for 10 Gbit/s applications.

Cat 7: An informal name applied to ISO/IEC 11801 Class F cabling. This standard specifies four individually-shielded pairs (STP) inside an overall shield. Designed for transmission at frequencies up to 600 MHz.

Reply to
Merv

also see article Beating Signal Loss in WLANs By Jim Geier

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also check out Wi-Fi Gurus

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Reply to
Merv

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Remember that two of those antenna plugs are for 802.11A. Though, IIRC, the 1242s I just ordered for my facility didn't have the A radio installed. The single AP with a high-gain omni should serve you well. However, keep in mind the spread of the signal. The best place to situate an antenna is at the level of your usage. I'm sure Jeff Lieberman will be around to expound on radio coverage if you ask him nicely.

If you have the budget, I'd get the two APs and use the hawking corner antennas to focus your signal.

Reply to
BigMike82

Acquire one of the Cisoc AP that you plan to buy and situatuion it where it would be located after the reno and using the Ciso site survey tool perform a site survey to determine.

The previous poster's comment regarding placement height of the omni is quite important. It my case I located the 12 dbi omni in the centre of the basment hanging from one of the rafters. I had good quality signal on the upper two floors and even outside on the front porch and on the patio.

Remember that signal loss thru each wall is ~ 3 dB ( i.e. the signal strenghthis cut in half) so if the house is of an open design one AP should suffice. It there are a lot of rooms and thus lots of walls then multiple AP' s may be the way to go. The standard rubber duckies that Cisco provides are okay for open areas. Remember that the multiple connectors for each radio are meant to be used for antennas diversity. To support multiple antenanas without diversity then you need to use a splitter. The splitter should be of a type that you can directly connect to AP instead of using a cable to avoid any unnecessary signal loss.

See if you can find a Ciso distributor in your area that has a wireless design specialist on staff.

You may also want to take a look at the new Cisco 1250 AP which support the draft 802.11N standard (MIMO).

Reply to
Merv

I'm currently looking at the 1242's.. I'll checkout their tools for this..

Good to know.. I'll keep that info in mind!

Our floorplan has few walls in the front but a fair amount in the rear for the bedrooms.. While the house is only ~75' long from one end to the other, I'm thinking that 2 AP's is probably the best way to go to ensure the best signal strength throughout the entire house and possibly some additional coverage for the front/back yard a bit as well (in case I want to sit in my easy chair and whatnot).

I put a query into one of the many Cisco reseller sites that finds local resellers and am looking for some pricing on the 1252 model, but haven't found anyone yet with pricing -- not even CDW which usually does as a last resort.. Any ideas on what sort of price for one of these? If it's not much more than the 1242, then I might go that route to save a future upgrade.

Reply to
Rick F

Good reminder.. I'm not planning on using 802.11A so I could perhaps get a model that ditches that radio altogether and just support the b/ g series.

Reply to
Rick F

I've currently got CAT5e run throughout the house -- probably close to

3k' of the stuff.. Lotsa-drops! Anyway, I can easily put a bit of CAT6 in if needed for a few places.. Not an issue.. I want to make sure this thing can deal w/ gigabit ethernet from the get-go.. I just gotta find some decent (but not budget breaking) smart switches to go w/ my Cisco 1841 router and other stuff I'm working on..
Reply to
Rick F

CAT 5E will suffice. I indicated Cat 6 since I thought you were starting from scratch

Reply to
Merv

I'm not sure I see the point of Cat 6. For GigE it's no better than Cat

5e but it is more expensive (though the cost is dropping), more difficult to handle (larger bending radius) and bigger (needs bigger containment). It will only support 10GE on a subset of your installed links since 10GE only works up to 37m (used to be 55m) and not the full 100m.

Having said that our wiring guys are currently specifying Cat 6 because if we specify Cat 5e we can't persuade architects to include big enough containment for Cat 6a (or Cat 7) in future. If we specify Cat 6 now we have a fighting chance of being able to install Cat 6a later without having to knock more holes in walls. We think the premium is probably worth it, though it's sad.

Sam

Reply to
Sam Wilson

The OP stated he wants to have Gigabit capability.

Though cat5e can run gigabit, cat 6 will run it over longer distances and/or with fewer errors.

I have had to replace cat5e with cat 6 to eliminate electrical interference issues and more than once.

One would like to only have to install cabling once ...

Reply to
Merv

In principle, that's nonsense - properly installed and tested Cat 5e (and it's the installation that's certified, not the cable, at least here in the UK) will run at 1G (actually 125Mbaud) up to 100m without error. There should be be *no* advantage to Cat 6.

Having said that...

... I bow to your experience, of course. JOOI did the cat5e test correctly but fail to work in practice?

Most certainly.

Sam

Reply to
Sam Wilson

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