two AP's with same SSID for coverage

Sure. Depending on the customer, replacing everything with new hardware will vary from a financial impossibility to an invitation to find another consultant. Nothing like a "change everything" solution to a solving a minor problem. Hmmm.... didn't we just elect a president on that principle? Oh-oh.

Besides, technology offers a possible solution. If you can't coexist with them, jam them with more RF:

Anyway, let's get real for just a moment. There's no way you can get a free lunch with wireless. If you want speed, you're going to lose range. If you want reliability, it will cost you both speed and range. If you want backwards compatibility, you have to give it air time which costs speed. Free lunches only exist among congress critters. You have only to look at the product test results on SmallNetBuilder.com to see the distinction between advertised claims and reality.

Even MIMO doesn't offer a free lunch. Since multiple streams depend completely on the presence of reflections, if anything changes to affect those reflections, the thruput falls apart. I've seen this in my "testing" (i.e. screwing around) with an Apple MacBook and Airport Extreme (802.11n) base. While running continuous Iperf or Jperf benchmark tests, the thruput varied all over the place. Thruput would sometimes hit 60Mbits/sec followed by an immediate drop to perhaps

12Mbits/sec. I only had to move the laptop slightly, and everything would change. Watching an H.264 QT video, while walking around the room, was ummmm.... painful. More:

With just the Apple stuff running in the room, performance was respectable and methinks impressively high. However, when I fired up a wireless peer to peer network between two other laptops nearby, thruput hit bottom at perhaps 3Mbits/sec.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann
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In your "testing" have you noticed any impact if a BT device is operational? I don't have any 11n AP's to verify this statement on the Intel site. " Another mechanism, designed to protect Bluetooth devices is a means of signaling that the wireless network should not use the wider (40 MHz) channel width. An 802.11n device that knows of potential interference with Bluetooth (e.g. a laptop with both 11n and BT) can force its BSS and neighboring BSS?s to stop transmitting 40 MHz. This reduces any potential impact on these devices to the same level as existing

802.11b/g devices."
Reply to
LR

On 26/01/2009 00:05, Jeff Liebermann wrote: ? More:

My first thought on seeing the photo was of the replicators from Stargate running around the floor.

Ruckus and Cisco do seem like a bit of a squabble.

Cisco's "beamforming"

Reply to
LR

Moving from 802.11g to 802.11n (2.4GHz) is already a "replace everything" situation, all we're talking about is what gear you put in.

Reply to
DevilsPGD

DevilsPGD wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You'd think....but....

Last fall while doing some field site surveys for 5.8Ghz gear in Buffalo, NY, in two different locations/nodes/subnets (whatever you want to call it, several different PtP links within city limits), both locations tested showed 3 or 4 different AP's already operating on 5.8Ghz. Only one was a duplicate from one location to the other. Oddly enough, these same locations showed the same number of AP's operating in 2.4Ghz also. I would have expected a dozen.

Reply to
DanS

I have a BT AP plugged into the router part of my b/g regular wap/router (Pretty cool product, anycom BT lan AP, sold elsewhere in the world but not the us

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One pda does BT only-no wifi, and works with bt dongles), right next to the wap/router that does n with wide channels, and notice no problems....

may only refer to a laptop that does both, sure doesn't seem to cause a prob with ap's, and devices that do one thing instead of both.....

Reply to
Peter Pan

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One pda does BT only-no wifi, and works with bt dongles), right next to the

I am wondering if this is due to not having a definitive 11n standard as yet and some devices will conform to what the Intel website says and others won't. If we take your n router:-

you cannot set the "40MHz Channel" nor pick the "Wide Channel" however if you look at the V1 you can.

This may be due to a change in the draft std. but as I don't have a copy I can't check.

Reply to
LR

Sorry, but this was not "testing". Testing is when I record results and follow a reproduceable test procedure. Screwing around is when I tinker with the hardware to see what I can break. This was screwing around. In addition, the owner of the laptop was getting a bit anxious as I was tweaking settings and (shudder) using the bash shell prompt on his Mac. Everyone knows that the command line is the sure way to make a mess.

However, one of my customers just took delivery on a Dell Precision M4400 laptop with an Intel 5300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO card. The laptop does NOT have built in BlueGoof but I can simulate the interference with my cell phone playing MP3's to my BT 2.0 stereo headset. Time permitting, I'll give it a try with a WRT350N and see what breaks.

Some of the new hardware uses a common card for Wi-Fi and BT. Only one is active at a time. The common hardware timeshares between Wi-Fi and BT resulting in dismal throughput for both, but no interference. I played with an early version of one of these (forgot the vendor). It worked, as expected was slow, and did not create any disconnects or hangups, which is really the objective of this system.

Nice feature. Translation: When there's so much crap flying through the air, that high speed data is essentially impossible, the wireless access point will give up trying and run at slower speeds.

As I understand the spec (which I haven't read), anything that causes excessive retransmissions and retries in the 40Mhz mode, will cause it to slow down to the 20Mhz mode. It doesn't have to be BT. It could be a microwave oven. My guess(tm) is that this is to insure that flow control works, where the AP can hear a/b/g broadcasts in 20MHz mode, that are not detectable while in 40MHz mode. The fear of creating unrecoverable interference in the 40MHz mode is what probably inspired this feature.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Not really.

If I replace the router with a spatial diversity type 2.4GHz 802.11n router, all the older 802.11g clients continue to work.

If I replace the router with a spatial beam forming 2.4GHz 802.11n router, all the older 802.11g clients continue to work.

If I replace the 2.4GHz router with a 5.8GHz router, nothing works unless I also replace all the client radios.

If I replace the 2.4GHz router with a dual band 802.11n router, the older 802.11g radios continue to work, but I have to reconfigure literally every dual band client radio to default to 5.8GHz. Those with single band 2.4GHz client radios continue to work, but derive no benefits.

Incidentally, I do have two client with dual band wireless routers. I've lost money on both due to the numerous stupid problems I've had to fix or work around. Most involve connection managers and client radio drivers that are clumsy, sloppy, or inept at dealing with multiple bands.

Incidentally, in my WRT350N, there's no way to disable the 2.4GHz band leaving only 5.8GHz operational:

Also note that the SSID applies to both bands. Seen any 5.8Ghz access points or wireless routers lately?

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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> One pda does BT only-no wifi, and works with bt dongles), right next

sure you can...... just out of curiosity, why don't you use the actual linksys site (now linksysbycicsco, I have no clue what the above are since I only get a screen display) select v1 or v2

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Band For best performance in a network, keep the default, Wide - 40MHz Channel. For Wireless-G and Wireless-B networking only, select Standard - 20MHz

Channel.

Reply to
Peter Pan

For various cities, we have:

for 5.8GHz coordination. The PowerPoint presentation is worth viewing:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

formatting link
>> One pda does BT only-no wifi, and works with bt dongles), right next

The links I provided are interactive so you can change the settings on the website, which is much easier than downloading the pdf. file.

Reply to
LR

Your confusing me again. I thought the WRT350N was only a 2.4GHz band router. I thought it was when they introduced the WRT600N they started the dual band router.

Reply to
LR

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>>> One pda does BT only-no wifi, and works with bt dongles), right

okay, so it doesn't have the same defaults as the manual specifies, and doesn't work the same way as an actual wap/router.....

from what you said above "you cannot set the "40MHz Channel" nor pick the "Wide Channel" yes you can with a real device, it's in the acual manual, and in v2 it's the default, so it seems like you just can't set it in the online simulation you pointed to, but you can on the real device, and the real manual tells you how/why/etc.... fraid I don't see why I would want to waste my time with something innacurate?

Reply to
Peter Pan

~ Seen any 5.8Ghz access points or wireless routers lately?

We sold half a million or so of them last year. It's kinda nice to have 20 non-overlapping 20MHz channels, and no Bluetooth/ legacy 802.11b/microwave interference, if you're serious about delivering connectivity over non-regulated wireless.

Of course, these are most all in good sized enterprises, not in your house.

Reply to
Aaron Leonard

Argh. You're right. My appologies. The WRT600N does allow independent control of each band and independent SSID's. I'm not sure why I thought the WRT350N was a dual band.

Full disclosure: I've been fighting some rather nasty kidney stone problems erratically since Thanksgiving and full time since New Years. Most of the time, I'm mildly drugged, which seems to have an effect on my judgement and memory. I've reduced the frequency of my postings, but apparently that's not sufficient to insure accuracy. I think I'll abstain from any more postings that require much thinking until I'm off the pain killers.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I checked the Cisco web site for an 802.11a only access point and couldn't find one.

Most everything seems to be "ag" suffix which I presume means it will do both bands, or no suffix, which usually means "g" only. I guess one could order an Aironet 1200 with only an 802.11a PcCard, instead of the usual 802.11g PcCard, but that would make it a special order.

What's the Cisco model numbers or series? I'm curious.

Yep. The lack of interference is a good thing. One of my friends recently replaced his 2.4GHz only wireless router with a dual band version. I don't recall the model numbers. Range and thruput to his laptop was dramatically better on 5.8GHz than on 2.4GHz. My guess(tm) is that this was due to massive interference from numerous 2.4GHz networks in the area, possibly compounded by a local messh wireless system.

Ummm.... Linksys is Cisco's consumer product line. No 802.11a only access points (that I know about). Other than the high price, complexity, and management overhead, I don't have anything against using enterprise solutions in the home.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

~ >~ Seen any 5.8Ghz access points or wireless routers lately?

~ >We sold half a million or so of them last year. It's kinda nice ~ >to have 20 non-overlapping 20MHz channels, and no Bluetooth/ ~ >legacy 802.11b/microwave interference, if you're serious about ~ >delivering connectivity over non-regulated wireless.

~ I checked the Cisco web site for an 802.11a only access point and ~ couldn't find one. ~

~ Most everything seems to be "ag" suffix which I presume means it will ~ do both bands, or no suffix, which usually means "g" only. I guess ~ one could order an Aironet 1200 with only an 802.11a PcCard, instead ~ of the usual 802.11g PcCard, but that would make it a special order. ~ ~ What's the Cisco model numbers or series? I'm curious.

Ah, you meant a 5GHz *only* AP. Yep, we don't make those as such (other than I suppose the special case where one would get, as you mention, a 1200 or 1240 series AP and install only the 5GHz radio.)

But I would say that, in our medium-large enterprise installations, at least 80% of our installed APs are dual-band (except for in those countries that don't allow 5GHz wifi.)

~ Yep. The lack of interference is a good thing. One of my friends ~ recently replaced his 2.4GHz only wireless router with a dual band ~ version. I don't recall the model numbers. Range and thruput to his ~ laptop was dramatically better on 5.8GHz than on 2.4GHz. My guess(tm) ~ is that this was due to massive interference from numerous 2.4GHz ~ networks in the area, possibly compounded by a local messh wireless ~ system.

Probably a good guess any more.

~ >Of course, these are most all in good sized enterprises, not in ~ >your house.

~ Ummm.... Linksys is Cisco's consumer product line. No 802.11a only ~ access points (that I know about). Other than the high price, ~ complexity, and management overhead, I don't have anything against ~ using enterprise solutions in the home.

:)

Reply to
Aaron Leonard

Sorry (again), my fault. Looking at my original comment, I forgot to include the word "only". Yet another screwup.

Also 4.9GHz for public safety. The fairly small incremental cost of adding the 2nd wireless PcCard is nominal compared to the cost of the access point. However, I wonder how many of those medium-large enterprise installations actually use 5.8GHz? WiFi Hopper and various sniffers (Kismet and Kismet-Newcore) will display and filter by 802.11 mutation. I've sniffed with these around industrial districts and haven't really found much traffic. Plenty of point to point links, some SSID broadcasts, but very little client traffic moving. The AP's may be out there, but they don't seem to be using 5.8GHz.

Guesswork is my trademark.

Back around 2000-2002, after the dot com bust, many companies gave their layed off employees a severance bonus in the form of surplus computing equipment. Convincing a home users that a RAID 5 redundant everything server, some giant Cisco router, a 48 port ethernet switches, and such were not suitable for the average home user, was ummm.... awkward. Yell louder.... I can't hear you over the fan noise. Why is it 120F in here? Why is everything so big? Anyway, I had lots of experience deploying enterprise grade hardware in several home environments. The trick was to get paid before the electric bill arrived.

Favorite enterprise hardware questions from the home user... where is the on-off switch? Why is it on the rear panel where I can't get to it? What do you mean it never gets turned off?

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

You have my sympathy. My mother suffered from kidney stones for years before Lithotripsy was introduced.

Reply to
LR

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