Wireless Router?

Thanks in advance.

I am thinking about putting a wireless router into a 8 unit multifamily apartment. I am afraid of the user that will hog all the bandwidth. Is there a unit on the market that will give me ability to limit the bandwidth of each connection?

Dave H.

Reply to
DH
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On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 03:33:57 GMT, "DH"

Reply to
John Navas

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 03:33:57 GMT, "DH"

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 04:53:50 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Unfortunately, most of them are pretty pathetic in terms of QoS, crude and limited. Which is why I mentioned the Cisco 871W. Expensive, but worth it in this kind of environment.

Reply to
John Navas

John Navas hath wroth:

Sure. For $600/ea, I could buy perhaps 10 of the cheapo wireless routers with QoS. As far as pathetic, I agree. Cisco 871W has some really fancy QoS features. From that data sheet at:

· Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) · Class-Based WFQ (CBWFQ) · Low-Latency Queuing (LLQ) · Class-Based Traffic Shaping (CBTS) (Cisco 871 only) · Class-Based Traffic Policing (CBTP) (Cisco 876, 877, and 878 only) · Class-Based QoS MIB · Prefragment before encryption · TX ring adjustment · VC bundling · Policy-based routing (PBR) · Per-VC queuing · Per-VC traffic shaping

Methinks this might be overkill for 8 users in an apartment building.

So, have you abandoned Sonicwall as your favored high end wireless router? The TZ170 wireless supports QoS.

Approx $600. I've installed these, but never bothered with the QoS because of the complexity. Perhaps that's why I prefer pathetice, crude, limited, and cheap.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The Cisco 871W costs ~10 times as much as a vanilla wireless router. TANSTAAFL.

Reply to
Bob Willard

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:54:52 -0500, Bob Willard wrote in :

True. You tend to get what you pay for in terms of functionality, reliability, support, etc. But think of it this way: it's actually about the same cost per family as a cheap crappy router.

Yep.

Reply to
John Navas

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:05:49 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I respectfully disagree -- all it takes is a couple of families doing something like file sharing to overwhelm a typical "bargain" router, and as I noted in an earlier reply, the cost per family is roughly the same as a typical "bargain" router. What's reliability worth?

No, it's just that my advice isn't simplistic -- I'm matching the product to the application.

For hotspot type security I prefer SonicWALL. For QoS I prefer Cisco. Roughly the same price point.

As I get older [sigh], I value my time more and more, and thus have less and less tolerance for wasting time trying to keep crap running (especially when not being paid for it:). It's why I use a ThinkPad T-series notebook computer instead of a "bargain" from Dell.

Reply to
John Navas

John Navas hath wroth:

Speaking of cheap routers, here's a chart of the number of simultaneous connections apparently allowed by various cheap routers.

Some of these routers would not work with 8 apartments (and probably

16 wireless users).

Is it worth 10 times as much as the cost of a cheap router? I have several customers that have replaced literally everything in their hotel WLAN because of bad selection of hardware and topology. I have other customers that are quite happy using cheap hardware because it works well enough for a few years until they're either stolen or obsoleted by the next big thing. If this were a luxury apartment building, methinks a quality router would be appropriate. If it's going into a slum dwelling, methinks something cheaper would be better.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I'm now writing a bid for a replacement retail transaction server currently running NT4. The software is ancient and only moderately stable. They will surely spend the rest of November delaying the decision and then expect me to drop everything so that's the new server is up, running, and tested for the holiday buying season. I'm wondering if I really need this obvious recipe for disaster. Tossing a coin...

I now have 4ea laptops (not counting the WM5 based PDAphone). My customers buy the new stuff, while I buy surplus and obsolete hardware. For my own use, quantity is a tolerable substitute for quality.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 10:18:52 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Even the high end of that range is probably going to be a problem if more than one family uses peer-to-peer file sharing at the same time.

Another issue is isolation -- it's probably a bad idea to have all the families on the same network, and most "bargain" routers don't have isolation ability.

And I wonder if a single wireless access point will be able to penetrate all the walls.

Methinks the Cisco price is affordable for the target application and needed feature set.

Another option is the ZyXEL G-4100, which has both authentication and hotspot feature set, but that's still $400.

But if price *really* is that much of an issue, then my recommendation is ZyXEL Z-2000 Plus (about $140), because of its built-in PEAP. (I don't think PSK is at all suitable for a multi-family environment.)

I buy factory refurbished or clean used notebook computers still under factory warranty, which lets me enjoy top-of-the-line quality and support (albeit 1-2 cycles back) at bargain prices. My current T41 (still under factory warranty) cost me all of $550.

Reply to
John Navas

John Navas hath wroth:

Peer-to-peer can exceed the number of available streams that the router can handle. Strangely, I've tested bridges and access points (not router) for the number of MAC addresses they can handle. Some are intentionally restricted (i.e. workgroup bridges) to 4, 16, or whatever. Some are limited by available table size (WAP11 maxes out at 30). Most have some mechanism for clearing out stale entries. The speed of which these can be cleared seems to be what limits the maximum number of MAC addresses. If the access point is fast, it can handle a large number because the access point dumps them as fast as the MAC simulator software can generate them. If they're slow, the table fills and the number of MAC's is limited. There's probably a connection between the number of streams in the router, with the number of MAC addresses in the access point, but offhand, I don't know what it might be. I'm also not sure if the access point and the wired side router share the same MAC address tables.

True. Linksys WRT54G has "AP isolation". Cisco has it as: Network Interfaces -> Radio0-802.11G -> settings ->

(PSPF) Public Secure Packet Forwarding -> Enable Hot spot specific hardware and some access points have this feature. It's also sometimes called "client isolation", "wireless to wireless", or part of "port isolation". This feature became a major requirement for my neighborhood LAN when some of the local kids decided to use it as a repeater for their non-TCP/IP gaming network.

For apartments and some office buildings WISP service, I try to arrange for the AP to be outside the building. It's much easier to "illuminate" the outside wall of the building, and go through the windows, than to convince wireless to make right angle turns down hallways and go through thick doors or walls. This is not possible with office or home WLAN's that require a wired backhaul to a DSL or cable modem, but works nicely for community and apartment networks where everyone shares the same broadband backhaul.

A single router for 8 apartments is possible but problematic. It really depends on the usage pattern, topology, and building construction. If it's a concrete block building, and outside illumination is impossible, then it might require more than one wireless access point to cover the 8 apartments. That would raise the cost to prohibitive. Without details, I don't think either of us could offer an optimized solution. At some price point, the various wired options (HomePNA, HomePlug, WiFi over CATV, etc) become viable.

Yep. A good choice for security. Administering a neighborhood WLAN or shared network is a PITA. The 2AM phone calls asking "is the internet down" is enough to make me reconsider the option. Neighborhood relations and the ultimate fair billing system are other problems. Anything that keeps the phone from ringing is a good thing. Therefore, security should be a non-issue which means WPA-RADIUS.

Yep. Same here. I buy refurbished: |

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for some shipping damage, my savings and batting average has been quite good. The 30 to 90 day warranties seem to be good enough, but I've never had to use them. However, these are for my customers. I get their obsolete computers for next to nothing.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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