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dongato17
join:2000-07-28
Atlanta, GA

dongato17 to dr mongolia

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to dr mongolia

Re: [Equipment] Ruckus MediaFlex / MetroFlex -- EOL'ed.. alterna

Great feedback. Would you prefer a 2-radio product? We could do one radio fixed as 802.11b/g/n and one as 802.11a/b/g/n maybe?

Also, 1 ethernet is ok (vs. the typical 5 ports)?

Thanks!
-Hal
dr mongolia
join:2008-07-03
United State

dr mongolia

Member

said by dongato17:

Great feedback. Would you prefer a 2-radio product? We could do one radio fixed as 802.11b/g/n and one as 802.11a/b/g/n maybe?

Also, 1 ethernet is ok (vs. the typical 5 ports)?

Personally the ability for the radio to "hear" through noise is the most important part for me regardless of if it's a single or dual radio unit. Having two radios would be a nice addition, as then obviously we could separate the WAN and LAN traffic to reduce some congestion on the channel, but I would think that it may be more difficult to fit the product into the CPE price range like that.

For me the number of ports doesn't matter. We can always use a cheap switch if necessary, but from what I've seen almost all of the tenants want just a single ethernet port.
petecarlson
join:2004-11-06
Baltimore, MD

petecarlson to dongato17

Member

to dongato17
Odd as it seems, I'm inclined towards a single radio CPE but it has to be done as well or better then the 2211NG. I haven't seen anyone else create an AP on a radio in station mode that works. Not saying it isn't possible. If a dual radio system is used, the AP radio needs to dynamically move its channel to avoid the channel that the station radio is on.

Things I am looking for.

1) Durable, clean, desktop form factor.

2) Router mode.
A) Connect to WAN via B/G/N
B) Local SSID on LAN
C) Local Ethernet on LAN (one port is OK)

3) Beamforming or other method of interference rejection is critical. I've tested TONS of CPE and the 2211DZ and NG are the only ones that work well in this environment. the 7200 series (»www.ruckuswireless.com/p ··· 0-series) which is not EOL BTW, is much cheaper but doesn't cut it. The antenna elements in the 2211s are clearly driven by engineering while the antenna elements in the 7200 series seem to have been designed by bean counters.

4) 802.1x (EAP-TTLS using MSCHAPv2) is an absolute requirement on the WAN.

5) The ability to compile our own firmware would be a huge plus. In wired buildings, I use the UBNT Airrouter with a custom firmware which gets assigned to a configuration vlan when the customer plugs it in. The device then connects to a configuration server and gets its configuration, reconnects and authenticates on the switch port using 802.1x. All we have to do is flash all the CPE when they come in, scan them into inventory, and then assign a particular CPE to a customer before shipping it out via bike messenger or UPS.
I have been working on a wireless version of this using the Airrouter as a testbed but the local AP just doesn't work as well (see #1) and it doesn't hack it in a high interference environment (see #3). The concept works though. Deploy a configuration VLAN with 802.1x auth. When a client connects, it authenticates with a configuration user/pass, connects to the config server, gets it's new config, and then reconnects to the correct SSID with it's new settings. Not the most secure system in the world as the default config user/pass is stored on all the CPE and at this point, all you need to know is this and the expected callingstationid to get a users config. I digress.

6) The ability to set a preferred BSSID is nice.

7) The ability to select only B, G, N, or a combination is nice.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this Hal, didn't know you were working for ARC. I've also got another project in the works that might need a dual 2.4GHz board but the formfactor in the freestation isn't right for me. Not sure if we could do enough volume to make it worthwhile for you but I'd love to talk about it sometime soon.

Best,

Carl