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sekba
join:2004-09-23
Montreal, QC
| sB, Is it worth it?
Hello Guys, I learned on this forum that there is no standard for equipment performance in this business so we are trying to test various manufacturers for our Wisp. We are on canopy and Mkt now and we wanted a SmartB Trial kit but we found it very pricy (5000 euros for a trial kit). Can anyone who have been using those 3 manufacturers or even just SB tell me what practical technical features can have somebody putting this amount of money on this product? thanks in advance. | |
br_wlan
join:2005-11-20
New York, NY | None ? | |
slipstream1
Premium
join:2005-11-15
Jacksonville, TX
| reply to sekba
If you are talking about smartBridges Nexus line. Then, no, I cannot justify the price to you. I bought 2 Nexus AP's when they first came out and they do not play well with other manufacturers radios. If the radio is not chatty enough it will disassociate the radio which adds even more overhead to the network. Also, for the amount of money the things cost, they should have more features. The configuration pages, web based java, are very nice and the radio has alot of features, but it is not as adaptable to the situations that you may run into out there. The AP Nexus has both low band, 2.4, and high band, 5.x, but you cannot use them at the same time. You cannot turn the radio into a repeater and have a high capacity 5.x backhaul to a 2.4 sector. The surge and static handling capability of these units are weak, in my opinion. I have 2 of the units sitting in my office that are nothing more than paperweights. I do not trust the units and will not buy anymore of them.
I am currently running Mikrotik AP's and a mix of Deliberant and HGA sub $100.00 cpe's in a routed network. I still have some Tranzeo and Deliberant AP's in a bridged network serving a couple of the last Tranzeo CPE that have survived.
Hope that helps. | |
superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
| reply to sekba
said by sekba  :Can anyone who have been using those 3 manufacturers or even just SB tell me what practical technical features can have somebody putting this amount of money on this product? thanks in advance. Well, Having used everything in the SmartBridges line, I can tell You that the newest Nexus line seems to work well IF You plan on going with all Nexus products. What I mean by that is if You are going to use a Nexus AP, then You should be planning on using a Nexus CPE, as it seems their gear doesn't play well with others. I love the features on the gear, and I would compare it to Mikrotik as far as settings are concerned. They do RIP, spanning tree and all of the standard routing and they allow You to do bandwidth throttling and QOS. The great thing about this is that the GUI is easy to use and You don't have to learn all of the line by line stuff that Mikrotik uses. Even though their gear only works well when used together though, it really is a standard 802.11b/a protocol, so don't expect any polling or other features like Nstreme, because it isn't there. The backhaul units will do what is advertised, although the ethernet ports do not like any kind of static electricity, and they will die at the slightest jolt, so if You decide to use them, make sure Your ground and protect these units well. While I like all of the things listed above, there are still a few reasons why I have not deployed mass numbers of these units. The #1 reason is price. While the feature set is nice, I can not afford to pay what they are asking per unit. The prices are currently higher than Canopy or Trango per CPE, and that just seems crazy to me?. There still is the occasional firmware bug running around too, and it seems no matter how hard SmartBridges tries to use bug spray, the critter keeps coming back?.
I have compared these units to Mikrotik, and I can tell You that using Mikrotik will save You a lot of money, as You have all the features but the platform it runs on is a lot cheaper to purchase. The negative side to this is learning how to run it, and this is a job I have yet to tackle, as it is time consuming and as far as I am concerned, a royal PITA!. 
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sekba
join:2004-09-23
Montreal, QC
| reply to sekba
Thanks for the replies, very helpful. My idea was to test a least 3 manufacturers to find out the most suitable for our RF environment, then just stick with that one. Because of the price I think I wont even try the SB Nexus since to pricy for my business model to use it for the whole network.
On the other hand I thought that maybe one manufacturer is better for some kind of apllication like VoIP, another for higher range, another for higher throughput, and so on. So my last question is: Is there any reason / situation / application why I should really have some SB equipment on the side to use with an SB AP on my tower?
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to sekba
The big advantage of SB compared to Mikrotik is it's ease of configuration. If you're already using Mikrotik then SB is not a good choice for you as it does less than Mikrotik does. This includes setting up priorities for VOIP etc.
I would say if you are using Mikrotik there is no reason to have any SB equipment at all (unless you get some used stuff cheap0.
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CCNA, Comtrain Certified Tower Climber | |
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