Need help finding a harden Access point

fastcon68 · Feb 18, 2008, 1:25 AM

I have a to deleop a proposal for a company that is at the beach in North Carolina. We have a 100' to 150' building (2 floors). There is a walkway between rooms down the center of the building. We are going to use pf-sense for the firewall. I need to know what type of access point we could use in a beach type enviroment to prevent damage.

Any thoughts?
RC

hoba · Feb 18, 2008, 7:20 AM

Checkout some of our recommended vendors:
http://www.netgate.com/index.php?cPath=31_61
http://www.titanwirelessonline.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=118

Besides that there are outdoor solutions from vendors like cisco or siemens but they are rather pricey. Another option is always to get an outdoorhousing with built in antennas and place an ordinary accesspoint (a cheap netgear for example will do) in there and power it via PoE. I don't think cold temperatures will be an issue at your location but you maybe should check the higher temperature ranges of the hardware to suit your application.

jahonix · Feb 18, 2008, 8:07 AM

NOT to stirr up something here…
Beware of products with the Netg... brand on it!

Several forum users (including me) had nothing but trouble with APs and switches from that company.
For a cheap W-LAN AP use a Linksys WRT54GL. Works 99% of the time.
You can easily get rid of the housing and put that device in an outdoor housing on a pole somewhere.

hoba · Feb 18, 2008, 9:19 AM

I personally really never had any issues with netgear products. However dlink didn't work very good for me. In fact I'll never buy anything from dlink again ;-)

fastcon68 · Feb 18, 2008, 1:42 PM

Great looking products. How many per building would you you recommend?
RC

GruensFroeschli · Feb 18, 2008, 2:48 PM

Depends on your building.
If you're in a bunker you'll need one for every room.

I'd take a look at where the WLAN is needed and plan from there how you might have best connectivity.

jahonix · Feb 18, 2008, 5:06 PM

Another important part is the antenna, of course!
A high gain omni might be well suited, but WLAN coverage basically is YOUR homework and largely depends on building structure and area to cover.
Sectoral antennas are another possibility.

Having said that, if you have to design coverage patterns and need flawless handover between the cells nothing beats Cisco Aeronets.
I have home owners with wireless Crestron touchpanels that need seemless handover urgently. The touchpanels cannot cope with it otherwise…

rsw686 · Feb 19, 2008, 3:49 AM

@jahonix:

For a cheap W-LAN AP use a Linksys WRT54GL. Works 99% of the time.
You can easily get rid of the housing and put that device in an outdoor housing on a pole somewhere.

Guess everyone has something bad to say about every company. My WRT54G wireless will randomly crap out. I have unplug / plug it in to get it working again. With DD-WRT firmware it does this once every couple of months. Still unacceptable in my opinion.

b00gz · Feb 20, 2008, 1:01 AM

Use Tomato instead of DD-WRT it won't lock up on you.

jahonix · Feb 20, 2008, 11:31 AM

The hardware of the different versions slightly differs. WRT54GL has more flash and ram like the old WRT54G v1 had.

We use DD-WRT on it in a mil. environment acting as APs for Crestron touchpanels. Those panels are known to be quite picky about APs but work flawlessly ever since. (Well, once Crestron sorted out their W-Lan problems…)

fastcon68 · Feb 22, 2008, 12:22 PM

Has anyone taken a business grade access oing and put it in a exteral housing? Also does any know of a N class device with removable antenna's.

RC

lsf · Mar 4, 2008, 10:53 AM

You might want to check out wilibox.com, they have boards, firmware, cards and outdoor enclosures, as well as PSU with builtin PoE feeder. Expect to pay 500$ + for such a solution, it's better then most other stuff tho.

jahonix · Mar 4, 2008, 3:05 PM

@fastcon68:

Has anyone taken a business grade access oing and put it in a exteral housing?

What about an ALIX3c3 http://www.pcengines.ch/alix3c3.htm with appropriate W-LAN card
and put it into an outdoor housing http://www.pcengines.ch/case2c.htm

Don't know if one can call it business grade but I'd suspect that. Are draft-N mini-PCI W-Lan cards available?

dotdash · Mar 5, 2008, 9:20 PM

@jahonix:

Are draft-N mini-PCI W-Lan cards available?

They're starting to show up. Here's a rebranded Wistron draft-n card with an Atheros chipset:
http://discountechnology.com/Netegriti-802-11n-802-11g-802-11b-802-11a-Turbo-Mini-PCI-Wireless-Card
By the time there is software support for N, they should be pretty easy to find.