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Wireless Access Point Reliability?
darrelld2 asks: "I'm having problems finding a low cost access point that is reliable. I started searching the web; however, I can't find anyone who has done independent research on access points to find which one is the most dependable. I have had several different brands; Cisco, 3Com, and Netgear. The only one that has lasted more than 6 months was the Cisco. What are other Slashdot users seeing?" Just as an added datapoint, I've been using my Cabletron Wireless AP for well over 2 years, and aside with a (repairable) problem with the power supply, it is still going strong. What have your experiences been with wireless APs?
And still works great. I didn't realize this was such a big deal.
My Linksys wireless AP/DSL router/4 port switch has run constantly for nearly two years. I just wish I'd paid today's price for it :-)
Witty signature omitted for brevity.
3Com WAPs hava always given me exceptional service. D-Link is a brand I would stay away from, though I use one in my house (it sucks).
I'd imagine you'll find a lot of praise for NetGear, but I've never used one.
I'm just wondering what you've been doing with those AP's that make them die so easily.
I've got a Linksys, it's been working fine for probably a year now. At work, we use Cisco AP's and they've been running strong for well over 2 years.
Do you leave it outside in the rain, drop it in the mud, or kick it?
I hope someone is going to have a counter-example on this one, for D-Link's sake.
My D-Link DI-614 accesspoint/router has had the habit of crashing from time to time, forcing me to manually reboot it. It happens once or twice a month when the trafic load is high. I have seen other people reporting the same thing on newsgroups/mailinglists, but without any answers to why or what to do about it.
Believe it or not, I've had this one since they came out (2 years ago or so) and have had to reset it twice. It's pretty reliable and the transfer rates are decent. I have it plugged into it's own interface on my firewall using a crossover cable so I can section if off from my internal net and log^H^H^H protect my network.
I have heard horror stories about them but I must admit I am a very happy customer. Their PCCards suck though.
I will agree with the dlink sucking. I had one and it always locked up on me. I recently replaced it with a Orinoco BG-2000 and zero problems and it runs like a dream. I think it also looks better than many of the other stuff out there. It is a bit more expensive but when it comes to computers and tech you really do get what you pay for.
I've had no problems with it so far. I believe I've had it for a year.
I've had an AirPort since shortly after it came out, and it's been running nearly continuously since then. I had the capacitor failure that a lot of the early ones had, and swapped them out myself. I also added a Lucent range extender antenna to boost the signal around the house. but it's been running virtually trouble-free since.
I don't know about the newer versions, but the original Graphite base station has worked great for me. There are Windows and Java-based configurators available for the older Graphite and Snow 802.11b models. I'm not sure about the Extreme (802.11g) version, though.
A base station of any brand shouldn't fail as quickly as you are experiencing, I think. If they die quickly, they may be getting too hot or perhaps they're getting really crappy power that stresses the power supply beyond what they're spec'd for.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
When you talk about 'reliability' it sounds like you are talking about longevity. In addition to hw failures you also have to worry about the AP's ability to be upgraded to keep up with new authentication/authorization methods and other such software/firmware improvements. That is the biggest difference between the low end and the high end APs. We use Cisco APs and bridges for this very reason. We were steered this direction because we are a Cisco shop, so I'm not by any means trying to steer people towards Cisco APs. That being said, we have been happy with them, but I also know of people who have AP installs using other 'high-end' APs with similar success.
At my home I have a Linksys box (one of the gateway/wireless/4 port hub boxes) and it has been working alright for a couple years now. With earlier firmware revs the wireless would occasionally drop, but with the later revs its been pretty good.
is about 5 months old and counting. I had a few problems where it locked early on, but it's been running like a clock for a few months now, barring power outages, which have been happening disturbingly often...
I have used an apple AirPort for over 2 years now. I do not own a Mac but someone wrote a nice Java based configuration application so you do not need a Mac to use one. They have a lot of nice features and the new ones look even better. (This is my one and only Apple product.)
I just grabbed an old 233Mhz I had sitting around(small form factor Deskpro) and put in a PrismII based card(DLink DWL500 I think) and installed the Linux HostAP driver. It now runs as the access point on my network, and has built in DHCP and DNS servers and firewall capabilities.
Just find a rock solid card, ignore the AP issue and build your own with Linux! Hey, it really is that simple. And I have used this now for months without an issue at all. Debian Stable with the hostap driver compiled on and a updated kernel to deal with some speed issues...
Try it and see...
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Personally, I have a 340-series (802.11b) Cisco AP at home, which has been running just fine for about 3 years now. The only real maintenence I've done to it was to upgrade the firmware sometime last year. The only problem with the Cisco boxes is that they're a little expensive; you probably can get one pretty cheaply on Ebay.
At work, we have several Linksys AP's and I have a Linksys WET11 wireless-to-ethernet bridge at home. I have found Linksys's equipment to be quite reliable and reasonably-priced. Their firmware releases used to be a little flakey about 2 years ago, but their latest couple releases have proved very stable.
I don't think you could go wrong with either Linksys or Cisco.
About 2 years ago, I purchased an old Belkin Wireless AP. It's been running non-stop for the full two years, but about once a Night I have to reset it manually or else I cannot get any outgoing traffic to work.
- tom -
I've been using my SMC2655W for about a year and a half. Rock solid the entire time. Highly recommended.
-xdg
We just decommissioned our Lucent WavePoint II's after 3.5 years of near-perfect service. If it weren't for the 10 Mbps uplink limitation, we'd probably keep them around for a lot longer.
:(
Our replacements are Proxim AP-600's, and so far they've proven to be less stable. One developed a short on its mainboard and melted down a few days after deployment, and a few others have spurious wireless card failures from time to time. Luckily, a reset from the web or telnet interface seems to bring them back online. If only we didn't need 802.1x and 802.11g
I've had an Aironet AP1100 (from Dell), a Lucent AP-1000, a Dell TrueMobile 1170 wireless base station, and about 3 TrueMobile 1184 wireless routers for up to 2.5 years now and they're all working well. As long as you just want regular 802.11b with no WEP, you're golden. Those are all from just one vendor, though, so I couldn't tell ya how others are (except linksys. i've had an odd issue with the BEFW11S4 V2 that I have here)
The Linksys Issue: Some BEFW11S4 routers have a problem with some 802.11b/g cards. To get the card to associate with the router you have to set the rate to 2Mbps, which is utterly stupid with 802.11g cards! Other BEFW11S4s are just fine and work no matter what you throw at them (Pringles can, a/b/g cards, old lucent cards, whatever.)
Yes, I'm using the latest firmware recommended by them. Yes, I know what I'm doing. Steer clear.
They have the Internet on computers now?
Generally, you need to flash new firmware onto these devices in order to correct bugs, improve performance, etc.
I've seen many instances of (wireless) router misbehavior due to buggy firmware that has since been fixed and posted to the company's web site.
I've had mine for 2 years and it still works great. I run my Zaurus and my Laptop off it.
AP's shouldn't die the way they are on you. Could be a power problem (wiring?) or maybe humidity or temperature.
If you have a UPS, you could try plugging your AP into it to smooth things out a bit.
May we never see th
I must be odd man out. I had one go bad on me (normal office environment). It got into a mode where it would slow way down, and packet sniffing (with etherial) showed that it was trying to "phone home" (a huge number of HTTP puts to an IP address that resolved to labs.linksys.com IIRC). Cycling power seemed to fix it for a day or two. Three others in the same environment seemed fine.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. I also have a Netgear (don't recall the model) that goes wonkers in lightning storms--though I can't say I blame it.
I had a funny problem with my Netgear ME102 at home. The connection gradually got less and less reliable over distance, finally it could sustain a connection (to a Netgear MA401 802.11b PC card) for no more than a couple of minutes at a time. But the status lights on the WAP itself were showing it was fine. The problem was the power supply - it had failed in such a way that the ME102 could still power up, yet it could not run the radio link. It took 6 weeks or so dealing with Netgear's frankly useless tech support organization to diagnose this. I don't just mean that their people are clueless (altho' they are) and that they barely speak English. Their call centre technology is poor - for example, every time I called, I gave the ticket number the last one had given me, but it wasn't recognized and I had to almost start again from scratch each time. There also appears to be no link between their email and phone tech support groups.
Nezt time, I'll pay the extra money for Cisco.
I use a PC with a PRISM card plugged into it running FreeBSD. The card has all the bits to make it run as a AP and FreeBSD allows these to be enabled (not sure if linux can do this, it may).
Waiting for FreeBSD to support the PRISM-GT cards so I can run 802.11g.
Had my Linksys over a year, dropped it many times (don't ask), it lives in a warm environment...still going strong.
I'd be pretty pissed if an access point only last 6 months!
-psy
At home I have a Linksys WAP51AB dual band AP. I've had one or two times where the box has frozen and one time where the A radio froze, but the B didn't. Overall, it's a reasonably good product other than the A radio having disappointing performance and the fact that it seems to have marginal support since the intoduction of the B+G products.
FWIW...the 2-3 years before I got the Linksys, I had a Nokia 11b AP (only 1MB, though, and no WEP...not exactly featureful) that ran flawlessly.
I don't have an AP your insensitive clod!
We've got a mixed bag of stuff: WinXP, OSX, and a Palm Tungsten C. The Airport--Snow version--has been bullet-proof for twenty months and counting. I'd love to extend its range a bit; the only thing it's missing is an external antenna jack.
I regularly experience the high volume crashes with my Speedstream 2624 wirless router. I bought it because of PCI card compatiblity, and I've had no problems with their cards (PCI and PCMCIA). But having to physically stop and restart the router stinks.
I'll add praise for my Netgear MR314. No problems with it at all. Occasionally I had problems getting a connection with my Netgear MA401 PCMCIA card in my Compaq Presario laptop (I would have to eject the card and reinsert it), but now that I have a Mac G4, I haven't had any problem connecting, and I even have better signal strength than before.
Long story short, my Netgear wireless router is great, the Netgear laptop card not so much.
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
Hey there,
Well I've been using both Cisco and D-link AP's for a few years, and have had neglible problems with either of them.
In our house we are heavy wireless user's and there are times I'm streaming heavy video to one device or another, and have never had much degredation, or packet drops.
Actually, the Lucent WavePoint IIe (note - the "e") has a 10/100 port on it.
:) Both WavePoint II and IIe's run 486 class CPU's in them.
However, you're grossly overestimating the CPU in the box
I can't say with perfect accuracy, but I believe the WP-II's run a 66MHz processor and the IIe's run a 75MHz processor. Anyway, it's along those lines, perhaps it's 75MHz and 100MHz, not sure - regardless, they're 486's.
Incidentally, they both do have CardBus controllers in them, so they probably could support newer CardBus cards (802.11a or g), in theory. However, it would be quickly and terribly I/O bound for lack of bus bandwidth I'd think.
KarlNet wrote the firmware for Lucent (and Proxim) for the WP-II(e)'s, as well ar the OR's. They've had some "troublesome" releases, but in all, the combination of the hardware and KarlNet firmware is *incredibly* stable in recent releases (for me anyway).
KarlNet and Proxim had a falling-out recently, and is no longer writing the AP or card firmware for them to my knowledge. Since the WP-IIe platform has been obsoleted (nix'ing the AP-1000, and all OR products), Proxim has stopped providing FW updates for those products. You can still purchase new FW from KarlNet, so you're not completely SOL, but it will cost money from here out.
For a "vanilla" plain old 802.11b access point, even the "old" Lucent AP-1000 with Orinoco radios is still a very choice. It's not cheap, even on the used market (usually >$100 even on eBay), but they're solid - set it, forget it.
FWIW
Brad
I have been using this for about 6 mos without a hitch. It is 4port/wireless. I run 2 wireless and 2 wired PCs and have not had to reboot it in about 3 months, and the only reason I had to was my cable modem went down. All of the netgear products I have used in the past have been great.
I would highly rec. this router.
The original WAP11 had a notorious firmware bug that would cause it to lock up every couple days. It was fixed with firmware version 1.4g. Download the fix from the Linksys website.
I've used Lucent, BreezeCom, Linksys and DLink APs.
I give the Lucent AP1000 my top rating for overall reliability. (I've got over 50 of them and only one has ever failed, lightning strike.)
The Alvarion (AKA BreezeCom) DS.11 AP seems to be the best "out of the box" for range and quality. It has slightly higher throughput then the Lucent AP1000. BUT it didn't last as long as my Lucent radios and did not have nearly as much configurability or security as the Lucent.
The DLinks I have used all seem to need a hard reset every month to two months, but give good throughput. They stink for range, but then again they are built for indoor use.
The Linksys AP's have seemed to be more reliable then the Dlink ones, but I have typically got less throughput on them when compared to all the other gear I have tested.
*Last word
If you want cheap reliability, go for the Lucent AP1000's. You can find them cheap in the used sector (I got 10 off Ebay new in the box for $35.00 each) and buy a UPS to make sure the power is very stable and conditioned. Power was the biggest reliability issue I ran into with them. Next followed up by long term sustained peak transfer rates. IE After several hours of peak throughput, sometimes the radio interface would fall over. This could 90% of the time be cured by a remote soft reboot.
--JR--
Outdoor Telecommunications dude, specializing in wireless technologies
Thanks, I'll look into that.
-- MarkusQ
I've used 2 different DLink DI-614+ Router/AP's now and have had great luck. One has been there about a year and was rebooted twice and the other is about 2 motnhs old and hasn't needed a reboot yet. The range is pretty good and the transfer rate is OK. My wired connection is very fast and I get 10,000+ kb/s from computer to computer. They are very cheap (the one I just got was $50 + tax after rebate) and reliable.
Reliable? Wireless? I'm confused.
Since everyone seems to be offering up home-based solutions, I figured I'd pop in and give you a real-world answer. :)
Enterasys (formerly Cabletron) has a new line of APs out called RoamAbout R2. They have support for 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11a. You can also use one AP to bridge between a G and an A network, or any combination thereof.
They have full support for 802.1x authentication using a Radius server, re-keying, MAC filtering, etc. You name it, they support it.
I, too, have had problems with power supplies on these, but we've been running power over cat5, so that has become a non-issue.
My dos centavos.
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