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Wi-Fi Times Sixteen
2Stupid2KnowIt writes "eWeek has a cool review of Xirrus' XS-3900 Wireless LAN Array. The unit consists of 16 Integrated Access Points and a wireless switch....all in one device. According to their website, Xirrus can achieve 800+ Mbps of bandwidth and handle 1000+ users. Finally enough bandwidth for us all to cut the cord?"
I hope people are careful where they use it -- using all the channels at the same time seems quite antisocial to any other networks that might be in the area.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Am I the only EE (by training if not practice--I do software for a living) around that's a little concerned about the long-term effects of all this (additional--we've been absorbing UHF/VHF for 60+ years now) microwave radiation? Sure, sure, inverse-square law, skin effect, yadda yadda. I can't help but think we biological beings are much more sensitive to EMFs than the biologists assume. Could there possibly be a correlation between increased EMFs and the increase in autism, cancer, etc.? I haven't seen the actual research/figures, but I'm told that, when flourescent lights (with the older, dirtier ballasts) were introduced in the 50's, that learning disabilities skyrocketed (yeah, perhaps diagnostics just got better).
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
been there, done that, works fine. I hosted a lan party with 6 people at my place once and it worked great...
ah here's the link he "mesh'd" 3 or 4 open AP's to be one fat connection.
*shrug*
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I've never had latency problems either, but I'm one of just a few users on my wireless network. At what number of users on the same channel do the ping rates start to drop so bad?
According to this web-site, using periods inside quotation marks in defiance of logic is an American thing. Canadians and Brits only put the periods (and similar punctuation) inside quotation marks where it makes sense. E.g., for the GP post the period makes sense outside of the quotation marks. However, consider this sentence:
You said, "They're in the queue, directly behind people who don't put periods inside quotation marks."
Here it makes sense to have the period inside the quotation marks.
It should also be pointed out that many Americans (myself included) follow the Canadian and British style.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's actually quite big compared to a normal AP but looks like nothing more than an oversized smoke detector when setup.
The term wireless switch may be misleading, more than one laptop can connect to each IAP and the wireless link is still a shared medium.
Where this product differs is it's ability to use all of the unlicensed spectrum within a given area. This translates into 3 channels on 802.11b/g and 12 channels on 802.11a. The range for 802.11b/g was about average but for 802.11a it was great. This is because each IAP has it's own antenna pointing in a specific direction (70 degrees wide) which allows the signal to be amplified by 7dbi rather than the normal 2.2dbi for an omnidirectional. This translates in the transmitted power being roughly doubled.
Some people say they could "emulate" the devices result using a bunch of WRT54Gs but since those operate in 2.4GHz they would all overlap and cause massive interference problems. The only effective way to get massive amounts of wireless bandwidth within a given area is using 5GHz because there are more non-overlapping channels (12 vs 3).
Another cool feature with the product is the lights on the front of the array. There is one for each IAP and they light up when someone associates to that IAP.