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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'll never be able to cut the cord as long as latency for wireless is so high.
Parking lots will be overflowing with war drivers...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Yeah right... until we can get 10-12 hours out of a laptop battery, we'll all have a cord. Might as well be a network cord with POE.
More
Sounds like a nice solution to save the pain in the butt of setting up large lan gaming events like the CPL... If a company can come up with a "gaming version" of this idea that "guarantees" lower latency and such i bet a lot of places will start adopting it... The only cords you'd have would be power cords... i like.
"Priced at $12,000, the XS-3900 is a relatively affordable solution for locations that require high-density networks. With all functions in a single device, administrators could see significant cost savings for deployment because multiple power and Ethernet outlets are not needed."
:/
So the savings on 11 ethernet jacks and power sockets are worth a $12,000 price tag?
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
At that price, it's FAR cheaper to just buy the 16 devices and a router. But it does look cool.
;)
Not to mention you can microwave your coffee by just setting it on top of the thing
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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.
Finally enough bandwidth for us all to cut the cord?
Multi-channel 802.11a has plenty of bandwidth to cut the cord. Even plain ol' 802.11g would suffice.
However, only one question really matters, and I doubt a positive answer:
Can it give me a decent signal more than one room away from the AP?
Turning on WEP, and authorizing on the MAC address would prevent most, if not all, wardrivers from connecting. Although MAC addresses can be spoofed relatively easily, it would definitely deter amateurish attempts at free internet access.
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Sure they get a lot of bandwidth out of this thing, but don't they essentially get the same coverage they would with one AP?
For a large size area, the benefit to having multiple APs is that you can spread them out to increase your coverage.
>Finally enough bandwidth for us all to cut the cord?"
*Yells down to basement*
Kurt! You're moving OUT today!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Such gimmicky devices never take off. They proport to be some groundbreaking new amazingness when in actuality it's "a bunch of WiFi transceivers stacked on top of each other". That's not new, and it's not amazing. Companies have for years sold network cards that work by load-balancing traffic across multiple CAT5 lines - a good idea, sure, but it's never going to be widely accepted. How many double-100baseT NICs do you have? If you needed more than 100mbps, you'd buy gigabit ethernet. People who need more wireless speed are going to wait for the next step in technology, not a bunch of the same thing duct-taped together and put in a shiny plastic case.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Is it just me, or is it ironic that war drivers would take over parking lots?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
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.
Okay, now this is going to sound incredibly stupid to the vast majority of you, it'll probably start a flame war and all of that good stuff.
The reason I won't use wireless is pretty simple, suppose I have my computer and my WAP sitting in the front room of my house. If you decide to pull up and park across the street you can sniff my data rather easily. Sure I can encrypt it, secure it, and slap an ACL on there so you can't get in or do anything with the data you capture, but the fact of the matter is you and your buddies hanging out in your car across the street from my house can sniff my data.
Now, if I've got copper inside. I pull up to the house one night and I notice the front window is open and there is some cat5 ran across my yard from your car window to my switch. I'm going to come out of the house, go to your car and proceed to knock the ever loving shit out of you in front of your friends. I'm not a big man, but if I was in that situation, I would be an angry one.
Of course, sure you can sniff my data with copper, but most likely you won't be doing it parked in front of my house, but rather at your own house which settles the whole notion of me dragging you out through your car window and kicking your ass there in the street.
This is really a good idea. From TFA: ...permit only a single concurrent station to connect to each IAP...
... that might be a challenge. Like I said, similar, but not identical. Still a neat idea.
It's a wireless *switch*! Typical wireless deployments are like a hub-- 10, 20, 50 people connecting to the same AP. This is a really cool idea when you think about it. You're bridged solely to your own integrated access point, much like a port is your part on the bridge of a switch.
I say, get 12 WRT54G's at $60/piece, and a used/refurbed Cisco 2912, for about $200, load up the WRTs with OpenWRT, and you could probably do the a similar thing for about $1000. A little configuration and tweaking might be necessary though.
Also, don't know about the overlapping channels thing
FLR
Actually there are high end wireless routers out there that cost 3 to 5 thousand. They are intented for high security/authentication purposes. Also it generally cost 50-150 a drop for ethernet. And you are saving significantly more than 11 jacks as the intentions are for a thousand users. Easily making up the cost. Big question simply is, does it have enough distance for these thousand users, probably not.
Well, ignoring the fact that multiple clients can connect to the same AP, if you are in an office that doesn't have a wired infrastructure, or it needs upgrading*, then the cost of getting someone to rewire and patch could be quite high, especially if there are 100 people on the network (e.g., an office). 10000ft** of cat5e might not cost too much on its own, but the installation costs will cost a lot more, as would 8 decent 24-port GigE switches. And then all the laptop people will still moan about needing wireless access.
And think about having one of these at a convention or trade show... very handy.
* yes, I know that if the network 'needs' upgrading then there is probably a bandwidth need.
** yes, you can install switches at each block of desks to reduce cable runs. And so on.
Does it also function as a smoke detector?
Is it sufficiently tamper-resistant to not break when someone tries to check the battery?
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
example.org - powered by Linux!
How is my company supposed to be able to afford the equivalent of a couple hundred T1s (ok, hyperbole) underneath this uber hot spot to handle all these users? Can't wait till one of our customers calls us this week and asks us to give him 800Mbits up and down. We already have to filter all spam perfectly without deleting a single one of their legitimate e-mails, and well as ensure they never get a virus or any spyware. Evar.
ah here's the link he "mesh'd" 3 or 4 open AP's to be one fat connection.
*shrug*
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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?
What's the big deal about "cutting the cord"? Everyone's acting like this is the Holy Grail or something, but as near as I can tell, I'll still be sitting in front of the same old cubicle using the same old workstation, so what's so Evil(tm) about the "cord"?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I say, get 12 WRT54G's at $60/piece, and a used/refurbed Cisco 2912, for about $200, load up the WRTs with OpenWRT, and you could probably do the a similar thing for about $1000. A little configuration and tweaking might be necessary though.
:-)
Yeah, a little configuration and approx. 20-50m (30-60yards) of cable
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You get 4 a/b/g APs, plus 12 a-only APs in their can. That's where they get the big # of users. For a total of 16 APs, this is a great device for high-density, conference room or public lobby applications. And the retail is more like $14K.
Oh yeah, telnet works on it unless disabled, too.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
TFA makes no reference to multiple (distributed) antennae - which was my initial thought on how range might be widened.
(But anyway, that would defeat the purpose of not having an ethernet system with multiple wireless access points, right? Certainly sounds less cost-effective than ethernet.)
Agree with parent - I'm also not seeing why this device has so much capacity when range (and therefore potential users) appears so limited.
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.
Not only would you be obliterating all other wireless networks within range (this thing is active on all the channels) and getting collisions slowing it, but there is no way in hell you are going to be getting the advertised 54 Mbps on each channel.
Now I have never used the 54 Mbps stuff but from my experience with the 11 and 22 Mbps equipment I can say that you get no where near that speed even with the antennas nearly touching each other. My 22 Mbps network gets around 6 Mbps in actual use, I have never seen it go above that. And when I was on 11 Mbps it literally topped out at exactly half that speed (3 Mbps). It seems like we have all been duped.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
So, you put this on the 2nd floor of your building. It'll be in range of the almost 314 people on the 1st floor, and 314 people on the 3rd floor.
Eating a whole bottle of hot sauce every day.
Hmmm, Wifi times 16...
According to my math, 802.11 x 16 = 12,833.76
I guess we get discounted down to $12K for buying in volume?