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About LinkBacksRight. PM's and plans off to the various suppliers who have contacted me. LET BATTLE COMMENCE!!
Right. PM's and plans off to the various suppliers who have contacted me. LET BATTLE COMMENCE!!
CPLTD (23rd July 2009)
To be honest my only concern with Ruckus kit, is if the range is much better than your typical access point, this could 'in theory' create problems, especially with inner city schools. Scan for wireless networks and you'll find quite a few in the area. Two access points broadcasting on the same channel in close proximity is extremely problematic.
Although we are close to several housing estates, the area is quite hilly. So it's not so bad. Also I've found the 802.11a band to be much less cluttered up than the 802.11b/g band. So we try and get machines that are capable of that.
You're right, it is seriously becoming cluttered up in populated areas. I think my record is around 20 different wireless networks from doing one scan. Some of them have hilarious names too!
Hopefully 802.11n will help. Although I have no practical experience of it.
Yes it probably would actually. It still isn't as widely adopted I suppose due to prices, plus the majority of portable computers still come with 802.11g adapters. 802.11n is more comparable with Ethernet. However, (generally) 802.11n gear is compatible with 802.11g, but 802.11n signals have been known to cause interference with nearby 802.11g signals.Hopefully 802.11n will help.
Geoff (23rd July 2009)
The Ruckus is intelligent so using its beamflex technology it will "bend" around stuff and activly change channels as needed to avoid others and problems it really is very clever. When we were demoing it here the other week it picked up about 14 "rogue" APs which were our current unmanaged solution as well as some across the river in the near by housing which shows its power!
To take my HP hat off, most of the managed solutions (I would say all as can it me classed a managed solution if it doesn't) I have seen or read about have some sort of automatic channel reassignement to avoid interference or the single channel solutions obviously do things their own way.Originally Posted by john
"Bending" radio signals around stuff sound interesting, the MIMO antenna arrays in any N kit should use this multipath to their advantage or it isn't an N solution.
Rougue AP and intrusion detection again should be available on most managed solutions of any worth.
Except the Ruckus AP's offer multipath, beamflex MIMO or whatever you wanna call it from the standard b/g AP upwards.
i think you can reduce the transmit power on the AP's too if you need to?
I think these are different things. I'm not a Ruckus Expert but looking at the website the beamflex is a way of the internal antennae adjusting its output from the antenna array to produce more focussed directional 'beams', I’m still not sure of the bending thing though. It would appear that netgear use the same antenna array in the soho rangemax products.
MIMO is specific to the N standard and is a way of using multiple radios and antennae to increase performance and throughput using multiple data paths.
Surely N standard is the way to go on new deployments though anyway.
At the end of the day its about real world use in education, every site is different, I've seen 90 netbooks simultaneously log on and connection speeds of up to 300Mbps across a whole site. I know happy Meru, HP, Ruckus, Aruba, Proxim and Netgear users.
CPLTD (24th July 2009)
Presumably it would also make a difference what clients you had. I imagine there's quite a difference (for example) between a top end Intel WiFi card and a cheap atheros one. So there is absolutely nothing the APs could do about that no matter how clever they are.
SteveCSE (24th July 2009)
This is definitely true. Even down to how the aerials in the machines are positioned and the like. I've had 2 laptops - my Macbook Pro, and a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro v2085 (IIRC) next to each other 10m from an unmanaged AP, and the MBP had a high quality signal compared to the F-S one which barely connected.
So, it varies wildly.
Best client cards I've come across were Cisco Aironet ones with the external antenna.
SteveCSE (24th July 2009)
I think Netgear lisenced the design from Ruckus for these units, correct me if im wrong though...
SteveCSE (24th July 2009)
Would stand to reason i thought it was a patented technology.
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