Netbooks and wireless

[Little-Miss]

Right, my school made me purchase some netbooks of doom.

 

I warned them from the start that there was no way that our handful of wireles AP's are going to cope with 20 netbooks all trying to log on at once. So anyway, teacher gives them to the kids in the last 15 minutes of his lesson and loe and behold about 5 of them logged in.....

 

So, i know you're all going to be shouting ruckus at me (and i am going to look into that) but what can i do in the mean time to tide us over? Buy a few more AP's? Do the basic ones work like that? Will the laptops switch to another AP if they arent having any luck on the first?

[Michael]

What access points are you using? Let me guess, D-Link?

[Haptic]

Right, my school made me purchase some netbooks of doom.

 

I warned them from the start that there was no way that our handful of wireles AP's are going to cope with 20 netbooks all trying to log on at once. So anyway, teacher gives them to the kids in the last 15 minutes of his lesson and loe and behold about 5 of them logged in.....

 

So, i know you're all going to be shouting ruckus at me (and i am going to look into that) but what can i do in the mean time to tide us over? Buy a few more AP's? Do the basic ones work like that? Will the laptops switch to another AP if they arent having any luck on the first?

 

Give me a shout for Ruckus Little-Miss as everybody knows we are the cheapest in the UK hun:cool:

[Little-Miss]

a mish mash of everything! Buffalos, dlinks....random generics...

[User3204]

We found this problem with some of the older laptops and stuff

 

To solve it we stopped the users from logging on to the domain.

 

The machines will boot up, and authenticate to the wireless network with the logged on user (whose passwords are unchangeable).

Then we got hold of a VB script that would take their username and password and use this to correctly map their homedrive and connect to our proxy server. It has a timeout which undoes all this after 30minutes.

 

It all got wrapped into .net so it's pretty much a pain in the bum to install, but other than that it works fine.

[round2it]

netgear wg302 work perfectly for us good coverage auto channel selection on 20 laptops no problem.

 

Dom

[leco]

Our classes are now well drilled into logging on - one at a time. Takes about 5 mins for the whole class of wireless laptops. No I don't have Ruckus - like Little Miss mine are a mish mash of Netgear and Zyxel.

[HodgeHi]

You could use 2 APs. Split the net-books down the middle and join half to one AP and the other half to the second AP.

 

Or get an 802.11n WAP. Apparently 802.11n WAPs can support more concurrent connections

[actech]

We found this problem with some of the older laptops and stuff

 

To solve it we stopped the users from logging on to the domain.

 

The machines will boot up, and authenticate to the wireless network with the logged on user (whose passwords are unchangeable).

Then we got hold of a VB script that would take their username and password and use this to correctly map their homedrive and connect to our proxy server. It has a timeout which undoes all this after 30minutes.

 

It all got wrapped into .net so it's pretty much a pain in the bum to install, but other than that it works fine.

 

Would you mind sharing the script that you use for this? Sounds like it may resolve a few issues I'm having here but with staff that don't want there laptops joined to our domain.

[mac_shinobi]

a mish mash of everything! Buffalos, dlinks....random generics...

 

To tide you over

 

I would go with linksys WAP's - possibly netgear but not sure about them

 

Long run

 

Give Simon a shout re the ruckus stuff

[alan-d]

Right, my school made me purchase some netbooks of doom.

 

I warned them from the start that there was no way that our handful of wireles AP's are going to cope with 20 netbooks all trying to log on at once. So anyway, teacher gives them to the kids in the last 15 minutes of his lesson and loe and behold about 5 of them logged in.....

 

So, i know you're all going to be shouting ruckus at me (and i am going to look into that) but what can i do in the mean time to tide us over? Buy a few more AP's? Do the basic ones work like that? Will the laptops switch to another AP if they arent having any luck on the first?

 

 

I can loan you some additional APs (Sale or return basis if you like) until you get funding or sort out the problem. They are Buffalo 54G.

[dwhyte85]

Hi, agreed with above - we use Linksys WAPs.

 

However, we have noticed an issue... some machines seem to take forever to get DHCP, then again, this could be our connection as we have a wireless bridge. It might help to assign static IPs on the wireless - we've found that obtaining an IP from DHCP seems to be the make or break bit on our LinkSys APs... if an address isn't obtained within 10-15 seconds we can guarantee the user is going to login with a cached profile (luckily our students are assigned per netbook, not randomly given out), it then goes to limited connection and a repair resolves. Unless you can get them to stagger logins - from our experiences teachers don't quite get the idea!

Edited September 23, 2009 by dwhyte85

[witch]

Def try what Leco said: logging on one at at time sorted out our similar problem at least for a while....

[Tricky_Dicky]

I've also got some spare AP's if you are in a bit of a mess, but in my opinion it's not more access points you necessarily want.

Have a go at turning of all the APs apart from 1 which is in the classroom of the netbooks you are trying to log on. This will stop a lot of the interference that you can get from wireless networks. We did it here before the Ruckus kitted arrived and it helped a bit.

 

Good luck

p.s. You could always ask for a loan kit of the Ruckus to tide you over until you can get a PO in Once they teachers are used to it and the head see's how good it is then you won't have a problem getting the money

[Little-Miss]

With regards to Ruckus - im still trying to bed my new network in and dont think i could cope just now with another big installation....but it is definately on my to do list.

 

In the meantime i am happy to borrow some AP if peeps are happy to lend them, just to a) test and b)tide me over till i can get something sorted...

*looks at remaining budget* *GULP*

[Haptic]

With regards to Ruckus - im still trying to bed my new network in and dont think i could cope just now with another big installation....but it is definately on my to do list.

 

In the meantime i am happy to borrow some AP if peeps are happy to lend them, just to a) test and b)tide me over till i can get something sorted...

*looks at remaining budget* *GULP*

 

 

 

"BIG INSTALLATION" Little-Miss from what I can gather you would only need a Zone Director 1006 with around 6 AP's and we would preconfigure so you just plug it in and away you go hun ,

[featured_spectre]

Simon stop making it sound complicated! lol, no its really easy, plug the Zone Director in, plug your APs in, set up your network (SSID, wep/WPA key) and away you go!