intheknow

Post edited due to unauthorised advertising. Dos_Box

Did see this, seems to deal with those bandwidth constraints http://www.youtube.com/w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnx-3qTKc Regards

One system that has not been mentioned is the Motorola solution....as see that you have previously installed low cost wlan. For that reason it is worth looking at Motorola's indoor wlan portfolio as certainly meets the budget requirements. So much so it is the preferred solution for 90% plus of retailers. It also meets your requirements as it works via a layer2/3 switch that provides POE. Regards intheknow

Reply for you, 1. Reply - Ok in this example I used .11b....throughput on the blanket is approx 5.5Mb. Share this blanlet across the entire school and we could have maybe hundreds of users fighting for that 5.5Mbs. Cell based I could opt for a .11a network, one AP in each classroom, no co channel interference and have much better thoughput than Extricom could offer? 2. Reply - I hear that you have to have more AP's available to be "seen" by the client in order to get same band to function correctly....again this means youhave to have a denser deployment of AP's which costs more. 3. Reply - Missing the point - if you share an "tweaked" antennae with a 2.4G and 5G radio the net effect is both radios will not have maximum tunned antennae for that radio....impact is that in a like for like test vs a traditional AP you will not get the distance. I guess you simply but more AP's in place....but again that means I need to purchase more AP's... 4. Reply - You make it sound so simple, can you confirm then in a busy office I simply turn True Reuse on and it will triple/quadruple my bandwidth....what if there is no re-use available? 5. Reply - ok so if I have VoIP on one blanket and seperate all my data onto the other blankets. How do I make sure, when my VoIP blanket is fully loaded, that I can guarantee other VoIP calls wont be dropped. QoS within the blanket is important...is CAC working yet? 6. Reply - LOL thanks Dean, it confirms point 11. If my Wireless controller fails, then yes I have a standby that, without haveing to un plug cables, will automatically adopt those AP's and recover in about 45 seconds. Extricom - as far as I know they can't offer this and in a mission critical environment will certainly cause issues. 7. Reply - Sure understand the reason for fibre, but as I understand it the Extricom switches inly have copper interfaces.....doh! Media converters it is then...doh! 8. Reply - I need t check this out. If this has changed then great. 9. Reply - Zyxel and Belden OEM Extricom so yes you are buying Zyxel. Or if you are not you may as well be as it's much cheaper for the same box.......Doh! 10. Reply - LOL...I love the bit about mission critical being mostly readily tackled by Extricom. Without true redundancy that's not the case. Reply - stop drinking the Extricom cool ade...take a look at the rest of the market. Extricom does not win hands down my friend and they have a long way to go before they do. Cheers intheknow

Reading the post I thought I'd comment. Extricom has a unique proposition but don't be fooled. Here are ten reasons why not to buy: 1. Each AP's acts as an antennae which gives great coverage area but adding AP's does not increase bandwidth! A 24 port switch with 24 AP's all on one "blanket" at .11b settings gives 11Mb of bandwidth...not good. Share that with 24 students in 24 classrooms then the potential available b/w is into the K/bs range...rubbish 2. Dual radio AP's do not offer any antennae diversity 3. Dual or quad radio AP's have one antenna that "does all". The problem is that antennaes, to get max performance, requires different antennae's. Hence the one size fits all has an impact on distance...meaning more AP's to cover the same area which means more cost. 4. There True Reuse is a myth....ask them to show you this with several different types of laptops with different radio chipsets in. Make sure they are not all Atheros! 5. Great VoIP demo yes...but they have no QoS on the box. They will say simply but different traffic types on different blankets but what about the same traffic types on the same blanket. 6. If an AP fails then it will auto re-route...yes but what happens when you have a switch fail! There is no redundancy and therefore this is not an enterprise class sytem. 7. All cables have to re-route back to each switch...nothing can go over a layer two infrastructure. 8. Ask how many users can be assoicaied to any one switch. In order to make this system work the AP's are antennaes and the switchis the AP. Last I heard was that it could support 128 users in hardware then after that it ran like a dog in software. 9. Cost - the solution is not cheap if you need several switches in several locations. 10. Their channel is not well trained and leads to price differences between competing resellers. If you have an issue they call Extricom in directly and there are ony two engineers in the whole of the UK...STAY AWAY. You will hear of this solution working, I argue that to get this working in a high data, mission critical environment is a real challenge. Student use in a school, then yes you can get away with it. Check out the other wireless LAN players and stick to well known names. Motorola - very good indoor and outdoor solution player, good price Cisco - expensive but may fit with your current architecture Aruba - security play is good but you pay for it Belden/Zyxel - STAY AWAY some of it is Extricom but a different colour