Reliable wireless networking equipment?

November 10, 2008 9:32 AM

Reliable wireless networking gear?

I'm looking to redo a small wireless installation (less than 10 APs total), starting with a no-name wireless bridge box that has to be reset every morning.

Given the budget it looks like I'm stuck with Linksys or Netgear equipment, both of which I've come to abhor over the years. I have yet to be burned by D-Link, but I've never used their wireless gear either.

So, I'm looking for people's experiences. Have you set up small low-maintainance wireless networks? Would you recommend the same gear to someone else?

Thanks.


For reference, the topology includes:

• One wireless bridge hop to a nearby building
• A small number of APs directly wired to a switch
• Several range extenders

Throughput is not a significant issue.

posted by tkolar to technology (13 comments total)

Linksys hardware has always been the least stress wireless equipment I've ever had. I bought Netgear and D-link routers in the past when the budget needed to be stretched and cursed the decision every time.

That said, Cisco products definitely outperform them, but I've had far less experience with them.
posted by scabrous at 11:06 AM on November 10, 2008

dd-wrt on wrt54g is rock solid.
posted by Meg_Murry at 11:33 AM on November 10, 2008

I heartily recommend MikroTik for any even semi-serious wireless or routing needs. They are hands-down awesome in all regards.

They sell both the router software (RouterOS) and hardware (varies depending on your needs). There are several licensing models to choose from with the software, you can probably use the cheapest option for your needs.

One of the boards I manage, which handles 10mbps daily traffic for over a dozen customers, has been up for 340 days. It only went down because of an ice storm shutting off the power.

You can either go with their hardware or use their software on any X86 bare-bones PC you build yourself.

Even though Cisco is probably a direct competitor in terms of performance, MikroTik units are much friendlier to administer and maintain in my opinion.
posted by odinsdream at 11:34 AM on November 10, 2008

I have found Mikrotik routerboards to be unstable and unreliable. That is from my own experience, YMMV.

I have had great success with Cisco Aironet access points and would highly recommend them, though they may be beyond your budget constraints.

However, I will agree that Mikrotik is easier to configure for more advanced configurations. Cisco has a bit more of a learning curve, but a basic AP setup is a breeze.
posted by doomtop at 2:11 PM on November 10, 2008

dd-wrt on wrt54g is rock solid.
posted by Meg_Murry at 2:33 PM on November 10 [+] [!]

Linksys no longer supports wrt54g routers with free warrantied tech support - it's now $30 a call or so. So, pick a newer model.

Personally, I've had hellacious problems with my WRT54G, so I wouldn't recommend it anyway. FWIW.
posted by IAmBroom at 2:16 PM on November 10, 2008

My wrt54g with dd-wrt requires weekly resets.

Interesting link: http://www.marco.org/303
posted by aeighty at 2:35 PM on November 10, 2008

In my humble opinion, you go with lots of the cheapest AP that have power over ethernet, running cheap software(openwrt, dd-wrt), bridged on several different channels with the same SSID. You get one really badass machine to be the master node. I suggest an actual server, perhaps one you already have in your closet (it doesn't have to be beefy, over 500mhz will do, and some serious fans) and a pci wireless card over 600mw with a big antenna on a completely other channel, running monowall or something. On this node you run heartbeat to all the other nodes, nagios, snmp or whatever health monitoring system you prefer. If any node goes down your power over ethernet switch does a hard restart of the node and you're back in action. Basically, you expect that at any given time, you'll have to send a WOL or reboot nodes if they don't respond to ping, haven't had any clients in a week, or behave funny in any way shape or form. Ideally any given client will have more than one node available at any time. You'll spend a bit more money, as well as alot more upfront administration time, however, you will have a significantly more reliable wifi experience than the most expensive hardware.

Cheap, Mini, POE AP with actual operating system on it. $39

PEO switch: you are going to have to do some research on that. All I know about is switched PDUs, and in our small office, I'm going to use some of those little mini POE adapters, plugged in to the switched PDU and then patched directly to the AP's. If any of our APs starts to misbehave, we'll use the PDU to power cycle it. I'll lookup POE managed switches to see if they offer the ability to directly power cycle whatever is connected to them. I'd imaging they do.
posted by Freen at 6:25 PM on November 10, 2008

I have had great success with Cisco Aironet access points and would highly recommend them, though they may be beyond your budget constraints.

Plus I used to work for Trapeze. I'd get lynched.

Interesting link: http://www.marco.org/303

Interesting indeed...
posted by tkolar at 6:31 PM on November 10, 2008

doomtop; that's really interesting - what board did you have a bad experience with? What radio card chipset? I've worked with a wide variety of RouterBoards, but only with Aironet wireless cards. The only problems we had with them were due to environmental problems like moisture or bad power supplies.
posted by odinsdream at 6:54 PM on November 10, 2008

Freen; those are some really interesting thoughts - The Bullet is especially cool looking. Have you used them?
posted by odinsdream at 6:56 PM on November 10, 2008

I meant Atheros wireless cards, not Aironet.
posted by odinsdream at 7:00 PM on November 10, 2008

I have not used them, but I have used quite a few other ubiquiti products in the past, with great success.
posted by Freen at 1:52 PM on November 11, 2008

Thanks everyone.

Unfortunately the infrastructure hat gets passed too often in this environment to get too exotic, otherwise I'd try some of the more interesting suggestions here.

As it is, I think I'll reluctantly follow the advice on the marco link and go with the mass market crap APs and expect to replace one every six months or so.

Oh, and pass on the infrastructure hat as quickly as possible :-)

Sigh.
posted by tkolar at 3:45 PM on November 13, 2008