 Until this Friday April 20th, Fred Niehaus, technical marketing engineer for the Cisco Wireless Networking Business Unit, is providing Cisco customers with updates and the opportunity to discuss outdoor wireless technology.
Fred has extensive customer contact and is responsible for developing and marketing enterprise class wireless solutions using Cisco Aironet and Airespace Series Wireless LAN products. He has actively participated in some of Cisco's largest Wireless LAN deployments in education and retail with such customers as the New York Board of Education and the Home Depot stores. In addition to live deployments, Fred has also served as technical editor for several Cisco Press books including the Cisco 802.11 Wireless Networking Reference Quick Guide by Toby Velte and The Business Case for Enterprise-Class Wireless LANs by David Castaneda, Oisin Mac Alasdair and Christopher Vinckier. Prior to joining Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit, via the acquisition of Aironet, Fred worked as a support engineer for Telxon Corporation, supporting some of the very first wireless implementations for customers such as Wal-Mart, Ford, Hertz Rent-A-Car and others. Fred has been in the data communications and networking industry for the past 20 years and holds a Radio Amateur (Ham) License "N8CPI". Between 1983 and 1995, prior to joining Cisco, he was a senior technical support engineer for Tecmar Inc. one of the first companies to offer aftermarket products for the Apple and IBM personal computers. |
Highlights of Fred's responses to outdoor wireless questions that were rated by network professionals at the highest rating level possible - 5.0 (extremely helpful):
Customer question:
I am looking into some outdoor mesh with the 1500, and was wondering how can the backhaul reach 1 mile and more. Isn't 802.11a limited to 500feetat6Mbp? (omnidirectional antenna?)
What is the throughput at one mile?
Fred's 5.0 rated response:
The recommended distances for the Mesh backhaul is typically between 1000 to 4000 Ft as this assumes you are connecting a Root Mesh AP referred to as a "RAP" or Rooftop Access Point to a "MAP" Mesh Access Point (that's usually an AP mounted on say a telephone or street light pole using an Omni antenna).
The backhaul link can certainly go further if you aim the signal in a given direction (using a directional antenna).
However, when doing same, it does limit the options of the AP to "mesh" to only those APs within the area covered by the directional antenna.
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Customer question:
Thank you for your response regarding the 1500's. We have several WAPs installed in various models from 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400 and 1500 series in both outdoor and indoor deployments. Most of them are on different Vlan's located at various facilities. What is your recommendation as far as managing and monitoring these WAP's at a central location?
Fred's 5.0 rated response:
You can use Cisco WCS for more information on this product check out the URL here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6305/index.html
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Customer question:
I need to set up a wireless network between two buildings. What would you recomend for equipment to use. The buildings are about 500 ft apart. I have tried the linksys WAP,s but lost signal half way between the buildings. Could you please advise me on a solution?
Fred's 5.0 rated response:
If the buildings are only 500 Ft apart, you could use the BR1300 series Bridge for 2.4 GHz or the BR1400 series Bridge using the less congested 5 GHz band.
Either product would work well.
Another option (if you can locate the AP indoors) and simply run the antenna cable outdoors might be to use a pair of AP1240's in Bridge mode.
Any of these three options would work fine, given the buildings are that close 500 Ft and I assume you have line of sight, the only advantage to using the AP1240 would be that you could use two sets of antennas (one on 2.4 GHz and one on 5 GHz) at each site, that way if you did encounter interference you could "software switch" between bands and you would have some redundancy should an antenna happen to get damaged or a cable cut.
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Join in on the outdoor wireless technology discussion with Fred Niehaus until this Friday, April 20th.
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Subject: Outdoor Wireless Mesh
I have been assigned to find and create a market for a product and take it global. I have chosen CISCO wireless mesh for this assignment. My research project would be to establish strategies, locations, and feasibility methods to deploy city-wide wireless zones using Wireless Mesh.
Can you direct me to the following information:
· I have been unable to find a comprehensive list of all such projects world-wide where CISCO has established WIFI city-wide coverage.
· Per square miles what hardware would I need to launch wireless mesh? I will also need software pricing. If you don’t have hard numbers, ballpark would be a start.
· Countries that have partners that are technically ready to receive such a proposal.
· Contract pricing for 24/7 support after implementation from CISCO.
My goal is to create, hypothetically, a turnkey package that we could propose to CISCO partners and or subsidiaries or joint venture partners and have them offer this services to their clients (government entities, for example).
If you can provide me with a contact person, phone or email for future questions that would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Sincerely, John Vargas