We are having some trouble setting up our setup at the office, we have our trixbox setup and everything is running fine, we have some polycom phones that are working fine on it, but what we are trying to do now is use some F1000G UTStarcom phones to give wireless 'walk around' phones for people at the office. I am able to get the F1000G setup to connect to the trixbox and make calls to all the phones no problem, but the problem is our office is big enough that we will need 2-4 access points to give good coverage. We arent able to get the phones to cross from one AP to the other :(. We are using WRT54G linksys routers, using WPA-PSK security. We need it to be able to carry a call while walking between access points, not just pick the best signal AP. How do we go about doing this...or...are there any access points we could pickup that are at least 802.11g (n would be nice but not neccesary) and support MIMO, that are 3-4x the range of the linksys WRT54G. We have alot of offices and our office is somewhat of a W shape, with 2 large hangar bays in the middle of the W.
Handoff between APs. Questions!
those f1000 are not very good phones, I would look at the Hitachi 5000 or the new 3000.
funny - just saw another post like this - same answer too -
I have used quite a few different routers and some high end ones - but the bang for the buck is with Buffalo -
The WHR-HP-G54 - is the best - about $60 and does WDS - point to multi-point bridging - so the wireless network then looks like one big network, rather then several networks with the same SSID. You might want to call their tech support and describe your issue before buying - I must admit they have more expertise then me.
Also - MIMO is junk, this thing uses good old G standards with a high power transmitter and a booster on the antenna rather then those junk proprietary mimo schemes. You are much better running at a lower speed - it will be much more reliable - you might even try forcing your equipment to 5 mb - this may give you more reliable range. Just cause I got 3 eyes dont mean I am going to see you better than 2 or 1 even. :-D
Im not sure I understand why MIMO is junk, I guess I assumed that a voip call is using a decent chunk of bandwith, and if we are using 10 or 20 wireless phones, we would want the MIMO to be able to handle the multiple phone traffic. These APs will ONLY be used for phone traffic. I have looked at the buffalo AP and it looks pretty nice, I may look into them. Does it matter if all of the APs are the same brand or not? I think our first goal is to get completely setup with our voice APs so that we can use the phones throughout the building, then we will try out some different phones untill we find the ones we like.
I'm working on this project too for the office and have over 15k feet to cover. I've been looking at this AP. This puts out 400mw far better than the 100mw that linksys puts out. Check it out... You can call him he'll talk to ya..
If you average call bandwith on the high side, each call uses about 92k..
So 20 calls is only about 1.9Mb/s...
MIMO just doesnt handle as good as a b/g access point - thats why you see Buffalo selling "MIMO performance" G access points still, it works better then their MIMO line.
As for that 400 mw unit - Senao is a true industrial wireless solution, but those units cost close to $300, I have used them in several cases and they work excellent, **warning** do not get any of the lesser units from Senao they do not do MAC bridging, and your VOIP will never work - been there already. I used these to cover a historic Mission which has 24 inch thick adobe/mortar walls, it powered through great. It has WDS, and is pretty identical in functionality compared to the Buffalo.
The Linksys units arent that great "stock", but if you load a custom firmware like dd-wrt (very easy, like Trixbox, takes 2 minutes to flash, all GUI), or openwrt (little more flexible, but more comparable to straight *) - however after adding one of these custom firmwares you can boost any wrt54g or gs (gs is best) to pump out 251 mw of power, compare the mw to the buck - cant beat it compared to a Cisco or Senao even. I use a WRT54GS at my house, and can hit the AP w/ 15 db antenna on it from 3/4 mile away @ 11mb, using my Dell laptops built in b card. So I think they are definitely a contender.
The Buffalo out of the box has excellent strength (I believe its 180 mw with their booster), and for $65 ($54 here), you could afford to buy 5 of these by the time you bought a single Senao unit, and in the real world this would probably give you 2-3 times the coverage/strength over that single Senao.
Buying the same unit is not imparative, but the Buffalos do have a quick install button that makes secure implementation a 5 minute deal for 5 AP's. Most of these other brands, can however see another makers AP and connect to it through WDS (**most**). I would suggest buying a pair of Buffalos and seeing how fast you can get them going, and how strong they are, for the price - why not. I have them setup with point-2-point directional antennas over a mile bridge, but I can still get on my laptop and connect to an AP from over 1/4 mile outisde of the site line. Call their tech line, tell them what you have, and they can work you up a cheap infrastructure easy. You should be using your AP's in conjunction with high gain antennas to achieve the best spread - this is one reason why MIMO is garbage, 90% of the MIMO AP's cannot accept an after market antenna, and then the ones that do, are only limited to low gain antennas. A truely efficient wifi infrastructure should be a combo of decent APs and hi gain antennas. I get my antennas from wlanparts.com and buffalo APs from Provantage. - I dont work for any of these guys ;)
Whatever you do, dont go buy the latest $200 N router from Netgear, Dlink..., when an old POS from Linksys can give you 3-4 times the coverage at 1/2 the total cost. - - Good Luck :-D
What model are you talking about? The model I'm looking to use is the 3220 is this the one your talking about will this have the MAC bridging?
Thanks,
Any of the 3000 series models are fine, but the older 2500 series, which are rated at 200-250 mw are junk - they are great for web browsing, but any other apps they just dont work well.
Is EnGenius an american branding of the Senao APs? I found this on the Senao site:
http://www.senao.com/english/product/product_wireless01_outdoor_1...
and then looking at the link UnDerdog posted I see the same router branded as EnGenius, is there anything I need to lookout for here or are these the same APs. Im finding the ECB-3220 for as low as 140$ (comp usa)
I think my issue with working with multiple APs Is that we just cant seem to get call-handoff working perfectly how we want it, and so the easiest solution seems to be just find the longest range router we can, and tether people to it. The F1000Gs arent great but they are able to switch networks to the strongest one (after about 20 seconds). I dont think this is an issue for this installation our location isnt nearly as big as UnDeRdOgs 15k feet, I would guess our location is probably 50 yards wide and 150 yards long max and that is with 2 100ft long hangars in the middle. Also this is not a phone system replacement, its something to give some users a walk around phone in addition to their desk phone, as replacement for Spectralinks (cost to replace spectralink - 700$, cost to replace F1000G 150$)
Yes - enGenious and Senao are one and the same - which brings up another interesting point - Some may have heard of them, but this company has been in the cordless phone business for a long time, and they are known for making some of the worlds longest range and most durable phones, I am not sure, but I think they somehow affiliated with Senao 3-4 years ago.
probably not cost effective either - but some of their phones are touted to go over 3000 feet (analog not VOIP).
If you find them for $140 - I would say go for it, looking back at the invoice I payed about $250 for them with the 19 DB antenna about 6 months ago.
add one of these to your AP, and a single unit will probably do it http://www.wlanparts.com/product/OD24-9D7
Also make sure to get a RP-TNC to SMA Male pigtail. Also that AP is POE capable, so if power is not accessible, its no big deal, just order a POE injector.
those guys also have the AP for $140, you could buy anywhere, but I have had great service from them.
Well I really hate to break the news to you but to use AP's for this (and not have the dead air) you must giveup on the hand off.
You will need to have a third to auth to the network something like radius
hand off is about 50 ~ 75 ms in the best setup and over 100 ms in the avg.
and as we "hear" speech at 25 ms or less as single event (most of us do anyway)
anything higher and we "hear" or better term is "notice" echo or lag.
Cheap home routers will not work because of this simple fact.
Now I do have some WAP11's in service as wireless "cabling" Point 2 point
And I do have a setup of WAP11's as a AP with three repeaters which works very well, if you discount the LAG..
The junk Linksys Wi-Fi (1 st gen.) is junk but when the battery is fully charged and it "wants" to work it covers a good 2000 foot run even when moving on a ATV I am told (Which the reason the phone is so beat up I am sure).
U can find UHF phones which will cover MILES in the right setup.
Do you get lag when you walk between them? If so is it silent or echoing or is it both for a second or longer? Honestly can people deal with it?
Okay! I just put in two 3220 routers and WOW they work great. You do have a little of the switch time delay when walking between the APs but the users can deal with it. I'm going for more 3220 maybe about six of them total. Its working the way I suspected them to work, kind of like an old type of cell phone when you travel between two repeaters you hear a little digital noise and then its clear.
I'm using:
EnGenius 3220 both in AP mode with WDS on. D-Link DPH-540 battery life needs help.. but ok phone might change mind when testing some different phones out.
I'll post the results.
Details of testing.
3 floors about 31,324 SQ. FT. total. with all types of metal, rooms and thick concrete walls.
CO
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pri
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(OLDPBX)
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pri
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(TB)
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pri
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(TB)
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(POE SW)----(AP)
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(AP)
Underdog, thats my same situation building wise, thick metal/concrete walls and the building surrounded by 2 large jet hangars. I just put in 1 of the 3220 routers and it has *fantastic* range. I am still using that p.o.s UTstarcom phone. Could you suggest a more 'executive' type phone? I need one with desk phone type functions; transfer calls, easy way to handle a 2nd call coming in, etc. Battery life not too important, as long as the users dont have to charge multiple times a day.
Also, what exactly did you do to get call handoff working? Is it actually handing off calls mid-conversation, or do you mean by 'switch time' that it switches between APs when out of conversation...taking the highest strength one. I was able to get AP switching working, but call handoff was not working for me. I was using a USR ap and a linksys ap just for testing. Is the WDS what is allowing the calls to be handed off? im not sure if the usr/linksys setup I had was doing that or not.
cant wait to hear your response :)
bump
bump again for underdog or anyone with an answer to my question!
thanks :)
*edit* double post
Oh man sorry for the wait I just had a little break here :)
I used the WDS setup and it switches off from the weakest to the strongest and a tiny little bit of strange noises like ms and back to full bars when you switch. It’s cool I was watching the POE switch that I have them on and saw one light blinking when the guy on the phone walks around the building it starts handing off to the other AP, Pretty cool. If you want ill do a print out of the setup. Upgrade your APs to the newest firmware.
As for the phones I will be testing some out, haven’t got that far as of yet.
Ill do the AP firmware upgrades today, thanks for the heads up. Im still not 100% clear though...are the users able to initiate a call on AP 1, walk around the building into AP 2 territory, and have the phone sense a stronger connection so switch from AP1, to AP2 *during* the call. Or is that switching happening while they are off the phone.
I think I am going to test that hitachi IP-3000 phone mentioned earlier in the post, and maybe the linksys WIP-320, the F1000G is just a kinda crappy phone.
Yes they can walk from one to the other AP with no problem but (ahhhh, the but) you will hear just a tad bit of noise ie cracking, tones or nothing for a slight millisecond. This should be no problem all you have to do is say "Can you hear me now?"... Kidding, it sounds good and the signal bars will climb back up. I plan to install more downstairs I think 4 will cover the entire building. If not I will install more and jack the power up or if I have a blind spot I'll turn it on low in that spot. Speaking of which have you messed with the power settings for the output of the antenna?
I'm also eyeing that hitachi IP-3000 and linksys.
I set the power settings to extreme but it seemed like I lost range that way. I ordered one of the hitachi 3000 it should be in tommorrow. Where did you find your firmware updates?
My hitachi IP 3000 came in today and first impression is wow!, very solidly built phone, pretty quick setup. Reception was nice, very clear compared to the F1000G. It sounded better than most cellphones. very impressed so far. I am working on getting our WDS switching setup, the last time I had it running we got some sort of network spanning and it brought our network down. I updated both firmwares and I will test again once I get a chance.
for the WDS setup, I put in the MAC of each device 1 into device 2, and device 2 into device 1. Then I had them both plugged into the network. Is this how I need it setup? or do I only have 1 device plugged into the network, and the other APs have ITS mac put in, and they are not plugged into anything? maybe thats what was causing our network spanning and multiple routes issue.
I think on those units I had to set the default gateway to blank or 0.0.0.0 - I cant remember which it was exaclty. Just wondering if you have the gateway correct.
You are doing the WDS in a star topology right? I know it says you can WDS up to 4 routers away, but I found it best when doing the WDS back to 1(or more) primary wired router, you can have several secondary WDS partners, but make sure not to run additional WDS partners off those secondary partners.
Hope the new firmware helps.
When I get back to the office I'll print screen the setup of the wds. I read you have the hitachi IP 3000 is this a nice phone I'll let you know how the hitachi IP 5000 I've just ordered it today. (((CAN'T WAIT!!!)))
( execflight) The hitachi IP 5000 phone is NICE! very nice and small way better than the D-Link 540. Comes with a desktop charger too! I also received three 3220 AP's, and you have to install more wow, I have coverage now. Do you still need help with your setup?
Member Since:
2007-02-06