Wide area/long range access point

apatia77 · 20 Dec 2010 at 16:12

I am a little bit confused, my boss asked me to look into extending our network, basically we need some sort of wireless access point/router etc in our warehouse, we are going to have some scanners which will connect wirelessly to our network.

I am looking for something with quite good range even though our warehouse is not that big. At the moment we use some normal wireless router and it works quite well even though coverage is not that great but it is located in the main office for testing only/visitors use.

I am really confused and not sure what we need, do we need 1 access point, or multiple access points or what.

I have found Netgear PROSAFE WIRELESS-N ACCESS POINT- WNAP210 which says "Up to 10x the coverage and 15x the speed of 802.11g networks".

I can't quite find anywhere what the coverage is for any access points, I think it depends on location ie walls, shelfs, objects etc hence they don't provide any details. How do I know what will work well enough in our situation?

Syx · 20 Dec 2010 at 18:11

Right so without knowing the layout of the warehouse it's difficult to say, but essentially you'll want one (or more) APs wired back to a switch or router.
If you have more than one, these are then configured with the same SSID and security information to make the devices "roam" seamlessly between them.

Essentially to answer your question as to what will work well enough - it's impossible to tell without knowing, as you have guessed, what objects are in between your wireless APs and the client devices.
The best thing to do would be take the coverage of your existing device, and see what area that covers - use it as a base reference going forwards.

If you're comfortable, you can get your hands on some much cheaper devices than the Netgear one you've mentioned (like this one), install DD-WRT on it and get full functionality.

apatia77 · 21 Dec 2010 at 09:42

Thanks Syx, I think we are going to buy 2 x access points and then connect both in different ends of the warehouse and see how it goes.

paradigm · 21 Dec 2010 at 09:43

For the love of god buy decent access points and not shoddy consumer grade stuff!

Given that its for multiple concurrent connections, and that data integrity is more important than throughput, I'd rather get a decent Cisco Aironet "G" access point than a piece of crap consumer grade "N" product.

Infact, I'd rather buy a few used 1242's or similar than any brand new consumer grade access point.

ANDARIAL · 21 Dec 2010 at 09:48

we are going to have some scanners which will connect wirelessly to our network.

Won`t the range of the network coverage be limited to the capabilities of the scanners I.e. if the scanners are only G or B having a N network will be a waste of time?or of no benefit
Or am I completely wrong :confused:

Syx · 21 Dec 2010 at 12:59

paradigm said:
For the love of god buy decent access points and not shoddy consumer grade stuff!

Couldn't agree more. However the consumer stuff is much cheaper for POC when a user has no idea what might be affecting signal strength in a given area...

deuse · 21 Dec 2010 at 13:20

If you can wait for the TRENDnet which has 450 Mbps Access Point, Wireless Distribution System (WDS), and Repeater mode functionality.

The model is TEW-690AP
"Advanced features include 4 SSIDs per wireless band, unique encryption for each SSID, WMM Quality of Service (QoS) data prioritization,
WPA2-RADIUS encryption, and a convenient on/off power"

Trifid · 21 Dec 2010 at 18:26

paradigm said:
For the love of god buy decent access points and not shoddy consumer grade stuff!

Given that its for multiple concurrent connections, and that data integrity is more important than throughput, I'd rather get a decent Cisco Aironet "G" access point than a piece of crap consumer grade "N" product.

Infact, I'd rather buy a few used 1242's or similar than any brand new consumer grade access point.

This, basically. Buy several autonomous cisco AP's or equivalent. The 1242's are good and so are the 1142's that we are now deploying. Don't try and stretch the coverage as far as possible, work out roughly how many access points you will need to get good coverage and then present the bill. Remember on .11g you can only have 3 non overlapping channels (1, 6 and 11), you don't want these overlapping in close proximity.

apatia77 · 22 Dec 2010 at 11:23

Thanks guys. So I go to my boss and tell him that perhaps we should spent some more £ and get some professional equipment like some of the recommended by you above but then he says £300+ for an AP is way to much, he much prefers to spend £50.

I am so going to remind him that when we'll have some problems