Posted: 12/8/2008 3:51:24 PM EDT
One of my clients is stuck on DSL and has 30 or so units running off 1 Wifi cheapest they come Linksys $50 router. Fun huh .
Can you recommend a router that would maximize the screeming potential of BellSouth DSL? The client wifi cards are about 5 diff brands mostly B/G and they don't have the cash to upgrade them all to N draft. Any ideas are appreciated. |
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One of my clients is stuck on DSL and has 30 or so units running off 1 Wifi cheapest they come Linksys $50 router. Fun huh .
Can you recommend a router that would maximize the screeming potential of BellSouth DSL? The client wifi cards are about 5 diff brands mostly B/G and they don't have the cash to upgrade them all to N draft. Any ideas are appreciated. What exactly is the problem? Bottom line is 30 clients is 30 clients. A/B/G/N makes no difference. |
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I've heard some good things can be had by upgrading certain Linksys routers with aftermarket (free, open source) firmware. I forget the names, but Google is our friend... Tomato, DD-WRT, and probably a few more.
How big is the office they're in ? How many are on wireless vs wired? The best answer is to maximize the number of wired users. After that, if you have more than 5-10 users on the wireless, and you have a decent size office, you might be able to add a plain access point to the other end of the building, put on the same SSID but set it to a non-overlapping channel. (might want to dial the power back a little on each too) This will cut down on wireless congestion. |
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You need to bridge more wi-fi points together with hard wires.
I've done work for a company like this before. If they don't have the money or the want to do it right (hard wire drop at various locations) then you're always going to be fighting a battle with this company your entire relationship. If anything you need to get them to spend the money on more wireless access points and bridge them together with hard wires. |
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I'm not a networking guy, but my guess is that a company doing their network as cheaply as possible doesn't want to pony up for the equipment to maximize its potential. JMHO. Exactly. The OP needs to lay the expectation down that if they don't do it right, that you cannot be held responsible and your time is chargeable. I've seen this a million times, they'll start pointing the finger at the OP. |
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Beyond that, invest in a used Cisco 2611xm, some G rated Cisco access points, and teach yourself Cisco IOS. (it works for me, but your mileage may vary) Why in the living fuck would that be a requirement in his situation? I mean really? So cisco is the only way to do this right? |
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The best router in the world isn't going to make that connection any faster, or prevent people from being dead in the water when too many users are drawing from it. You've got the equivalent of a garden hose providing water to 30 homes. Guess what? Flush the toilet in 5 homes at once and the other 25 have no water. As long as the existing router has current firmware and is functioning properly I doubt you're going to improve the situation without a lot more bandwidth. Then and only then, would I look at better routers. But even then, a router is only as good as the network cards and the current state of the OS in the individual computers. |
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One of my clients is stuck on DSL and has 30 or so units running off 1 Wifi cheapest they come Linksys $50 router. Fun huh .
Can you recommend a router that would maximize the screeming potential of BellSouth DSL? The client wifi cards are about 5 diff brands mostly B/G and they don't have the cash to upgrade them all to N draft. Any ideas are appreciated. What exactly is the problem? Bottom line is 30 clients is 30 clients. A/B/G/N makes no difference. not true, if you have (29) 802.11g clients and just one 802.11b client and a 802.11g router, the whole network is slowed to 802.11b. Make sure they are all at least G. |
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You need to bridge more wi-fi points together with hard wires. I've done work for a company like this before. If they don't have the money or the want to do it right (hard wire drop at various locations) then you're always going to be fighting a battle with this company your entire relationship. If anything you need to get them to spend the money on more wireless access points and bridge them together with hard wires. I'm computer challenged but I'll ask a stupid question anyway. Are you suggesting hardwiring from router to other computer?....if so , how far away can you run a wire from a router without losing speed, (let's pretend this is a linksys N gigabit router for discussion) |
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You need to bridge more wi-fi points together with hard wires. I've done work for a company like this before. If they don't have the money or the want to do it right (hard wire drop at various locations) then you're always going to be fighting a battle with this company your entire relationship. If anything you need to get them to spend the money on more wireless access points and bridge them together with hard wires. I'm computer challenged but I'll ask a stupid question anyway. Are you suggesting hardwiring from router to other computer?....if so , how far away can you run a wire from a router without losing speed, (let's pretend this is a linksys N gigabit router for discussion) If possible, hard wires are always the best, but you can always load balance the wireless network. But think about it, you're trying to have 30 clients access one wireless router. You can bridge together more then one router to "load balance" that wireless load. So instead of 30 people accessing 1 wireless access point, that load is split among 2,3,4,etc wireless access points. You hardwire the accesspoints together as a back bone cause obviously if you didn't hardwire the access points together over a higher bandwidth backbone(hard wires), what would be the point otherwise? |
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You need to bridge more wi-fi points together with hard wires. I've done work for a company like this before. If they don't have the money or the want to do it right (hard wire drop at various locations) then you're always going to be fighting a battle with this company your entire relationship. If anything you need to get them to spend the money on more wireless access points and bridge them together with hard wires. I'm computer challenged but I'll ask a stupid question anyway. Are you suggesting hardwiring from router to other computer?....if so , how far away can you run a wire from a router without losing speed, (let's pretend this is a linksys N gigabit router for discussion) If possible, hard wires are always the best, but you can always load balance the wireless network. But think about it, you're trying to have 30 clients access one wireless router. You can bridge together more then one router to "load balance" that wireless load. So instead of 30 people accessing 1 wireless access point, that load is split among 2,3,4,etc wireless access points. You hardwire the accesspoints together as a back bone cause obviously if you didn't hardwire the access points together over a higher bandwidth backbone(hard wires), what would be the point otherwise? Oh, ok....got it. |
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2nd DSL line, split the net or use 2 default gateways to do it half-assed. DSL here is 3MB down/640 up, so you need a Dual T1 to match DSL peak speed on download, but your upload will also be 3MBit then. Depends on what they are using up the bandwidth on, up or down. If it's upload speed, they are going to be paying 4 digit bills/month for satisfactory speed (T3). Otherwise, 850/month for 2 T1s with router from Qwest, not sure what bellsouth would charge. Many telco's don't allow "bonded" DSL lines, one router/LAN port, 2 DSL ports, but you might ask about it. For the LAN, Hardwiring might increase the speed a bit, 30 clients all in the same channel space could be an issue. 200m/link is the max for Ethernet / Cat5/5e/6 (timing, which cable quality won't improve much, is reason for length limit), although I've ran a temp 800ft straight line and was able to link at 100Mbit, pure luck there. |
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Well I'm more doing some favors for the 'client' and just trying to help them out, and they just don't have much money to work with and I haven't had to jury rig such a messed up system before. All the clients are wifi, no wired and in this environment wired would work for them.
I didn't think about getting another DSL line put in. I could split the network into 2 distinct networks and it would probably work fine. They just need a net connection, not even peer to peer networking. |
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I would get a dual band gigabit router. Like any of the ones from Netgear, D-Link or Linksys.
You can run the current cards off of the 2.4 Ghz channels and move up to 5Ghz N channel as time and budget permits. Also you can consider Powerline networking. You can run a cat 5 connection over the electrical lines and reach some places better than wireless. You can also get a wireless range extender on the end of the powerline connector to expand rance and help performance . All of these would have most of the newer features and security. As the cost of the wireless N cards come down, you can upgrade. Later you could put in a Gigabit switch and upgrade the wired connections too. http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=681 http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1175243241047&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper&lid=4104733028B08 http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30591/97/ |
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Quoted: Personally, I'd go for a decent Aironet 1250 AP (30 clients is no problem), an 800 series router, and a DSL WIC. And honestly, it's not that expensive, considering.Why in the living fuck would that be a requirement in his situation? I mean really? So cisco is the only way to do this right? Why? Because good equipment that reliably solves the problem doesn't come cheap. The radios are good, they have excellent receive selectivity, and fantastic RF management features. And they'll have up to 600Mbit of bandwidth to share (300mbit on just one radio). I'm thankful to be in a position to outright turn down clients, who only want to cobble shit together on the cheap. Do it right, or find somebody else. There are plenty of "consultants" out there who will hack something together, and pass it off as a solution. I'm not one of them.  |
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Why not go with a managed network service from your provider. Research the telecom providers in your area and get on the phone with a few sales reps...a lot of them provide managed firewall/web content monitoring and web hosting services for small business. You will get a higher class of service....
Currently, your wireless router is providing basic Network Address Translation and firewall services and is probably getting a little taxed with 30 computers... I believe a managed network service should be able to take over this function for you. Get a few cheap Netgear, HP, Cisco 2900/2950 10/100 switches off of ebay... Daisey chain them together. Get a spool of cat V and wire in some drops....you can go up to 328' from the switch. I wouldn't want to deal with the security risks of low end consumer grade WiFi access points. For 30 clients, that is what I would do....YMMV |
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Quoted: Not with Aironet gear (well, not quite, anyway). The AP will turn on CTS-to-self in mixed networks. The link speed is still 54MB, but protocol overhead will certainly reduce effective throughput to a noticable degree. Still, the effective throughput is just over twice as fast as a b-only network. Quoted: Quoted: One of my clients is stuck on DSL and has 30 or so units running off 1 Wifi cheapest they come Linksys $50 router. Fun huh .Can you recommend a router that would maximize the screeming potential of BellSouth DSL? The client wifi cards are about 5 diff brands mostly B/G and they don't have the cash to upgrade them all to N draft. Any ideas are appreciated. What exactly is the problem? Bottom line is 30 clients is 30 clients. A/B/G/N makes no difference. not true, if you have (29) 802.11g clients and just one 802.11b client and a 802.11g router, the whole network is slowed to 802.11b. Make sure they are all at least G. N-clients are on the 5GHz radio, and aren't affected by other b/g clients at all. |
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Not with Aironet gear (well, not quite, anyway). The AP will turn on CTS-to-self in mixed networks. The link speed is still 54MB, but protocol overhead will certainly reduce effective throughput to a noticable degree. Still, the effective throughput is just over twice as fast as a b-only network.
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One of my clients is stuck on DSL and has 30 or so units running off 1 Wifi cheapest they come Linksys $50 router. Fun huh .
Can you recommend a router that would maximize the screeming potential of BellSouth DSL? The client wifi cards are about 5 diff brands mostly B/G and they don't have the cash to upgrade them all to N draft. Any ideas are appreciated. What exactly is the problem? Bottom line is 30 clients is 30 clients. A/B/G/N makes no difference. not true, if you have (29) 802.11g clients and just one 802.11b client and a 802.11g router, the whole network is slowed to 802.11b. Make sure they are all at least G. N-clients are on the 5GHz radio, and aren't affected by other b/g clients at all. He doesnt have Aironet gear, so its a moot point. |
| that router is smoking that DSL.. That is unless your DSL is running at 54 megabit.. I say run wires and wire the place thru the walls... its easy and once done is maintence free (PM me if you need instructions). If they wont wire then they are stuck with a shity WiFi router. |
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Don't think hardware is going to solve the problem. I have run as many as 15 users on a dsl line and it was ok as long as I made sure nobody was wasting bandwidth on internet radio, videos, etc. After a meeting when everyone got back to their machines and checked email it might get slow for awhile but it usually seemed fine. When you are sharing so little bandwidth among so many users one or two abusers can really make a difference. Now that I travel I see the same thing in hotels full of working folks. Everything is fine until all the guys get back from work and they start downloading porn and videos and the connection turns to caca.
A lot of people can get by with normal surfing and email on a dsl line. If a few of them are doing something that involves continuous downloading it won't work. The best router in the world won't fix it. The cheap Lynksys units are hard to beat as far as I can tell |
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Personally, I'd go for a decent Aironet 1250 AP (30 clients is no problem), an 800 series router, and a DSL WIC. And honestly, it's not that expensive, considering.
Why in the living fuck would that be a requirement in his situation? I mean really? So cisco is the only way to do this right? Why? Because good equipment that reliably solves the problem doesn't come cheap. The radios are good, they have excellent receive selectivity, and fantastic RF management features. And they'll have up to 600Mbit of bandwidth to share (300mbit on just one radio). I'm thankful to be in a position to outright turn down clients, who only want to cobble shit together on the cheap. Do it right, or find somebody else. There are plenty of "consultants" out there who will hack something together, and pass it off as a solution. I'm not one of them.
This all runs around 3K or so at least according to a quick check. Will it make that big of a difference when things are said and done. They went from using 4-5 pc's last year (no problems) to 30 or so this year and it is mostly connecting to a flash application which is also new and a huge bandwidth hog. How much would this help? I could sell it on them if in the end it would solve the problem. I'm thinking the DSL just doesn't have enough bandwidth. |
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Personally, I'd go for a decent Aironet 1250 AP (30 clients is no problem), an 800 series router, and a DSL WIC. And honestly, it's not that expensive, considering.
Why in the living fuck would that be a requirement in his situation? I mean really? So cisco is the only way to do this right? Why? Because good equipment that reliably solves the problem doesn't come cheap. The radios are good, they have excellent receive selectivity, and fantastic RF management features. And they'll have up to 600Mbit of bandwidth to share (300mbit on just one radio). I'm thankful to be in a position to outright turn down clients, who only want to cobble shit together on the cheap. Do it right, or find somebody else. There are plenty of "consultants" out there who will hack something together, and pass it off as a solution. I'm not one of them.
If you're on a budget the 1231G you can find refurbished and will accomplish the same thing. Remember to order the rubber ducky antenna's as they don't come with it. Subnet is right on - I'm a pro at this and crap is crap period. |
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Quoted: It will solve the problem of hanging 30 wireless clients off of a consumer grade AP, with a shit radio. Even with a DS3 at the site, they shouldn't be doing that. If they insist on being completely wireless, you CAN do it without any problems - with the right gear. It's just not cheap, that's all.This all runs around 3K or so at least according to a quick check. Will it make that big of a difference when things are said and done. They went from using 4-5 pc's last year (no problems) to 30 or so this year and it is mostly connecting to a flash application which is also new and a huge bandwidth hog. How much would this help? I could sell it on them if in the end it would solve the problem. I'm thinking the DSL just doesn't have enough bandwidth. Sometimes you can get away with having 30 PC's sharing a DSL connection, but like anything else it depends. Is it a 3MB DSL circuit? 1.5MB? Not every office has the same browsing behavior, either.. Are they all using the flash application at the same time? How much bandwidth EXACTLY are we talking about here, per client, with this app? Is it just browsing the occasional web site, otherwise? If you want to know how the DSL connection itself is holding up, you need to know exactly how much bandwidth is being consumed at any given moment. Often times even a cheap consumer grade router will allow you to check traffic counters via SNMP. If so, I'd bring a laptop in and setup something like MRTG to monitor it for a bit. Whatever you come up with, you need to find a way to monitor traffic, so that you can make an informed decision. I've had remote offices that size served by a single T1 with no issue. It just depends. Can everybody watch youtube videos at the exact same time? No. Do they, in a place of business? Not usually. Bottom line, you need to determine how much bandwitdth is actually being used, on average. Don't guess. |
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Quoted: If you're on a budget the 1231G you can find refurbished and will accomplish the same thing. Remember to order the rubber ducky antenna's as they don't come with it. Subnet is right on - I'm a pro at this and crap is crap period. Being a Cisco partner, I always forget you can pick up refurbished (and even used stuff), sometimes. You can save a bundle, for sure. One thing I would suggest, is that they pick up SmartNet contracts on the gear. It's so cheap (especially for a couple pieces of gear), I think it'd be crazy not to. Plus, he'll be able to call TAC if he needs some configuration assistance, or he has a problem. He'll get IOS updates, blah, blah. Truth be told, we won't even sell equipment without a SmarNet anymore, unless specifically asked. Even then, we'll insist they reconsider. I'm not sure how that works on used or refurbished gear, though. I only buy stuff on eBay for me, for use at the house.  |
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My recommendation would be to suggest a proper solution. 30 clients off a single DSL connection isnt optimal....its bare minimum and probably insufficient at best. At least have them go with a cable connection to a wired solution for the LAN. Be nice wouldn't it? For some reason they can get cable TV in the building, but the cable company won't do internet. Bastards. So I'm stuck with DSL. And wired LAN is not an option. And basically what they are doing is akin to 15-30 of them watching Youtube vids at once. I'll just have to monitor the traffic and get some real numbers to play with. Mostly I do web sites and now I remember why  . Thanks for the advice.
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And you MIGHT consider going wired, but don't assume you'll get off a whole lot cheaper than using proper wireless gear. A reasonable estimate to use is $75 per run, and figure you'll need 30 (and then some - I'm assuming they might like to grow a bit). So, that's $2,250, plus a Chatsworth (or maybe a small wall mount deal in a closet), a patch panel, wall plates, etc. And you still need a 48 port switch, and a proper router. Before somebody chimes in with "You don't need all that!", yes you do. A professional should wire the office correctly, not drag a bunch of solid core Cat5 with grey biscuits snapped on the ends over to the switch sitting on somebody's desk. In many cities and states, a wiring job over a certain dollar amount (of which this would likely qualify, unless he works for next to nothing) will require that the work be done by a licensed contractor. And they'll charge...$75/run, in my experience. Give or take. The cutoff is $500 in California. Not sure about Florida, but I'll bet there's a cutoff, somewhere. Personally, I'd definitely farm a structured wiring job out. At the rate I charge (and hopefully he charges), it'd end up being cheaper for the customer. A guy that pulls cable all day is REALLY fast at it, and has a better chance of getting it right the first time. His time isn't as expensive, either. Plus, on all but the simplest jobs, you probably need a licensed contractor to do it, anyway. If you live and work in an unzoned township in the middle of nowhere like me, disregard. |
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Quoted: Quoted: My recommendation would be to suggest a proper solution. 30 clients off a single DSL connection isnt optimal....its bare minimum and probably insufficient at best. At least have them go with a cable connection to a wired solution for the LAN. Be nice wouldn't it? For some reason they can get cable TV in the building, but the cable company won't do internet. Bastards. So I'm stuck with DSL. And wired LAN is not an option. And basically what they are doing is akin to 15-30 of them watching Youtube vids at once. I'll just have to monitor the traffic and get some real numbers to play with. Mostly I do web sites and now I remember why . Thanks for the advice. How much bandwidth is this DSL circuit provisioned for, anyway? |
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Quoted: About time somebody remembered to ask that. Quoted: Quoted: My recommendation would be to suggest a proper solution. 30 clients off a single DSL connection isnt optimal....its bare minimum and probably insufficient at best. At least have them go with a cable connection to a wired solution for the LAN. Be nice wouldn't it? For some reason they can get cable TV in the building, but the cable company won't do internet. Bastards. So I'm stuck with DSL. And wired LAN is not an option. And basically what they are doing is akin to 15-30 of them watching Youtube vids at once. I'll just have to monitor the traffic and get some real numbers to play with. Mostly I do web sites and now I remember why . Thanks for the advice. How much bandwidth is this DSL circuit provisioned for, anyway? If everybody is running streaming video, there will not be a "Cheap Solution". From the info in your latest post, since they refuse to run wire for any, you'll need to go with something above a Linksys, e.g. follow subnet's suggestions. They will also need to do something to increase the pipe to the net. A Single DS-1 (T1) would be a "step back" in speed for what you describe their usage as. IIRC, Linksys routers have a "Diag" page on the web management tab that will tell you what is provisioned and what is utilized on the DSL line, as well as packet loss, etc. (Or am I thinking IOS?) Take a peek there to get all the stats you can, and paste them here. It's really kinda hard to toss out suggestions when the problem seems both "big" AND vague... |
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I've heard some good things can be had by upgrading certain Linksys routers with aftermarket (free, open source) firmware. I forget the names, but Google is our friend... Tomato, DD-WRT, and probably a few more. dd wrt is pretty good. Open WRT is the foundation of White Russian and Kamikaze. Both are pretty good. If you go with the wrt54g, get the wrt54gs version 1 or 2. They have 8mb flash memory and can run dd-wrt mega (versus regular or mini). |