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For existing buildings that are difficult and expensive to retrofit with Cat5e, I am looking at deploying Firetide's mesh network nodes. Does anyone have experience with them and are there better alternatives out there? The benefit I see is that I can use 5 or so mesh nodes in an approx 100,000 sq foot building such as an elderly assisted living center that is basically laid out as a hotel or dorm room and wire 1-4 WAP's off each unit so running cat5e and 18-2 for power from the mesh node to each WAP.

For those not familiar, Firetide's mesh nodes utilize 802.11g and are self configuring and healing. All you do is plug them in and they provide the infrastructure to attach WAP's to without running back-haul cabling. Of course one of the units is hard-wired to the gateway.

The application that needs the internet access is a product called ElderWatch that has a system unit in each client's apartment that only occassionally needs a 128kbps pipe to upload and download data. We expect to have anywhere from 50-150 clients' systems on the network with probably only a max of 5 actively communicating at any one time so speed and bandwidth are not a major concern. The biggest challenge is to keep costs contained yet have a reliable network. Firetide also has their own network management software to manage the mesh nodes as well as their WAP's.

Hi pebaugh ,

Firetide offers exceptional mesh wireless devices.

Note:
The major enterprise vendors Aruba/Cisco have incorporated a mesh functionality in some of their WAPs as well to reach those hard to wire places. They too see the value of mesh networking.

Cost seems to be one of your concerns:

I have used Meraki's Mesh Wireless nodes over the past two years and will leave you a PM on some of the caveats based on their performance and level of management with links to Meraki. Perhaps a pilot test of the Meraki nodes may add some value in some areas of the facility?

They are not dual band radio's so you are limited to 2.4GHz for one.

Again, it is a trade-off between the costs of implementation and performance you are looking for.

How will your network scale in the future?, Will you be looking at doing some sort of location based tracking of the elderly and equipment in the future?

How bizarre. I was just on Meraki's site digging through their knowledge base, funny you mentioned them Compughter - you beat me to it.

You can also consider Trapeze in that mix, they have a mesh capability as well and a great management interface although all of the above (Cisco, Aruba, Trapeze, Firetide) will be much more expensive than Meraki. Question is if it will suite your other needs beyond the $$$ factor.

Good luck!

While cost is a consideration, reliability, ease of install and maintenance are much higher in priority. I am still trying to get some cost numbers from Firetide yet I read in a press release that their mesh nodes are $800 MSRP and ? for their WAP's. These numbers are not out of the question. I intend on being an installing dealer of whatever brand I select since there will be many installs in these facilities.

On the initial installs we intend to blanket each apartment with 802.11g coverage. Each facility Can have from 50-150 apartments which are efficiency apartment approx 400-500 sq feet each.

The initial intended application, ie ElderWatch requires an always on internet service yet the aprtment systems have a communication duty cycle of approx 1% and even when communicating the band-width requirements are only 125kbps or so so really we do not need much performance.

We are looking though at the potential of offering optional IP cameras yet this pushes us on the opposite end of the bandwidth situation.

Thanks pebaugh,

In the past I did some extensive research on Firetide products and recommended them for enterprise level deployments at another employer.

Since costs are not major concerns but installation and performance are; Firetide offers more output power, up to 400 mW in some cases thus, more range than Meraki's nodes. They also have additional Ethernet ports to provide connections for IP cameras. They also have the capability of dual radios in either the 2.4/4.9/5 GHz range. Because of that, you may be able to get away with less nodes (hops) and performance will go up.

Here is something more on some of the Meraki implementations from a nonprofit should you decide to augment this into your business line. I encourage you to give them a try in some of your smaller deployment. I think they have some value to add for those on a budget.

They (Meraki) is part of the One Laptop per Child Project as well.

http://www.netequality.org/projects.html

Thanks Compughter,

I have a few questions about Meraki.
1.) I assume that each unit is both a mesh node and WAP?
2.) With their feeble 2db antennas, I understand they can be upgraded to a third party antenna. What can be realistically accommodated, a 5 db, 7.5db, 15db?
3.) Each unit has an RJ45 connector. Can I hardwire this to my network device if placed nearby and obviate the use of a wifi adaptor or is this just used to connect to the gateway?

For the small cost of each unit, I can see an implementation whereby I place one in each room or every other room .

4.) With a dense network, how are the channels assigned? All the same? Doesn't this lead to interference? I can imagine 30-50 nodes in each building with each node serving 2-4 efficiency apartments.

5.) one concern with the low cost is that the hardware might be junk and have a high failure rate? any input on this.

The Meraki web-site and knowledge base is very sparse on data to answer these questions.

thanks.

Hi pebaugh,

I was going to send a private message but for the benefit of all, here goes. I will try to answer most of these, others feel free to chime in ;-) Moderators please remove this if it distracts from the forum.

1.) I assume that each unit is both a mesh node and WAP?

YES

2.) With their feeble 2db antennas, I understand they can be upgraded to a third party antenna. What can be realistically accommodated, a 5 db, 7.5db, 15db?

Yes, these antenna are not on par physically with enterprise APs . I have not seen much improvement with adding a 5dBi antenna compared to the 2dBi,

I would think something 6dBi greater would make a difference, I have not tried those higher levels of gain mindful of the FCC EIRP limitations. Drawback: single antenna (no diversity)

3.) Each unit has an RJ45 connector. Can I hardwire this to my network device if placed nearby and obviate the use of a wifi adaptor or is this just used to connect to the gateway?

You can use the ethernet ports to connect other devices to (minus) the root mesh's AP port.
I have plugged my laptop directly into one of the far nodes and got a DHCP address on the Meraki network. That is the DHCP server for all the nodes and client are coming from. Yet, another possible draw back.

For the small cost of each unit, I can see an implementation whereby I place one in each room or every other room .

4.) With a dense network, how are the channels assigned? All the same? Doesn't this lead to interference? I can imagine 30-50 nodes in each building with each node serving 2-4 efficiency apartments.

Yes, the same channels are used over in this mesh . Interference does come into play. Throughput goes down on any mesh system if they are single radio especially. So you are backhauling and provding client access on the same radio. A site survey with a three of these would give you a better estimate of how far they reach with various antenna.

5.) one concern with the low cost is that the hardware might be junk and have a high failure rate? any input on this.

That was my concern as well. But amazingly these little things work well (I have the indoor units) They (indoor) are not "hardended" for the outdoor elements but hold up and perform well under the purpose they where built for. That its low cost mesh wireless to provide access to the internet. Caveat: Meraki has outdoor units

Side note and worth exploring: Their competition,

Ruckus Wireless:
http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex/2925_lmg/

and PepWave:
http://www.pepwave.com/

Both have literature more indepth than Meraki's.

Hope this helps!

Compughter,

thanks for all of the input. I did check out the netequality site and they actually have more info and options than Meraki had on their site. They actually have embellished the web-based net management to add additional features and have some nice packaginjg options for the indoor nodes. If you hadn't seen, they repackage the indoor node into a somewhat larger plastic housing that encompasses the transformer, the wap and the antenna in a sealed unit with a 3 prong 120vac prong on back. All you do is plug this critter in and they even provide an anti-tamper (torx) screw so that people do not inadvertantly remove these is say apartment complexes and low income housing.

I plan to order a few and test these out.

I purchased 2 indoor and one outdoor Meraki mesh network nodes yet after testing it will not meet our need. Our clients (Elder-Watch controllers) use a fixed IP and Meraki does not support this. Also, it uses a flash page that you must clink through that we would have to modify our system to utilize. Meraki is very cool for a cheap mesh network yet it has too many limitations for us.

I also investigated the Ruckus mesh products yet they have a hybrid style of mesh implementation with wired nodes needed on each fllor of the building and then mesh nodes out from there. They are a possibility.

My energies are now focused on an implementation of hardware and software we are somewhat familiar with and have good success over the last 18 months with using it for basic routing and as WAP's. This is using a $65 Linksys WRT54GL wireless router/switch with the GNU open-source freeware DD-WRT flashed into it. We have been using it for residential and small commercial implementations and with a few dozen out there over the last 18 months it has proven to be very solid and trouble-free.

What i am planning is to use this same hardware and software using the WDS (wireless distribution system) facilities to implement a mesh network. The assisted living facilities are laid out with 2 stories of approx 30-50 efficiency apartments on each floor. I plan on having a base implementation as follows:
1.) A single DSL line 1.5Mb/s or better connected to Linksys DD-WRT configured router with the wireless off.
2.) A Ubuntu Linux configured server as our application server connected to this switch. this is running our GrandCare server app.
3.) 20-60 ElderWatch controller clients with fixed IP addresses and with a 802.11g wireless card
4.) A Linksys DD-WRT wireless node harwired to the switch with one on each floor as central to the building center as we can make it.
5.) 6-12 Linksys DD-WRT WDS mesh nodes placed around in various rooms to get desired coverage and minimize hops. These will have the power boosted a bit to probably 150 mw or so via the DD-WRT firmware. We may also change out the two diversity antennas to 7db units if needed from the stock 3db units.

Our application needs always on internet connection yet the bandwidth is only about 60kb/s for each node with only 2-3 max being accessed ie used at any same period of time so I can afford up to about 4 hops without stretching it.

I am also looking at using a Buffalo wireless unit as a potential alternative to the Linksys since it has the ability to put out up to 380mw in the G-mode and their PC-card NIC's have more power than its competitors and can accomodate an external antenna. This will give me the flexibility to increase the distance between an in-room node and the mesh nodes. I have one source for Buffalo equipment yet it may run out soon since Buffalo is under an injunction barring sales in the US until they resolve their patent litigation issues.

Anyone have any critique on this plan and approach and any insight or questions I should be investigating. I appreciate any and all input.