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Are the client stations on this network connecting to MS Active Directory or Novell eDirectory? Your situation sounds very similar to what was faced at one of my previous assignments. Due to user density and bandwidth requirements of Novell we had to switch to Xirrus arrays to solve our problems. D-Link, Netgear & Cisco WAP's just couldn't do the job. Not bashing Cisco here, part of the problem in our situation was an incompatible wireless card on laptops. Things worked fine testing a handful of laptops at a time but add in the full class all doing the same thing at the same time and everything goes down the drain.

Blaze Escribi?3:

Are the client stations on this network connecting to MS Active Directory or Novell eDirectory? Your situation sounds very similar to what was faced at one of my previous assignments. Due to user density and bandwidth requirements of Novell we had to switch to Xirrus arrays to solve our problems. D-Link, Netgear & Cisco WAP's just couldn't do the job. Not bashing Cisco here, part of the problem in our situation was an incompatible wireless card on laptops. Things worked fine testing a handful of laptops at a time but add in the full class all doing the same thing at the same time and everything goes down the drain.

What situation did you use the Xirrus array? My understanding is that it is designed for open air environments like conference halls, expos etc.

A school house (like I imagine anyway) has many smaller rooms with approx 30 students in each room. What I understand of Xirrus, this isn't the optimal way it should be deployed, although I would love to hear your case study. Thanks!

GT

GTHill Escribi?3:

Blaze Escribi?3:

Are the client stations on this network connecting to MS Active Directory or Novell eDirectory? Your situation sounds very similar to what was faced at one of my previous assignments. Due to user density and bandwidth requirements of Novell we had to switch to Xirrus arrays to solve our problems. D-Link, Netgear & Cisco WAP's just couldn't do the job. Not bashing Cisco here, part of the problem in our situation was an incompatible wireless card on laptops. Things worked fine testing a handful of laptops at a time but add in the full class all doing the same thing at the same time and everything goes down the drain.

What situation did you use the Xirrus array? My understanding is that it is designed for open air environments like conference halls, expos etc.

A school house (like I imagine anyway) has many smaller rooms with approx 30 students in each room. What I understand of Xirrus, this isn't the optimal way it should be deployed, although I would love to hear your case study. Thanks!

GT

Currently we are deploying to all of our buildings for complete coverage. This includes traditional classroom areas and open areas such as media centers, auditoriums & cafeterias. This setup is supporting both wireless desktops and laptops alike. We have at least one lab of 25-30 wireless desktop stations in a portable building (read trailers). So far no major complaints, been using for about a year now. As with a lot of schools coverage can be an issue with brick construction especially in the older schools designed as "fallout shelters".

Actually Samba servers.. but the typical usage in this school would be 3-5 laptops using a wireless access point at a time. We have this idea of 'laptop pods' that teachers can check out and just bring a couple to their classroom and have some students use them.

I set up a grid so teachers wouldn't have to fuss with plugging in APs, etc... but nearly everyday I have to essentially reboot APs.

Aaron -

I suspect you have already read the below thread?

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=3663

It appears this is a pretty common issue with this particular AP. Looks like people are using a scheduled SNMP soft reboot, as a preemptive work around.

If it becomes too big of an issue, I'd look into returning them and using something else.

Regards,

Brett

Brett,

No I did not run across that thread before. I now have something to at least try. Thanks for the link.

I looked around previously for something like this, but my searches didn't turn up anything.

Nice job.

~ Aaron

Just an update to the thread:

I have figured out a way to reboot them with snmp. I'll be doing a snmp reboot via cronjob to see if I can keep the grid up.

In case anyone else runs into this, here is the following linux command to reboot it, assuming your private/write password is 'private' and target AP is 192.168.0.162:

snmpset -c private -v 1 192.168.0.162  1.3.6.1.4.1.4526.4.3.9.1 i 1

bro that really blows... maybe buying some cisco 1200's on ebay under 1oo may be a better option...

Update:

Been a couple weeks now running with the wireless grid that needs a reboot and the results are its much more reliable. I have yet to hear of any fixes coming down the pipe.