We had Smartbridges (initial, older stuff) deployed for ~3 months and didn't have ONE PROBLEM. So, we made the decision to mass deploy them. WHAM - their quality went down the drain and now we seem to spend a good chunk of our day running around fixing Smartbridges units (or replacing them).
We were very (VERY) hopeful that the Smartbridges (along with our Canopy gear) would give us a good, stable, quality alternative to DSL. In theory, unlicensed wireless is cheaper than DSL. However, because of the excessive amount of man-hours we spend on maintaining our Smartbridges it turns out that DSL is cheaper (and much, much, much, much, much - you get the picture) more reliable.
The worst part is we love the concept of Smartbridges. We love working with their units (although they need better Logging to include the ability to send SNMP traps and SysLog entries to a SNMP/SysLog server for historical purposes). But, we MUST HAVE stable, reliable gear otherwise we run into the problems that Sully reported a while ago --- where he is losing customers because of lack of reliability!
IMHO - forget making the unit a router. Forget making the unit do NAT. Smartbridges needs to ensure they have a quality design (from electronic components to cabling components) so that we (WISP community) can continue to use their product to compete with DSL, Cable Modems and Satellite. If we lose our customers, eventually Smartbridges lose their customers (if we don't have end-users subscribing to our service, we no longer need Smartbridges).
Oh what I'd give to have "the new and improved Smartbridges" equipment work like the rock-solid stuff we had for the first 3-months we deployed Smartbridges!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At 08:48 AM 8/20/2003 -0700, you wrote:
I have 25 clients off of my repeater (aPPo in access point mode) which connects back to my head-end via an indoor airPoint. My head-end has 24 clients plus the repeater locations (2 of them) which is 26 associated. If you include the users on the other side of the repeaters, I have a total of 52 clients going through my head-end aPPo.
Everything was fine with my head-end until I put up one of the new (bad chipset) units. It now will drop ALL my users are random times (normally between 10 am and 5 pm). It only gets up to 80 degrees here&so heat shouldn t be an issue.
My repeater with 25 clients on it&works flawlessly! It is an older aPPo with the hardwired CAT5 attached.
Sully
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Blazen Wireless
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 7:44 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [smartBridges] MORE ABOS crapping out
I notice that when I get 21-22 users and sometimes 23 is the max that seems to be able to associate to the APPO before I start seeing the dissociation problems.
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Blazen Wireless
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 7:32 AM
- Subject: [smartBridges] MORE ABOS crapping out
- Okay I give up I have 4 of the new radios I purchased with supposedly the new chi and the new firmware and they are still disassociating any wonderful ideas on what to try next.
- 1. I have tried everything I have tried in the past when this whole thing started so PLEASE SB don't tell me stupid stuff to check already since I know 100% it is not the installation.
- 2. When we went to look at the one yesterday it was thought to be heat related. We touched the ABO and it was Luke warm if at hottest. Link light (blue) was just flashing away NO association. RSSI 85% Link 95% GREAT signal and he keeps losing associating every day.
- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let us know what's causing this.
- This customer is hooked from the radio to a D-link 4 port router to his laptop as are most all my installs..
