Re: [WISPA] Nanostations

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:20:36 -0700

Matt,

Having 90-100 subs on an AP that supports roughly 20Mbps of bandwidth is different than an AP that supports 5Mbps with 128 subs. There is a reason Trango, Canopy, Alvarion, and many others do a "polling" system... it allows better, more effecient use of the available bandwidth... especially for providers like me that sell a symmetrical service (1meg x 1meg, 2meg x 2meg, etc.). So the upload is just as important as the download.

Here's a test for you... take an AP without polling and start an upload on a client that is 80% of the capacity of the AP and then try and surf with another connected client and see how it "feels"... if it's even possible. With the Trango AP's, we are able to use 95% of the rated bandwidth on each AP before we see any issues (jitter, latency, etc.). That just is not possible with a non-polling system (in upload or download scenarios).

Travis


Matt Larsen - Lists wrote: 
Travis,

I've got 802.11a APs with 90-100 subs on them without polling and 
customers are very happy.   I am one of them - as I have a 4meg 
connection at my house that does just about anything my Trango gear 
would do when I was using it.   Bandwidth control addresses nearly all 
of the issues that polling does in the implementations I have put 
together. 

As far as the MT community being 10x the size of the StarOS Community - 
it's not how big it is, it is what you do with it.   :^)

I've had plenty of experience with both StarOS and MT, and MT just 
doesn't have certain features that StarOS does.   StarOS has kickass 
Atheros drivers and a superior way of automating the provisioning and 
deployment.   MT does have a lot of other cool features, but I don't use 
them so they don't mean a lot to me.  

FWIW, the WAR-1 version of StarOS is stripped down to the point where it 
fits into 4meg of memory.   Probably wouldn't be hard to port it to the 
Nanos.

Matt Larsen
vistabeam.com 

Travis Johnson wrote:
  
Matt,

Polling is a requirement for a system that will scale to larger number 
of clients. I have Trango AP's that will only do 5Mbps total 
bandwidth, yet we have loaded them up to their max clients (128) and 
have no issues. Latency is less than 5ms to any client at any time, 
and the bandwidth is smooth and consistent.

And although I have great respect for StarOS, the Mikrotik community 
is at least 10x bigger than StarOS... it would make more sense for 
Ubiquiti to load Mikrotik on the Nano's... ;)

Travis
Microserv


Matt Larsen - Lists wrote:
    
Travis Johnson wrote:
  
      
Matt,

I agree with almost everything you said... except the polling part. 
Having a robust, efficient polling system is the best thing available 
for outdoor wireless. That is one of the main reasons we are now using 
Mikrotik is because of their Nstreme and polling system. We are 
finding now it's not the same quality as Trango's polling, but it does 
work.

How else do you keep a single customer from taking down an entire AP 
with a large upload (usually from an infection, virus, worm, etc.)? I 
have tested this over and over and over, and every time I come back to 
the same conclusion... you have to have a polling system to control 
the upload, otherwise the customer with the best signal dominates the 
AP (on the upload side).

Here is a very simple test... set up an AP with two connected clients 
without polling. Start an upload on one client and then try doing a 
download or even a ping from the 2nd client. My tests show the 
download and/or ping to be very unreliable and very sporadic. Now, if 
you turn polling on and do the same test, everything works fine while 
the upload is running and the 2nd client can't even tell there is an 
upload running.
    
        
Um, bandwidth limiting?   As long as the AP has the upload speed coming 
from the client capped to a rate slightly less than the total capacity 
of the pipe, its not a problem.   I'm doing the test right now, and I 
have rock solid pings, with a little bit of jitter. 

  
      
What we really need is the Nanostation-ROS... a Nanostation running 
Mikrotik (even for $50 more per unit)... that would be the killer 
CPE... I would place an order for 500 right now today. :)

    
        
Or Nanostation-SOS - a Nano running StarOS.  

Matt Larsen
vistabeam.com
  

      



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