So, seeing the activity on this latest thread regarding Nanostations has peaked my interest...so, to satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to do some research on Nanostations
(I'm making a lot of assumptions here, so please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm a relative newbie to this segment of the market) Now, it seems to me that the Nanostation, although cheaper in price, due to being limited to running CSMA/CA, does not do a good job in competing with the Motorola Canopy / Trango / Alvarions of the world...people who buy those products are paying for the extra R&D effort put into developing a more "WISP-focused" solution than just "plain-ol" Wi-Fi That said, getting into the world of Wi-Fi CPE - for anyone who is not running a proprietary protocol, it seems that the current market leader is Tranzeo, however, looking at their site, it seems that their "value-line" (SL2) product still goes for about $130 and doesn't even have ½ the features of the Nanostation and AirOS If you're running Mikrotik in 802.11x (WiFi) mode, by the time you factor in the cost of the card, antenna, enclosure, power supply, you're back at that $150 / CPE level With the Nanostation at $89.95, why would anyone deploying a 802.11x-based WISP buy anything else? -Charles ------------------------------------------- WiNOG Wireless Roadshows Coming to a City Near You http://www.winog.com From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Blair Davis Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 8:59 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Nanostations You know, It doesn't need to be a full port of mikrotik either... It needs to be a client. 802.11abg, netstream, bridging, basic NAT, dhcp client/server, ppp client, and interface queues would be enough for most of us. A lot of things could be removed to maybe get it down to the flash size needed. Just a thought. Travis Johnson wrote: Mikrotik would make MORE money by porting ROS to the Nanostation than they currently make on the Crossroads or RB411 (which we are buying hundreds per month of now). If it's a business decision, MT would be smart to port the software ASAP. Travis Matt Ferre wrote: One more note. Mikrotik has long history of introducing 'their' version of hardware that was previously sold by UBNT and made the momentum. First there was SR5. Then there came Mikrotik R52H, which is far worse in terms of performance and quality (though 50% cheaper) but just at that time became the high power card of choice for all MT based applications. Just at that time you could see MT support posts on their forum starting to suggest swapping SR5 to R52H if you only had any problems and that move alone was magicaly supposed to cure all your problems. Then there came RB133 - a cheap CPE replacement for LS5 and/or LS2. At that time LS2/LS5 became a no-no for MT use too. Then again, there is a Crossroads which is brand new and strangely similiar to LS2. That's obviously a coincidence too. And no, I am not saying Mikrotik is evil. They are just a profit oriented company with clear idea how to explore their market share and having a really solid businessplan. And just as you will never see Microsoft supporting Linux type software, you will never see Mikrotik supporting NS2/5. Though it's likely you may see Mikrotik version of hardware pretty much the same as NS2/5 sometime soon. On 7/21/08, Sam Tetherow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: While you may be right on their focus being RB+ROS. I don't understand why they would not want to sell a $40 license on a piece of hardware giving them a theoretical profit of close to $40. Hardware has to be manufactured and shipped and warrantied to some extent. If they are already writing the software to go with their hardware, why not pick up the extra sale on someone elses hardware at next to no addtional cost. People buying the NS2/5 are doing it from a cost standpoint. Even with an additional $40 for a software license it would be 110 for a compact unit with integrated antenna, dual polarity and a POE. That is $10 less than just the crossroads board with no POE, antenna or enclosure. It would cost another 50% for a rootenna and POE. If they worked with Ubiquiti they would have a chance to own the lowend market and finally have certified gear out there. The upgrade path would be perfect for their hardware. They would sell the AP hardware as well as higher end CPEs for business and backhauls and still make $40/CPE on the cheap end. And the operator has a 100% end to end ROS network. I wonder if they are making $40 on a crossroads after manufacture and shipping. I really don't see the downside to this, especially if the hardware is similar to the crossroads and ubiquiti really expressed and interest in working with them. Well, if MT doesn't want the business, I wonder if Lonnie is interested... Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Matt Ferre wrote: Looking at the posts on the Mikrotik forum I'd say Mikrotik doesn't exactly like Ubiquiti. And from business point of view I can clearly see why. Who exactly would benefit from porting Mikrotik to NS5? Mikrotik? No, their Routerboard sales would drop and as we see during last two years they are more into selling Routerboard + Routeros package than the software alone. Ubiquiti would be the main beneficiary of that situation and that's why you're not going to see it happen. Never ever. On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Jeromie Reeves wrote: Oswave says there is no NS2/5 support and will not be. DD-WRT has support. That is a shame since ros/sos seam not to have plans to support them. I wonder how much effort/money it would be to get Ubiquity to solicit a firmware from someone? My understanding (this is "friend of a friend" quality info) is that MT and Ubiquity DID have discussions about the NS platform. It is not something that is going to happen "out of the box", however with a 16M flash that Travis mentioned, perhaps it is something that could be done. I mean, the cost would be just $45 for the nLevel4 license and only about $23 or so (I can't recall the available pricing) for nLevel3 plus the hardware cost. -- ******************************************************************** *Butch Evans *Professional Network Consultation * *Network Engineering *MikroTik RouterOS * *573-276-2879 *ImageStream * *http://www.butchevans.com/ *StarOS and MORE * *http://blog.butchevans.com/ *Wired or wireless Networks * *Mikrotik Certified Consultant *Professional Technical Trainer * ******************************************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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