need very good wireless networking info

[tigerbait]

Could someone direct me to some of the top of line wireless networking products? My boss just told me about a proposal we are working on for an industrial company that wants to go with a wireless lan to link up all the power monitors around the plant. The usually deal is fiberoptic, involving lots of long cable runs. But they want wireless. Probably talking about 1000 feet , 8-15 nodes. Price is not important. They want the best. ( This is for a $100 million expansion).


Thanks in advance.

 

[spidey07]

If they want the best then run the fiber.

Otherwise, I've had great success with the cisco 350 product line.

350

 

[TheCandyman]

I have to agree with Spidey on that one... (considering I have a 1/2 doz. myself)

The Cisco line of Aironet (350 series) is the best and the most secure with 128bit WEP encription.

another link... different page.

 

[spidey07]

Yeah, I try not to be a cisco biggot but they (aironet) really did a great job with the 350 series.

I'm all for running the fiber though, no troubleshooting, faster, more secure and really pretty cheap.

 

[Garion]

How industrial are you talking about here? Keep in mind that a lot of heavy equipment can cause some heavy interference that might cause havoc with wireless devices.

Also, what are you connecting to? If it's not a standard PC you'll have to put in wireless bridges for all the nodes. I don't know if you can "multipoint" 8-15 remote bridges into a single central bridge or if you'd have to use a bunch of central bridges. This means you don't get to use cheap PCMCIA/PCI cards and the price goes up quite a bit.

1000 feet is quite a ways. You'd probably have to run fiber to get your access points located around the building so that all the devices were in contact with an AP close enough to have reasonable signal strength. That, in itself, won't be cheap.

All in all, I agree with Spidey. If you want the best, just run fiber and get it over with. IF they really want wireless, make sure they understand that they won't be saving much money and will be getting something that's much slower and far less reliable.

If you do go wireless, check out ZDNet's Enterprise Wireless homepage. Has some pretty good resources.

- G

 

[tigerbait]

Black Box
This stuff looks pretty good.


This is for wiring a SCADA system, except that is will only be used for data gathering. There are square D circuit monitors at the switchgear, and those connect to switches like
this.




What I'm looking at is station adapter connected to device , then an access point connected to a device in the "middle" of the rest, and this will interface with the wired lan in the offices.

 

[tigerbait]

I found out that they have the fiber already installed, but they want to go wireless anyway.
Doesn't really make much sense to me. Supposedly they want to have a high-tech profile. But if this is what they want, and they are paying us to examine the option, then we can't really say no.

 

[spidey07]

If we eliminated the customer then networks would work great!

darn customers

 

[ScottMac]

Something like a Proxim P-P wireless bridge would work better, IMHO. I'm not sure that Proxim is still around, but an alternative would be something like the Sylink (public spectrum MW), or if the have the bux, the Cannon ConoBeak laser P-P system. The CannoBeam will do up to OC12 (622Mbps) and might go as low as 100Meg Ethernet or Multi-DS3. The Laser system is speced for up to 2 miles at OC12, with the same 6db rolloff as a 16-24GHz microwave. The cost is ~ 50-60K per pair, but it's a sweet system for most locations.

(Check out Cannon's web site, I believe they have specs & literature on the CannoBeam)

The Cisco wireless stuff I've seen seems to be more for mobility applications than cable-free p-p applications.

FWIW

Scott

 

[tigerbait]

Thanks Scott, that is some serious sh!t.