Re: The 'Wi-Fi At Conferences' Problem

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: October 10, 2009 9:57:53 PM EDT
To: Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig () gmail com>
Cc: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: The 'Wi-Fi At Conferences' Problem

(Copying Dave, in case he's interested in the answers)

At 07:09 PM 10/10/2009, Joshua Tinnin wrote:

> Are there any backward compatibility issues in regards to using  
> 802.11a and wireless clients?

Some older 802.11a access points are not of good quality (such as the  
old Netgear APs). But the newer ones are probably some of the best  
radios made today.

> Also, what do you consider quality brand/type APs, particularly in  
> conference situations like the one described, or even a bit smaller  
> scale?

The routers we build have integrated radios, which we turn into access  
points. Of the third party access points, some of the best are the  
ones made for wireless ISPs, such as Tranzeo.

I really wish that the laptop LAN drivers for Windows supported half  
(10 MHz) and quarter (5 MHz) channels, since at close range one can  
get fantastic spectral efficiencies and larger channels are wasteful.  
But since they do not, we use 20 MHz channels. We also must have a  
certain number of plain vanilla 802.11b access points scattered about,  
to support users with legacy hardware. But we encourage the users to  
use the 802.11a APs if at all possible.

> Have you found cost to be an issue when trying to cover larger  
> areas, because of the restricted range of 802.11a, possibly  
> necessitating purchasing more APs for the same area than you would  
> need using 802.11g/n?

Given the "population density" of conferences, we actually want them  
to cover less area, not more. Due to just the basic overhead of  
maintaining the connections, an AP should not try to handle more than  
48 simultaneous users. If you give several APs the same ESSID and then  
tell each to limit the number of clients that connect, most laptops  
will automatically roam among them until they find one that's below  
quota.

--Brett Glass





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