access point recommendations

[johnnydeu]

Hi,

I've got 2 questions. I work with medical offices and doctors are walking around with tablet pcs/laptops. I want a good business quality access point to recommend to all my clients.

1) what is a good quality ($100-$300 range) access point b/g with good range capabilities over 100ft indoors?

2) what options do i have as a scalable solution for larger offices where a client can walk from one end of the office to the other without dropping a connection, hopefully going from one access point to the other?

direction to some articles on this and model recommendations wouldbe greatly appreciated.

Johnny

 

[blue68f100]

AP's

I can recommend the USR 5450 AP 11b/g. It comes with 2 5dbi High Gain antennas. These sold for around $120 when I purchased mine. I am also using their PCMCI card with it. I currently have it set at low power. can cover 50' 4 walls with execlent signal (125mbps). I've had it for a 1 1/2 years and its been trouble free. The builtin Ralink mini-pci AP card in my LT has a problem. All users with this 2500 model report a line of site distance of maybe 20' with dropped connections. If you are working with only one brand of palm, you could optomize according to chip sets. I would guess they have newer models of this USR out now. The linksys is having a major problem when trying to set up users to roam between AP, so they are out for now. I don't know how good the antennas are in your palm type devices. If you were to set this up in the center of your office you should be able to cover your office on one unit, which would eliminate abunch of headachs.

I would stay away from all 11n units. It's just like the 11g was when it was pre-spec. A lot of comaptibility problems, drives problems, and that's just talking to 11n, not even adding the 11 b/g spec into the works.

 

[johnnydeu]

with the usr can i add additional units so that my laptops can roam from AP to AP. what do i need to do in that case just change the channel on each one?

john

 

[blue68f100]

This is from there manual on the USR5450.

Infrastructure configuration also supports roaming capabilities for mobile users. More than one BSS can be configured as an Extended Service Set (ESS). The continuous network allows users to roam freely within an ESS. All 802.11g Wireless Turbo PC Cards, PCI Adapters, and 802.11g Wireless Turbo Multi-function Access Points within one ESS must be configured with the same ESS ID and use the same radio channel.