Ah! SO sorry, I made a huge mistake and left out an important part: we use the Airport Extremes for wireless ONLY. They're dumb wifi repeaters.
We use the DLink DIR-655 for assigning and managing IPs, traffic shaping, etc. It runs like a champ with all of our traffic. Hasn't had to be rebooted in months. The D-LINK's wifi kinda sucked though, so we shut that off. http://www.dlink.com/DIR-655 -Alex /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Jerome Chang <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi all. > > Sorry folks, but I'd have to disagree. I tried to use an Airport Extreme, > then added another and we quickly overwhelmed them. We upgraded to a DLink > commercial grade router and within a year (or less!), that fizzled. We now > use Meraki AP's and router (since March 2011) and so far so good. > Basically, the Apple Extreme's simply couldn't handle the load for about > 40 simultaneous "devices." Remember that many people now use 2-3 devices > (laptop + phone/tablet), so you should anticipate x2. > > For the Apple Extreme's, we ended up having to often turn off and on > sometimes 1-2/day. The reason was that these Apple Extreme's would not > flush out IP addresses. We concluded that in an environment where you might > have the same 40 people, these AE's might be appropriate. But when we host > an event for 50 people... > > Also, AE's don't allow you to manage the user connections: no throttling, > no activity per IP address, etc. In an age of dropbox and all things cloud, > all it takes is one uneducated user to think they can upload a 1 gb movie > file to ruin the bandwidth for everyone else. Or say, when video streaming > and other heavy bandwidth usage peaks around lunch time because everyone's > watching NetFlix streaming while they take a break. > > Finally, how is everyone getting these fat 40mb pipes??? We pay $600/mo > for a 5/5 EoC, and $900/mo for 10/10. And some $200/mo I think for 10/2 DSL > (SLA, not consumer). I can only speculate a 50/10 or something must be $$. > Oh, and we need the synchronous 5/5 or 10/10 for our VoIP handsets. We use > QoS to prioritize the phone data packets; otherwise, we'd need 20/20 or > more! > > > Jerome > ______________ > BLANKSPACES > "work FOR yourself, not BY yourself" > > www.blankspaces.com > ph: 323.330.9505 | 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) Los > Angeles, CA 90036 > ph: 310.526.2255 | 1450 2nd Street (@ Broadway), Santa Monica, CA 90401 > > On Aug 26, 2011, at 7:53 AM, Pat Ramsey wrote: > > Josh, > > Never had any issues with the firewall. I eyeball the logs every so often & > haven't seen anything odd. > > The primary base station works great as a central router - no DHCP issues, > NAT works great, DNS etc. Very low-key & stable, as it should be. > > On the wireless side of things, there's no way we would be able to > satisfactorily handle more than 15 or so people on 1 wireless router. Don't > even try it. So I bought two (plus, it made the little red light in the back > of my head slow down. 2 is 1, 1 is none, etc) of the Extremes. > > We segmented out our cloud into three, in order to provide connection > points for the different speeds without causing a slowdown for faster > devices. Each uses the same wireless key, so it's convenient for users to > get on. My original plan of 1 cloud for all failed spectacularly the day we > had a visitor with an old 802.11b card connect, killing connection speeds > for everyone. D'oh! > > Cheers! > > Pat > > > On Aug 26, 2011, at 9:38 AM, Josh Aberson wrote: > > Thanks Pat, appreciate the help. > > I was looking into the Airport extreme option. I really like that it has > USB connectivity for shared drives, and that it's a dual antenna so can > separate out networks for different uses. Am mainly concerned with firewall > protection on the main line coming in. > > Have you ever had any issues with the firewall on those? Also, if you > didn't have two, do you think your 45 members would bog it down? > > Thanks again! > > Josh Aberson > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Aug 26, 2011, at 9:24 AM, Pat Ramsey <[email protected]> wrote: > > Josh, > > Congratulations, first off. Welcome to the fun! > > What are the connectivity needs of your users? Are they pushing large > amounts of code & files daily? Are you serving data from your end? > > We've always gone with a "reasonable" uplink. Business DSL for a long time, > then a cable line in addition, eventually adding fiber for data & keeping a > dsl for 1 member's VOIP phone. > > I've been in IT long enough to know you can never have a large enough pipe, > so set the expectations early, find out what's the right size without > busting your budget & work with your members - know them well enough - to > avoid any hurt feelings, problems, etc. > > We're at around 40-ish members now. Our data line is fiber, 5 up / 5 down, > I think it is. Our core router is an Airport Extreme base station. Off that > is a 24-port gigabit switch, as the space came with some wired data ports. > We run another Airport Extreme to extend the cloud in the main room. > Extended off that is a Linksys & a D-link wireless router (both flashed with > dd-wrt). Each of these has a old network printer attached to it. > > Easy-peasy, pretty much runs itself. > > Cheers! > > Pat > > > > On Aug 25, 2011, at 10:09 AM, Josh Aberson wrote: > > Hey all, > > Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut right > to it. > > I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing > details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet. We've > got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for > the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and > what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people. It's a > long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing > the network at any given time. > > Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I'm currently looking at > an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at > 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the > device. > > Would love some thoughts. > > Best, > > > *Josh Aberson* > [email protected] > m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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