I agree with you, Marlon on the documentation/ease-of-use. I gave up using Tranzeos for StarOS because of its flexibility and powerful boards and the atheros driver available creating an environment with extremely low latency.
Tranzeos were/are super-easy. With StarOS, I've gotten over alot of the learning curve, but there is still more to learn. It's for geeks...but once you're there, you're in pretty good shape. My biggest issue as of late is that I have a problem remembering which power supply goes to which board, and remembering which of two ethernet ports is the PoE port on each different type of board. Documentation for StarOS and the equipment it supports is lacking. Just last week I told our engineer that we MUST put PRINTED information in the hands of our installers on the equipment that we use (what power supply to use, which is the PoE ports, which boards can handle the high-powered cards and how many, etc). The equipment and software is very very good, but you have to be at least a semi-geek to understand it. Mark Nash UnwiredWest 78 Centennial Loop Suite E Eugene, OR 97401 541-998-5555 541-998-5599 fax http://www.unwiredwest.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marlon K. Schafer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 8:31 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] star os config help- clarifying my message > I have more and more trouble justifying the cost of any product with a > "steep learning curve". There's just no reason for gear to not have a > simple and advanced mode these days. > > And there's no reason for documentation that doesn't cover simple questions. > > There's no reason to NOT have a quick start guide. > > There's no reason to have a box that doesn't do something right out of the > box (this one shipped with all wireless ports disabled!). > > There's no reason to not have the option of picking up the phone and getting > some help to get started. Now I'm DAYS into a project that should have > taken just a few minutes. There was no documentation in the box. Not even > the web site address, had to Google for it. There is no tech support number > on the web site. > > I guess if a company wants to stay small, have a small user base etc. this > is all good. You only get really tech savvy customers. Something that I'm > not when it comes to routing and command line. I've got a very lean fast > growing company. I have over a dozen brands of hardware deployed. They all > do things differently. I have long ago given up on trying to memorize all > of this crap. If it's not completely self explanatory (like 802.1d bridging > actually turning on bridging!!!!) I don't have time to play with the gear. > It doesn't really matter how good it is. > > For the record I've got the same bitch with MT. I can do a little bit more > with them because they at least have a decent gui. But most of what I do > with them is due to Butch's help. He's great but having to hire him all of > the time raises the cost of the gear by a lot. All because I don't have the > option of a Linksys simple setup option!!!! Dumb. Very dumb. > > Alvarion has work to do too. They use strange names for functions. Don't > give "typical" levels as examples right in the software. I mean really, how > am I supposed to know if 10, 1000 or -50 is a good number to try for > interference mitigation? And which settings would I tweak for which things? > Who the heck has time to read yet another 150+++ page manual? Put the > basics right in the software! > > sigh > marlon > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "George Rogato" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 6:56 AM > Subject: Re: [WISPA] star os config help- clarifying my message > > > > Not really trying to defend star. The documentation issue has been > > around since Adam met Eve. > > > > The learning curve appears to be steep, but in fact, there is pretty > > good documentation. > > If you search the forums, you will pretty much find anything you need to > > know. Trick is first searching the forums. > > Then there is Tog's WiKi that is pretty good. > > Tog has put a lot of time into the WiKi and helping others with their > > star stuff. > > > > One thing I might add, one reason it's hard to document star, it's > > always changing, and how do you document l7 filtering or isc dhcp easily? > > > > Fortunately Tog and a few other smart guys hang out there and try to > > offer their help when they can. > > > > Good luck Ralph. > > > > George > > > > ralph wrote: > >> I just re-read it and need to clarify. > >> I put addresses from the same subnet on all interfaces because it seemed > >> that an address was required per the blanks to fill in. It was never > >> documented to only put an address on one interface. > >> With other products, you don't really program the other interfaces, so > >> you > >> aren't inclined to make that mistake. > >> > >> > >> > >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- > >> WISPA Wants You! Join today! > >> http://signup.wispa.org/ > >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- > >> > >> WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > >> > >> Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > >> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > >> > >> Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ > > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > > http://signup.wispa.org/ > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ > > > > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ > > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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