On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Charles Wu wrote:
So, seeing the activity on this latest thread regarding Nanostations has peaked my interest...so, to satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to do some research on Nanostations
You didn't do quite enough research. :-)
(I'm making a lot of assumptions here, so please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm a relative newbie to this segment of the market)
Ok. I'll do it, but I'll be gentle. ;-)
Now, it seems to me that the Nanostation, although cheaper in price, due to being limited to running CSMA/CA, does not do a good job in competing with the Motorola Canopy / Trango / Alvarions of the world...people who buy those products are paying for the extra R&D effort put into developing a more "WISP-focused" solution than just "plain-ol" Wi-Fi
Here's the part that you missed. This thread is about putting Mikrotik on the nanostations. Mikrotik, if it can be installed on the NS, enables the ability to run NStreme, which supports the option to turn off CSMA.
That said, getting into the world of Wi-Fi CPE - for anyone who is not running a proprietary protocol, it seems that the current market leader is Tranzeo, however, looking at their site, it seems that their "value-line" (SL2) product still goes for about $130 and doesn't even have ½ the features of the Nanostation and AirOS
Out of curiosity, where are your numbers coming from? I'm not doubting that Tranzeo is a "market leader", but would like to see some clarification of this or know if it is simply an opinion.
If you're running Mikrotik in 802.11x (WiFi) mode, by the time you factor in the cost of the card, antenna, enclosure, power supply, you're back at that $150 / CPE level
Correct here. The "good news" is that while the AirOS is very nice, it is not NEAR as functional as Mikrotik. The thing that makes this attractive to WISPs is cost, but even more than that, it is the combination of cost + MT functionality + a very nice package.
With the Nanostation at $89.95, why would anyone deploying a 802.11x-based WISP buy anything else?
Very good question. -- ******************************************************************** *Butch Evans *Professional Network Consultation * *Network Engineering *MikroTik RouterOS * *573-276-2879 *ImageStream * *http://www.butchevans.com/ *StarOS and MORE * *http://blog.butchevans.com/ *Wired or wireless Networks * *Mikrotik Certified Consultant *Professional Technical Trainer * ********************************************************************
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