Need help with AP solution

Hi All,

I'm trying to find a solution in regards to adding wireless access to our small office network. We are currently utilizing a Sonic Wall TZ series firewall/router. I thought about adding a smaller sonic wall wireless router to the network but am wondering if that's overkill.

I've also been warned to stay away from Linksys.

We will have 10-15 people utilizing wireless connectivity to our private network and internet usage at any given time. This will not be a public AP for customers or freeloaders obviously <grin>.

I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks so much in advance.
-mike

Hi mikeg299,

As far as deciding which brand/type of AP to go with all depends on what your looking for in wireless features. You can now obtain a wireless router with N-channel that will improve on 802.11 standards by implementing whats called multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) along with all kinds of other features.

You can simply stick with a standard 802.11g wireless router or in your case specifically a SonicWall wireless router. I'm a huge fan of keeping the same brand network devices within a network.

Why were you warned to stay away from Linksys? I'm a fan of Linksys, so I was just curious. Linksys running Cisco internals seems hard to see why you wouldn't want to go with Linksys. But of course everybody is entitled to their own opinion. If you do a search for DD-WRT on the forums, you'll see the Linksys are the best routers to configure as a enterprise router. But the DD-WRT firmware has now been expanded to run on many other brand routers.

If you have the money to spend on the SonicWall router, I'd stick to that wireless AP solution. But you could always pick up a cheap Linksys, Netgear, or D-Link wireless router and configure it as a secure AP.


Cheers mate,

ZiPPy

Also, what's your opinion on Cisco Aironet?

Being that Aironet is a Cisco product, I haven't seen them used in the enterprise. Which actually really surprised me, as I looked over the specs of various Aironet series. For example, the Cisco Aironet 1200 series claims to be very beneficial in those challenging RF environments. Also, I must say the shape of the Aironets are very different and peculiar.

I would think the Cisco Aironets can get rather expensive, but a simple search on eBay showed the 1200 series ranging from $65 to $170.


Cheers,

ZiPPy

We have 9 of these Cisco Aironet 1200 in our building (Nursing Home). They have turned out to be pretty good APs. The only problem we had with them are when using Plantronics CT12 wireless headsets, which was in the 2.4ghz band. Since we went to the 1.9ghz headsets, all is good.