Klueless
Very Senior Member
Ramblings of an Old Man … Ruckus
Where else can an old man ramble on about computers and networks? (My wife tolerates it only to the point that it puts her to sleep at night : -)
As a hobby I do minor repairs and setups for family, friends and a few car lots. I’ve tried to engage professionals for the car lots but they’ve always priced themselves out before I can even get a conversation going between the principals.
So we’ve made do with my amateurish efforts for the past decade. But the car lots are doing well and we’re expanding. I sketched out where we are and what we’ll need and, once again, looked for a professional. This time I found one!
He came out, looked around and verbally shared his ideas. (I had not showed him my design so I was silently flattered that his thinking was similar to mine.) He then paid me a surprise visit the next morning saying he had an idea and looked around a little more.
So it’s a few years later and my new vendor is looking at the channel. There is room but prior company left no string to pull a new cable. Not quite enough room to push one through and too many right angles. I observe that one of the phone lines never worked right and that we don’t use it and suddenly we had a “pull string”. Thirty minutes and a few shots of “grease” later we had Ethernet, a spare and a pull string between the two buildings.
My new vendor wanted to use Ruckus R510s for the APs. Now Ruckus is pricey as hell but I quickly signed off on them. Lots of reasons;
Now we get 150 to 250 Mbps from anywhere in the 2nd bldg.. We have to walk 200 feet down the road to get 25 Mbps. What changed? We still have plaster & lathe walls and solid core doors
We’re three projects down already and will be wrapping up our fourth next week. The fourth is a little different; we’re converting POTS (landlines) to VoIP. If it works out well we’ve already a fifth project in the making.
It’s been a great month!
Where else can an old man ramble on about computers and networks? (My wife tolerates it only to the point that it puts her to sleep at night : -)
As a hobby I do minor repairs and setups for family, friends and a few car lots. I’ve tried to engage professionals for the car lots but they’ve always priced themselves out before I can even get a conversation going between the principals.
E.g., “Sign up for a ten hour block of time and we’ll look it over, give you a design, throw out all your old equipment and install professional equipment that only we can manage for additional blocks of time ...”
So we’ve made do with my amateurish efforts for the past decade. But the car lots are doing well and we’re expanding. I sketched out where we are and what we’ll need and, once again, looked for a professional. This time I found one!
He came out, looked around and verbally shared his ideas. (I had not showed him my design so I was silently flattered that his thinking was similar to mine.) He then paid me a surprise visit the next morning saying he had an idea and looked around a little more.
The back story is this particular car lot has two buildings about 100 feet from each other. The second building has a skeleton staff so I was able to get by with gluing the two buildings together with just a wireless range extender. And, every year, I would remind the owner that if he were to ever staff up we would need to do something different.
So sure enough, I’m out of town and he hires a small company to dig a trench between the two buildings to run phone lines for a new sales staff and POE lines for new security cameras. I jumped on it as soon as I heard but I was shut down. I’m like just one more wire and I can set up the 2nd bldg. with a real network.
"The job’s already been spec’d, parts ordered and there’s NO room for another wire … no room! To change it now will double the cost!" BS … but the owner bought it and I was turned down.
So sure enough, I’m out of town and he hires a small company to dig a trench between the two buildings to run phone lines for a new sales staff and POE lines for new security cameras. I jumped on it as soon as I heard but I was shut down. I’m like just one more wire and I can set up the 2nd bldg. with a real network.
"The job’s already been spec’d, parts ordered and there’s NO room for another wire … no room! To change it now will double the cost!" BS … but the owner bought it and I was turned down.
So it’s a few years later and my new vendor is looking at the channel. There is room but prior company left no string to pull a new cable. Not quite enough room to push one through and too many right angles. I observe that one of the phone lines never worked right and that we don’t use it and suddenly we had a “pull string”. Thirty minutes and a few shots of “grease” later we had Ethernet, a spare and a pull string between the two buildings.
My new vendor wanted to use Ruckus R510s for the APs. Now Ruckus is pricey as hell but I quickly signed off on them. Lots of reasons;
- He had already paid for them with what he had saved me on other parts of the job.
- They are well rated.
- They are “professional” yet they are easily configurable by amateurs like me.
- I’m in my seventies and wanted to make sure the owner has someone to hand this off to in the (hopefully not too) near future.
- They mounted easily; one ceiling mount, one wall mount.
- They configured easily. Configured one. When we plugged in the 2nd it just automatically configured itself based off of the 1st.
- Our Asus router has two SSIDs, one for the company and one for guest with intranet access turned off.
- We used the same SSIDs on both Ruckuses.
- The Ruckuses were smart enough to pretty much auto-magically keep “Guest” from having any access to our company network.
- Workers and guests can now walk the lengths of both lots with no interruption in services.
Now we get 150 to 250 Mbps from anywhere in the 2nd bldg.. We have to walk 200 feet down the road to get 25 Mbps. What changed? We still have plaster & lathe walls and solid core doors
- Well, the AP for one. It’s a Ruckus (rather than the Netgear 6150).
- Location – it’s no longer locked up in the boss’ office. It’s out and center.
- Location – it’s higher. It’s now hung from the ceiling.
We’re three projects down already and will be wrapping up our fourth next week. The fourth is a little different; we’re converting POTS (landlines) to VoIP. If it works out well we’ve already a fifth project in the making.
It’s been a great month!
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