Looking for input here from people that may have tried using an SR9 in a mobile situation. We are currently doing a rural project where cell phone service is non-existent, as well as high speed internet. My thoughts were turning a standard 802 based voip phone as well as SR9 card over to my engineering department, and seeing what they could come up with. I haven’t tried a true mobile application to see what sort of real world coverage I can get, so im looking to see if someone here has. My concern is that by being digital and ip based, the slightest hiccup could cause the system to drop the call while it trys to re-associate to the nearest access point. An old school analog setup, or even digital carrier grade solutions, might be better designed to handle these scenarios.
-Nick
You could do this if you had a mesh setup (using WDS and RSTP). However I think you’re right, the calls will get dropped when moving from one AP to another. Not to mention, you’d have to have one big LAN so depending on the amount of users the ARP and other broadcast traffic will reduce the amount of total throughput.
Might be worth testing, if you can get a SR9 based VoIP phone with decent talk/standby time.
My biggest concern is the 10-20k ide probably have to dump in the engineers laps to build it. Once a prototype was done, I could build them reasonably, and if functional, would probably offer to the community, ubiquiti, etc. I just fear that it would require so many repeaters, that it would be almost as feasable as a 2.4 mesh setup, and using existing 802 standard phones. Initially talking with them, the biggest concern we had was how decent of an antenna could you really fit in a mobile phone, and not have some big ugly sticking out the top. The cellular companies may have the upper hand with less power restrictions, and a better suited technology. It still would be a nice feature that could be offered in some of these very rural areas I work in.
-Nick