guys i really need your help on this,
i have a stand alone outdoor AP 1 watt 11b (amplified) -84 sesitivity
most of my client using 11g Ethernet- Client Supporting WDS
whats better for me ?
using the mikrotik wireless package and Add 400mw mini pci
or buy 1 watt 11g Accesspoint (standalone)
please help me guys
my access point will die soon

In my opinion 802.11g is for indoor use and has a higher throughput. The 802.11b works better outdoors and gives me longer range but at a lower throughput.

I am doing 2 meg 802.11b links to 35 customers with the longest being 5 miles away. (omni at tower site and echo backfire dish (16 db) at each customer premise.

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If you use a 400mw card and place the radio close to the antani you should not use an 1 watt amp. Amp's have a max input power of normally 30mw to 100mw (read your manual). In order to use the 400mw card you would have to set the power within specs of your amp. And you will probibly be better off using the 400mw card by itself no amp.. Unless you have a long cable run from radio to antani. My cable run is 25 feet (radio is at base of tower and antani at the top). I am using a prisim card set to 30mw with an 1 what amp and a 8dbi omni.

-Michael

There is no use of 1W AP because your clients probably won't have devices of the same strength. And -84 is terribly bad sensitivity. Just stick with Mikrotik and normal wifi cards either 400mW or 100mW. I am using 400mW Ubiquiti SR2's and there is basically no use of this power, so I just lower it down to regular level of 100mW and everything is almost the same. Maybe just few clients have like 1dB less signal, but it works much more stable and I am happy with it. And sensitivity is -93. I have one client with very low signal of -79 and even him works quite nice, no problems. It's not all in power, it's more in design of your network.

so in ur opinion 100mw and 400mw no big diffrent?
how many km is the client from u?
at the moment my covarage is 5 mile
question: the mikrotik WDS compatable with the CPE WDS?

guys what do you think of RB/112 + 400mw mini-pci+ POE and make it as an access point any idea?

so in ur opinion 100mw and 400mw no big diffrent?
how many km is the client from u?
at the moment my covarage is 5 mile

Yes, 100mW or 400mW, same thing. My access points are in urban area, so I maybe cover 2-3km with one AP. I can connect from many kilometers to some of them which are on the edges of my town, but I try to spread my AP's and to cover smaller areas. This really depends on many things.

I am not sure about your case, this really depends how your clients are spreaded geographically and if you work in urban area or somewhere else. It is much more difficult to work in populated areas with many 2.4 devices arround. If you have line of sight and if your area is not "contaminated" with wireless devices, you don't have to worry about power. Just use 100-400mW cards and good antennas for your clients. If you work in urban area, 5 miles is probably too much, it's better to have more AP's.

Please explain your situation better. Do you network some town or suburban area? Are your clients concentrated at few points or spreaded all arround? Where is your Internet connection (uplink) compared to the location where you have most of clients? Give us more distances.

ok,
we are located in the city center as you know there is no huge buliding in saudi arabia most of them villas so we can say its clear line,
i have arround 50 clients connected to 1 AP
i m using omni-direction antenna my clients is spread all over city
N E W S <"---- of my location

50 clients is something like maximum for a Mikrotik AP, so you should put more AP's instead of having one with lot ot power. Then just interconnect AP's using separate wifi card and frequencies, maybe 5GHz or something like that. This way, you will have better bandwidth in all meanings.

guys what do you think of RB/112 + 400mw mini-pci+ POE and make it as an access point any idea?
can u answer this question please?

guys what do you think of RB/112 + 400mw mini-pci+ POE and make it as an access point any idea?
can u answer this question please?

well that's what the equipment was designed for...

Not exactly.
The RB/112 is clearly designed as a CPE device, not as an AP. I still have to get my hands on one to try, but the trimmed-down specs (like 16 MB RAM) make me believe it wouldn't be the best choice for an AP (unless home scenarios with 1 client or so).

Best regards,
Christian Meis

that what i thought cmit

Actually the RB112 can be used as an AP. But it does have some memory limitations.

These mainly affect the amount of clients for queues, pppoe server, and hotspot.

You can't run all of these services at the same time! But each can be run without the others...

For queues, you can probably have some hundreds -- but we will do some testing later and clarify the limitations.

John