ASK THE EXPERT – WIRELESS MESH NETWORKING SOLUTION

[ciscomoderator]

Welcome to the Cisco Networking Professionals Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to discuss with Cisco expert Fred Niehaus about Cisco’s Wireless Mesh Networking, a secure, scalable, broadband network infrastructure which enables new applications for public sector agencies to deploy to better serve the community.

Mr. Niehaus is a technical marketing engineer for the Wireless Networking Business Unit at Cisco Systems, Inc. He has extensive customer contact and is responsible for developing and marketing enterprise class wireless solutions using Cisco Aironet and Airespace Series Wireless LAN products. He has actively participated in some of Cisco's largest Wireless LAN deployments in education and retail with such customers as the New York Board of Education and the Home Depot stores. In addition to live deployments, Mr. Niehaus has also served as technical editor for several Cisco Press books including the Cisco 802.11 Wireless Networking Reference Guide by Toby J. Velte and The Business Case for Enterprise-Class Wireless LANs by David Castaneda, Oisin Mac Alasdair and Christopher Vinckier.

Remember to use the rating system to let Fred know if you have received an adequate response.

Fred might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Our moderators will post many of the unanswered questions in other discussion forums shortly after the event. This event lasts through January 27, 2006. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

[chris.van.krieken]

Fred,

I am wondering how a PAP communicates to the WLC. Does it setup a LWAPP tunnel all the way to the WLC, or is it's parent RAP handling this ? Can you elaborate on this subject a little ?

[fredn]

Most of the traffic DOES go back to the WLC the exception here is when you enable Bridging from PAP to PAP (this traffic does not need to flow through the controller).

[mark-edwards]

We are currently in the planning stage of deploying a wireless mesh network to a city, for use by laptop users within residential houses. The area is densely populated with 2 storey terraced houses. We are confident we can provide the outdoor coverage for the backhaul. However, the ranges given on the 1500 range calculator seem extremely high with. An ETSI 1500 AP at11Mbps in a non-line of sight urban environment gives an estimated client range of 106m. Does this take into account that the clients might be inside the buildings? If not what type of range should we expect through standard brick walls (I understand that this could vary but an estimate would be great)?

We intend to mount the 1500 APs on aerials at approximately 30ft. We will be conducting a pilot, but I am currently trying to put together a draft design for budgetary approval.