Design Question for Bridging AP

[andrew.bell]

I would like to deploy a wireless network to cover a large area. The problem being that only one location well be the root bridge and I would need all non-root bridges to be able to forword there traffic to the root bridge. In this situation I would need to have multiple non-root bridges forming connections wirelessly to the root bridge. So I might have 3 to 5 non root bridges connected to gether with only one of them having a connection to the root bridge. As well, each AP well need to be able to also forward traffic from wireless devices in it's cell to the root bridge. My questions are is this posible, if so is there a limit on how many non-root bridges can be connected together in this senario? The last question is what would be the best AP to do this with? Would it be a 1300 or can I get away with doing this with a 1200?

Thanks for your help

[andrew.brazier]

Are you proposing a star topology? If so that should work fine. If you're wanting to use repeaters to extend the WLAN then 3-5 repeaters in a chain is quite a lot and although it should work you might find throughput is pretty poor.

As for equipment, if you're going outside, 1300's (they are weatherproof) if you're inside you would probably be OK with 1200's.

[andrew.bell]

The topology that I need is like a star but with the branches of the star being two or more non-rood bridges chained together and one of them connected to the root bridge at the center of the star. The only other requirment that I have is that the 1300 AP on the chain need to provide access to the network to clients and connect to the bridge so the traffic from the clients it is serving can be backhauled to the root bridge that is connected to the wired network. From the product discription it sounds like the 1300 can do this but I'm not sure if I can do this with having multiple non-root bridges chained together? Can this still be done with 1200's?

TOPOLOGY: PC:Clients

NRB: NON-ROOTBRIDGE (AIRONET 1200/1300)

RB: ROOT BRIDGE (AIRONET 1200/1300)

PC PC PC PC

| | | |

PC------NRB---NRB-----NRB-----RB---WIREDNETWORK

[andrew.bell]

Sorry The TOPOLOGY ABOVE DIDN'T come out right. Below should be the correct Topology.

LEGEND: PC=CLIENT, NRB=Non-Rootbridge(1200/1300), RB=Rootbridge(1200/1300)

......PC.....PC....PC

......|......|.....|

PC---NRB----NRB----RB-----WIREEDNETWORK