First let me say that this does not apply to those WISP's who only see a
maximum of 20 or 30 residential clients on a single AP. In some tiny
towns, the cheap solution is the best way to go. For the rest of us,
the best service costs a little more $$. I hate how DLink & LinkSys and
companies with cheap WISP equipment skew the market. I remember when
dial-up ISPs in cities would spend 5 figures on the equipment they
needed to get started. It seems now that too many people want to enter
the WISP arena with $1000 or $2000.
FlashROM units are the ONLY way to go. We have what I consider to be a
large number of towers, most with large businesses on each. Almost all
of them run FlashROM units. Those that don't, service a few residential
customers in a geographical 'hole' or something to that effect. The
point is that with FR units we are able to provide service identical or
better to T-1 lines. We have so many clients that we switch from T-1
lines, so they know what a T-1 is supposed to be. It isn't just about
what a user can obtain from a single download. More important than that
are the ping times, constant download & UPLOAD speeds, heavy
simultaneous usage, etc... We also have many 'dsl' users (home or SOHO
with 256kb/s or 768kb/s), but we developed a system to cater to the 'big
fish.' Big fish are where we see the best money, but we were worried
for so long about whether we would be able to provide them a capable
service. Please don't think that the extra money you can spend on
equipment will not help if you only have residential and small business
clients, it will.
We have tried the the AP1000's and the WPBase, etc... but they ALL left
us spending time "working on the network" whenever we got some serious
$$ clients. The smaller APs simply cannot handle heavy load. Why not
get a product that allows you to focus on selling and expanding?
(reference the IBM T-shirt company commercial) ISPs are not supposed to
spend all their time fixing problems. The goal should be for every
client addition to go as smoothly as a cable modem install, if not
smoother. I am not talking about the drilling and wiring, but after the
equipment is connected and 'good' signal is acquired. FlashROM units
may take a bit of getting used to b/c there is NO support for them (zip,
zero, nada). They have many quirks, and I mean a lot. I don't spend
much time answering FR questions on the board b/c they are hard to
explain. With all the variables like motherboards, processors, and PCI
adaptors the problems just get more complicated. What causes one
problem on our units may be something totally different on another. I
understand why our units do everything they do now, after over a year of
hard use. Not lab testing, but actual deployment. There are a ton of
do-not's when assembling/configuring. But once you understand those
(i.e. from the support we give to those who purchase FR units from us)
they work so easy and flawlessly. Then you can focus on your company,
and not have to spend weekends and evenings trying to get something to
work. I can not even begin to explain how much more time we had on our
hands once we installed FlashROM units across the board. And for what,
an extra $1000 each. It seems worth it when you then have something
that you can actually take advantage of all the karlnet features with.
Routing, DHCP, and all the truly advanced features effect the volume you
can push through a unit, because they eat up so much CPU. This is not
the case with a FR unit. I am not saying that you'll never see the
limit of a box. We have run three channels in some units and reached
the CPU maximum. What's worrisome is that it wasn't the number of
clients we had (30), but the features we were using that caused the
excessive load. If we use 1.3GHz CPUs and the small AP units use 66MHz
& 133MHz, think about how easily their CPU is absorbed by the karlnet
software. Karlnet is AWESOME, but if you stick a lawn mower motor in a
Porsche you won't be able to take advantage of the Porsche's abilities.
This is a direct comparison for how I see the AP1000 & like units.
This is my PERSONAL opinion, and nothing more. Take it with a grain of
sand. Thanks for hearing my little rant. I hope it helps someone out
there.
Steve
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