Been fighting with 2.4ghz wireless installs for some time now, and as previously mentioned (somewhere in the blogosphere) I have a lot of wireless saturation down here, so after some research and assistance I decided to replace the 2.4ghz kit with shiny new 5ghz units. As with most wireless hardware you can spend £50 or £5000 on a solution, maybe one day I’ll see what the latter is like, but for an office with a couple of pcs here, three pcs there, the justification for anything other than the entry-level kit is hard to beat.
Eventually settled on some EnGenius EOC5510 from Solwise, good little 5ghz boxes for the price, and with a hard-switchable external antenna connection switch you can use them in outdoors configuration without actually siting the boxes outdoors.
EOC5510s come preconfigured to 192.168.1.1 IP Address, so if, like me, you want to set them up in a particular range on your network, take a laptop, give it an address in the 192.168.1 range and connect it up directly to the EOC5510 (via lan connection on the EPE1212) and you should be able to browse to 192.168.1.1 – username/password: admin.
First step is to check your firmware level (Management > Firmware Upgrade), the Band-B configuration is not available on early versions of firmware – I have 1.2.0 (on an out of the box Jan 2011 device) and have upgraded others to version 1.3.1 so far with no issues.
You can grab the latest firmware from the EnGenius site: http://www.engeniustech.com.sg/support just be sure to get the correct software for your model. From the firmware page browse to the image file and initiate the update. After installing and a reboot it’ll be ready.
In the scenario I’m using here I’m going to setup a client at “head” office and an access point at the “branch” office. I have now tested this and I have had no problems with it (Solwise also agreed the configuration would be fine);
Access first unit which is our head office/LAN-connected AP
System > System Properties
- Give the device a name
- Set Country/Region to: United Kingdom IR-2006 Band-B (if you don’t have Band-B as an option you need to upgrade the device firmware – see above)
- Set Operation mode to: Access Point
System > IP Settings
- Specify an IP address: use spare address LAN, set subnet mask, default gateway, dns, if required.
- Note – at this point I would take your label writer (and if you don’t have one some white masking/insulating tape and a pen) and stick a label on the side of your AP with the local IP address and device name on it – just to make things easier if you ever have several in one room (like I do!)
Wireless > Wireless Network
- Setup the Channel / Frequency (you should be able to choose from Ch100 thru Ch140), there is no channel overlap, just ensure if you are planning on deploying multiple links not to use the same channel ideally
- Under Current Profiles enable VID 1 and click the Edit button next to it.
- In the SSID profile give your link a name (come back to the security once the link works!)
Management > Time Settings
- You perhaps should also set your time correctly, I’m using a server as an NTP server, so just input the ip address there – failing that try the NTP Pool Project
Next the Remote/far side AP
System > System Properties
- Give the device a name
- Set Country/Region to: United Kingdom IR-2006 Band-B (if you don’t have Band-B as an option you need to upgrade the device firmware – see above)
- Set Operation mode to: Client Bridge
System > IP Settings
- Specify an IP address: use spare address LAN, set subnet mask, default gateway, dns, if required.
- Note – at this point I would take your label writer (and if you don’t have one some white masking/insulating tape and a pen) and stick a label on the side of your AP with the local IP address and device name on it – just to make things easier if you ever have several in one room (like I do!)
Wireless > Wireless Network
- Enable the WDS client
Management > Time Settings
- You perhaps should also set your time correctly, I’m using a server as an NTP server, so just input the ip address there
If you head back to the Wireless Network section you will find you should now be able to click the site survey button and see the first AP you configured, if you do click on it’s BSSID to set the link up. Alternatively you can manually enter the static SSID yourself. Once complete your wireless APs should now be talking to each other! If you’re happy that is working to your satisfaction you will need to go back and setup some security.
I will cover that in another post, work to do and all that. But I would suggest that you now take your working link and position your APs where you would like them – there are no hard and fast rules for positioning (that I’ve been able to discover) but when setting up security it does affect the link – so get things positioned before doing anything else is my suggestion, you can at the very least isolate by MAC if nothing else works!