good pings, slow data transfer.

Hi there,

a company has just setup a wireless connection for us. The setup is as following:

The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:

Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.
Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.
Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.

The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
Avarages at 12KB/s

Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.

rel wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> a company has just setup a wireless connection for us. The setup is as following:
>
> The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:
>
> Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.
> Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.
> Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
> Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.
>
> The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
> Avarages at 12KB/s
>
> Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
> be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.

Those Redline products (really nice, by the way) are supposed to support
up to 48Mbs sustained throughput. Somebody definitely screwed the pooch
on that project. I can't imagine the reasoning of having a Cisco 802.11b
(about 5-7 Mbs sustained) in the chain. If you're going to spend the
money for two Redlines, you lose the benefit by using a Cisco in the
chain. You could contact Redline directly for assistance, but I think
the company that did this for you has some 'splainin to do. As for
what's actually wrong, do you know the link quality and signal strength
for these links? Is there a lot of RF noise in your area?

Setting a single device up as a repeater halves the throughput. But the
Redline is so much faster than the Cisco, you only have to think about
the Cisco. It's data rate may be getting cut in half. Unless you mean
that the Redline and Cisco are piggy-backed on the building in the
middle and work together as a repeater, in that case, they're not cut in
half but have full bandwidth.

Rôgêr wrote:

> rel wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> a company has just setup a wireless connection for us. The setup is as following:
>>
>> The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:
>>
>> Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.
>> Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.
>> Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
>> Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.
>>
>> The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
>> Avarages at 12KB/s
>>
>> Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
>> be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.
>
> Those Redline products (really nice, by the way) are supposed to support
> up to 48Mbs sustained throughput. Somebody definitely screwed the pooch
> on that project. I can't imagine the reasoning of having a Cisco 802.11b
> (about 5-7 Mbs sustained) in the chain. If you're going to spend the
> money for two Redlines, you lose the benefit by using a Cisco in the
> chain. You could contact Redline directly for assistance, but I think
> the company that did this for you has some 'splainin to do. As for
> what's actually wrong, do you know the link quality and signal strength
> for these links? Is there a lot of RF noise in your area?
>
> Setting a single device up as a repeater halves the throughput. But the
> Redline is so much faster than the Cisco, you only have to think about
> the Cisco. It's data rate may be getting cut in half. Unless you mean
> that the Redline and Cisco are piggy-backed on the building in the
> middle and work together as a repeater, in that case, they're not cut in
> half but have full bandwidth.

Hi Roger,

The company says it should work ok, they left when they pinged the
connection an saw it was oke. On monday I will get them back to find the
flaw. Just was thinking it was somthing on our network.

The connection is urgent and has been setup in 3 days.
There is no much noise I guess because its an area with just some
company's that don;t use RF AFAIK.

I suspect its the connection from B1 to B2, this is connected with COAX
over a distance of 60 meters. As for the signal strenght, could I see
this in web management tool of the devices? I don't know much about RF
and because its a p2p connection there would't be a field?

The reason why they used cisco for the last end bit, was because (as
they say) they couldn't get another redline devices.

Could you tell me what settings I should check on the web management of
the devices to make sure they have been setup right?

thanks, rel.

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 00:16:44 +0000 (UTC), rel <relic@home.nl> wrote:

>The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:

Higher than what? Do you have an obstructed line of sight? Do you
have Fresnel zone clearance? If not, you're about to have a
reliability problem.
http://gbppr.dyndns.org:8080/fresnel.main.cgi
You need a radius of about 7 meters clearance at midpoint. Do you
have clearance?

Yeah, I know RedLine claims that the AN-50 is NLOS because it does
OFDM. I think NLOS is science fiction and marketing hype.

You topology description is vague, ambiguous, and lacking in important
detail.
How far apart are A -> B1? (Redline)
How far apart are B2 -> C? (Cisco)
Which path has the building obstruction? Any other obstructions?

>Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.

http://www.redlinecommunications.com..._overview.html
>Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.

Huh? Why a repeater? To what wireless device are they repeating to?
Methinks this is misconfigured or you're using the wrong buzzword.
Methinks both Redline boxes should be setup as a transparent bridge.

I'll make a guess(tm) and assume that B1 and B2 are located near each
other and connected with an ethernet cable. Is this correct?

>Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
>Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.

The Cisco 350 doesn't act as a repeater so methinks you're using the
wrong term here. There are also multiple models of the Cisco 350. My
guess(tm) is that both Cisco 350's should be setup as wireless
transparent bridges.

>The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
>Avarages at 12KB/s

9msec for such a system sucks. Something is wrong. Even the most
disgusting point to point wireless 802.11b link will do <3msec pings.
The Redline should do even less.

Also, you should do pings with large packets and only one link at a
time. I assume that *ALL* the wireless drives have IP addresses and
can be pinged. Try pinging all of them in sequence and record the
numbers. Methinks you'll find an excessive delay or packet loss in
one of the links.

As for the 12KBytes/sec (or 96kbits/sec), this is incredibly slow.
You have something eating packets along the way. There's not enough
info here to determine the cause, but look for packet loss somewhere.
The management interfaces for the RedLine and Cisco boxes all have
signal strength, signal quality, and error count status pages. Use
these to determine if you have an RF problem.

One common problem I've seen is NWAY negotiation failure. Both Cisco
and Redline have NWAY negotiation at the ethernet interfaces.
However, there's no guarantee that they actually setting on the
correct protocol. I've seen pairs of devices which settle on
100baseTX, but with FDX on one end, and HDX on the other. It works,
but the error rate is horrible. If you suspect this problem, make
sure the ethernet interfaces are set to fixed and identical speeds.
To get 48Mbits/sec thruput, you'll need either 100baseTX-HDX or
preferably 100baseTX-FDX (full duplex).

>Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
>be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.

This is a rather poor design. You have a top of the line, premo
5.6Ghz wireless bridge running in an obstructed path. It's capeable
of doing 48Mbits/sec thruput, but you have it throttled with a pair of
comparatively slow 802.11b bridges which are limited to perhaps
5Mbits/sec on a good day, and probably 3Mbits/sec typically. Even if
it had worked as intended, it still would be running well under
expectations. Methinks you need to yell at whomever sold you this
mess.

Divide the puzzle in half. Plant yourself with a laptop at B1-B2 and
unplug each end. Ping away in both directions and see which part of
the link is having a problem. It could easily be both. Then, ask the
experts that sold you this abomination why they left without any real
thruput testing.

What does this thing do? What level of sustained thruput are you
expecting?


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 10:01:52 +0000 (UTC), rel <relic@home.nl> wrote:

>I suspect its the connection from B1 to B2, this is connected with COAX
>over a distance of 60 meters.

Coax as in RG-58a/u as in 10base2 also known as Cheapernet?
I do that all the time, but it's totally inappropriate for this
arrangment. If they're using 10base2, it's half duplex (HDX) at
10mbit/sec. You'll get about 6Mbit/sec thruput which makes it a
substantial bottleneck. The Cisco 802.11b link is slower, but if your
experts decide to replace the Cisco with something that will keep up
with the speed of the RedLine boxes, the coax will become the
preformance bottle neck.

If there's a 10baseT to 10base2 media converter in the system, the
flow control isn't setup correctly, or the ethernet interfaces in
either the Cisco or RedLine boxes are setup wrong, or NWAY is screwing
up again.

>As for the signal strenght, could I see
>this in web management tool of the devices?

Yes. Yes, yes, YES! Use the tools the manufacturers supplied.

>I don't know much about RF
>and because its a p2p connection there would't be a field?

Field? Point to point (wirless bridge) has the same RF problems as
any other wireless system.

>The reason why they used cisco for the last end bit, was because (as
>they say) they couldn't get another redline devices.

They lie. They unloaded what they had in stock because you were in a
rush. As long as it's temporary, I don't see a problem. Eventually,
the Cisco boxes should be replaced by another pair of RedLine wireless
bridges.

What are your performance expectations (i.e. thruput)? If it's more
than about 3-5Mbits/sec sustained thruput, the Cisco's are a bad
choice. If it's about 3-5Mbits/sec, then you overpaid for the
RedLine boxes as another pair of Cisco 350's would be much cheaper.

Incidentally, do you have any clue as to the relative cost of the
RedLine routers versus the Cisco routers?

>Could you tell me what settings I should check on the web management of
>the devices to make sure they have been setup right?

No. That's not your job. That's the job of whomever sold you this
conglomeration of boxes.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sun, 07 Aug 2005 09:22:27 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
<jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote:

>What are your performance expectations (i.e. thruput)? If it's more
>than about 3-5Mbits/sec sustained thruput, the Cisco's are a bad
>choice. If it's about 3-5Mbits/sec, then you overpaid for the
>RedLine boxes as another pair of Cisco 350's would be much cheaper.

RedLine AN-50 boxes and antennas are $3,455 each.
Cisco AIR-BR350-A-K9 bridges, plus antennas and coax,
are about $600 each.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:


Hi Jeff,

let me first say that I know little about wifi and the situation makes
me nosey at what is going on.


> On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 00:16:44 +0000 (UTC), rel <relic@home.nl> wrote:
>
>>The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:
>
> Higher than what? Do you have an obstructed line of sight? Do you
> have Fresnel zone clearance? If not, you're about to have a
> reliability problem.
> http://gbppr.dyndns.org:8080/fresnel.main.cgi
> You need a radius of about 7 meters clearance at midpoint. Do you
> have clearance?


There is clearance between the buildings. Let me draw the situation:


A1 B1 B2 C1
______|< >|_____|< >|_____
| | | | | |

Building A Building B Building C
A1 = Redline B1 = Redl. C1 = Cisco 350 bridge
B2 = Cisco 350 bridge

So building B is higher than building C, that is why this 3 point
setup is used. For what I know devices B1 and B2 are connected with
a 75ohm COAX cable that spans the width of the the B building whitch is
aprox 60 meters. My guess is that signal strenght is lost here.

>
> Yeah, I know RedLine claims that the AN-50 is NLOS because it does
> OFDM. I think NLOS is science fiction and marketing hype.

I've read on their site that they develop their systems by
a mathimatically view on the concept. And so be better :)
Aren't they all since it's all about EM waves.

>
> You topology description is vague, ambiguous, and lacking in important
> detail.
> How far apart are A -> B1? (Redline)
> How far apart are B2 -> C? (Cisco)
> Which path has the building obstruction? Any other obstructions?
>
>>Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.
>
> http://www.redlinecommunications.com..._overview.html
>>Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.

I'am a non native dutchy, so the right toplogy about somthing I have no
knowledge of can be a bit lacking here. Sorry about that. I'll try my
best.

The distance between A and B1 is aprox 900 meters
and from B2 to C is about 600 meters. There are no obstacles exept
a lake between A and B1 (and a container terminal that doesn't reach
above A and B, there is a lot of iron though, the containers.) This
could influence the signal a little be I think.


>
> Huh? Why a repeater? To what wireless device are they repeating to?
> Methinks this is misconfigured or you're using the wrong buzzword.
> Methinks both Redline boxes should be setup as a transparent bridge.

The people who set it up told me that B1 is a repeater and also
they named A1 as "office to repeater" and B2 "repeater to office"
So they would be all transparent bridges? Makes much more sence indeed.

>
> I'll make a guess(tm) and assume that B1 and B2 are located near each
> other and connected with an ethernet cable. Is this correct?

B1 and B2 are mounted on both sides of the middle builidng roof
and are connected with a COAX cable. (not sure).

>
>>Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
>>Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.
>
> The Cisco 350 doesn't act as a repeater so methinks you're using the
> wrong term here. There are also multiple models of the Cisco 350. My
> guess(tm) is that both Cisco 350's should be setup as wireless
> transparent bridges.

correct, they are bridges with a horrible web admin interface.

>
>>The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
>>Avarages at 12KB/s
>
> 9msec for such a system sucks. Something is wrong. Even the most
> disgusting point to point wireless 802.11b link will do <3msec pings.
> The Redline should do even less.

Even worse, today (i was at the site for a half hour) the pings would go
up to 1500, 3000 ms and back to 6ms. And other times stay just below
50ms. Very weird situation.

>
> Also, you should do pings with large packets and only one link at a
> time. I assume that *ALL* the wireless drives have IP addresses and
> can be pinged. Try pinging all of them in sequence and record the
> numbers. Methinks you'll find an excessive delay or packet loss in
> one of the links.
>

Good tip. But what if B1 or B2 is a faulty one. I would get bad
ping results from A or C, because they have to go trough B1/2.
A traceroute would workaround this, not?

> As for the 12KBytes/sec (or 96kbits/sec), this is incredibly slow.
> You have something eating packets along the way. There's not enough
> info here to determine the cause, but look for packet loss somewhere.
> The management interfaces for the RedLine and Cisco boxes all have
> signal strength, signal quality, and error count status pages. Use
> these to determine if you have an RF problem.
>
> One common problem I've seen is NWAY negotiation failure. Both Cisco
> and Redline have NWAY negotiation at the ethernet interfaces.
> However, there's no guarantee that they actually setting on the
> correct protocol. I've seen pairs of devices which settle on
> 100baseTX, but with FDX on one end, and HDX on the other. It works,
> but the error rate is horrible. If you suspect this problem, make
> sure the ethernet interfaces are set to fixed and identical speeds.
> To get 48Mbits/sec thruput, you'll need either 100baseTX-HDX or
> preferably 100baseTX-FDX (full duplex).
>
>>Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
>>be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.
>
> This is a rather poor design. You have a top of the line, premo
> 5.6Ghz wireless bridge running in an obstructed path. It's capeable
> of doing 48Mbits/sec thruput, but you have it throttled with a pair of
> comparatively slow 802.11b bridges which are limited to perhaps
> 5Mbits/sec on a good day, and probably 3Mbits/sec typically. Even if
> it had worked as intended, it still would be running well under
> expectations. Methinks you need to yell at whomever sold you this
> mess.

Beter yet, the whole thing costs 10.000 euro's.
I will call them tomorrow but have no fate in them fixing it.

>
> Divide the puzzle in half. Plant yourself with a laptop at B1-B2 and
> unplug each end. Ping away in both directions and see which part of
> the link is having a problem. It could easily be both. Then, ask the
> experts that sold you this abomination why they left without any real
> thruput testing.
>
> What does this thing do? What level of sustained thruput are you
> expecting?
>
>

It's a backup for a fixed line whitch will arive within a month. We
thought to bridge this perion with wifi. Sharing files with the
fileserver on the other end would be great, but with this transfer rates
this is not possible. Most important thing is stable connectivity with
an AS400 application.

I for havn't had any time to sit down and look for the problem.
Tomorrow I'll have that and have to fix this. I'll follow you tips.

The company left all in default, the passwords still admin/admin for the
redline's and the cisco's hace no authentication at all. Wonder how
security is done here :)
The http and telnet interface of the cisco is so bad. I can reach them
by telnet now and below a paste of their configs. Maybe some misconfig
can be seen here.

Redline A1:
Jeff Liebermann wrote:


Hi Jeff,

let me first say that I know little about wifi and the situation makes
me nosey at what is going on.


> On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 00:16:44 +0000 (UTC), rel <relic@home.nl> wrote:
>
>>The distance between objects is 1.5km, there is one building between the two buidlings that is 5 meters higher:
>
> Higher than what? Do you have an obstructed line of sight? Do you
> have Fresnel zone clearance? If not, you're about to have a
> reliability problem.
> http://gbppr.dyndns.org:8080/fresnel.main.cgi
> You need a radius of about 7 meters clearance at midpoint. Do you
> have clearance?


There is clearance between the buildings. Let me draw the situation:


A1 B1 B2 C1
______|< >|_____|< >|_____
| | | | | |

Building A Building B Building C
A1 = Redline B1 = Redl. C1 = Cisco 350 bridge
B2 = Cisco 350 bridge

So building B is higher than building C, that is why this 3 point
setup is used. For what I know devices B1 and B2 are connected with
a 75ohm COAX cable that spans the width of the the B building whitch is
aprox 60 meters. My guess is that signal strenght is lost here.

>
> Yeah, I know RedLine claims that the AN-50 is NLOS because it does
> OFDM. I think NLOS is science fiction and marketing hype.

I've read on their site that they develop their systems by
a mathimatically view on the concept. And so be better :)
Aren't they all since it's all about EM waves.

>
> You topology description is vague, ambiguous, and lacking in important
> detail.
> How far apart are A -> B1? (Redline)
> How far apart are B2 -> C? (Cisco)
> Which path has the building obstruction? Any other obstructions?
>
>>Object "A" a "Redline AN-50", whitch operates on 5.4Ghz, 36Mb/s and setup as accesspoint.
>
> http://www.redlinecommunications.com..._overview.html
>>Object "B1" a Redline (same device) but setup as a repeater.

I'am a non native dutchy, so the right toplogy about somthing I have no
knowledge of can be a bit lacking here. Sorry about that. I'll try my
best.

The distance between A and B1 is aprox 900 meters
and from B2 to C is about 600 meters. There are no obstacles exept
a lake between A and B1 (and a container terminal that doesn't reach
above A and B, there is a lot of iron though, the containers.) This
could influence the signal a little be I think.


>
> Huh? Why a repeater? To what wireless device are they repeating to?
> Methinks this is misconfigured or you're using the wrong buzzword.
> Methinks both Redline boxes should be setup as a transparent bridge.

The people who set it up told me that B1 is a repeater and also
they named A1 as "office to repeater" and B2 "repeater to office"
So they would be all transparent bridges? Makes much more sence indeed.

>
> I'll make a guess(tm) and assume that B1 and B2 are located near each
> other and connected with an ethernet cable. Is this correct?

B1 and B2 are mounted on both sides of the middle builidng roof
and are connected with a COAX cable. (not sure).

>
>>Object "B2" a Cisco Aironet 350, 2.4Ghz. 11Mb/s setup as repeater.
>>Object "C" the same Aironet setup as AP.
>
> The Cisco 350 doesn't act as a repeater so methinks you're using the
> wrong term here. There are also multiple models of the Cisco 350. My
> guess(tm) is that both Cisco 350's should be setup as wireless
> transparent bridges.

correct, they are bridges with a horrible web admin interface.

>
>>The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
>>Avarages at 12KB/s
>
> 9msec for such a system sucks. Something is wrong. Even the most
> disgusting point to point wireless 802.11b link will do <3msec pings.
> The Redline should do even less.

Even worse, today (i was at the site for a half hour) the pings would go
up to 1500, 3000 ms and back to 6ms. And other times stay just below
50ms. Very weird situation.

>
> Also, you should do pings with large packets and only one link at a
> time. I assume that *ALL* the wireless drives have IP addresses and
> can be pinged. Try pinging all of them in sequence and record the
> numbers. Methinks you'll find an excessive delay or packet loss in
> one of the links.
>

Good tip. But what if B1 or B2 is a faulty one. I would get bad
ping results from A or C, because they have to go trough B1/2.
A traceroute would workaround this, not?

> As for the 12KBytes/sec (or 96kbits/sec), this is incredibly slow.
> You have something eating packets along the way. There's not enough
> info here to determine the cause, but look for packet loss somewhere.
> The management interfaces for the RedLine and Cisco boxes all have
> signal strength, signal quality, and error count status pages. Use
> these to determine if you have an RF problem.
>
> One common problem I've seen is NWAY negotiation failure. Both Cisco
> and Redline have NWAY negotiation at the ethernet interfaces.
> However, there's no guarantee that they actually setting on the
> correct protocol. I've seen pairs of devices which settle on
> 100baseTX, but with FDX on one end, and HDX on the other. It works,
> but the error rate is horrible. If you suspect this problem, make
> sure the ethernet interfaces are set to fixed and identical speeds.
> To get 48Mbits/sec thruput, you'll need either 100baseTX-HDX or
> preferably 100baseTX-FDX (full duplex).


I have no packet loss and even the stats on the devices don't have much
error reporst. Couldn't find signal indicators, execpt on the redline
there are just green boxes that indicate signal, power etc. All seems
fine. But I did see a realtime chart on the cisco about interference.
The chart was filled, just don;t know how to read it. But it indicated
70%.
>
>>Could there be a misconfiguration of the hardware, or what can
>>be the problem here. If someone can hint me, please.
>
> This is a rather poor design. You have a top of the line, premo
> 5.6Ghz wireless bridge running in an obstructed path. It's capeable
> of doing 48Mbits/sec thruput, but you have it throttled with a pair of
> comparatively slow 802.11b bridges which are limited to perhaps
> 5Mbits/sec on a good day, and probably 3Mbits/sec typically. Even if
> it had worked as intended, it still would be running well under
> expectations. Methinks you need to yell at whomever sold you this
> mess.
>
> Divide the puzzle in half. Plant yourself with a laptop at B1-B2 and
> unplug each end. Ping away in both directions and see which part of
> the link is having a problem. It could easily be both. Then, ask the
> experts that sold you this abomination why they left without any real
> thruput testing.
>
> What does this thing do? What level of sustained thruput are you
> expecting?
>
Havn't had mych time to look at it, will have since this monday.
The whole setup costs 10.000 euro's.

We wanted to bridge the delivery time of a fixed line, whitch is in a
month. File serving with the office would be great. But most important is
stable connectivity with an AS400 based application.

I have telnet access to the devices now, the last end (C1) seems down at
the moment. But have copied some data from the others (even
authentication is left as is to default, cisco got no auth at all).

Please see:






Redline A1:

AN-50>show config
sysname = kantoor to repeater
sysdetails =
ipaddr = 10.32.248.16
ipmask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = 10.32.248.1
flowctrl = off
eth = 100FD
http = on
snmp = on
telnet = on
telnetport = 23
rffreq = 5535
autoscan = off
dfsaction = 2
antgain = 40
txpower = 14
atpcen = on
adaptmod = on
modreduct = 2
ubrate = 36
master = on
encrypt = on
encryptkey = ###
llmod = off
lmu = on
ll = 0
buzzer = off
radio = on
optionskey = ###
flash 1: 1.32.003
flash 2: 1.32.011 active

AN-50>show stats
macaddr = 00:09:02:00:38:A2
swver = 1.32.011
starttime = 0 day(s), 06 hr, 21 min, 04 sec
rflink = Yes
ubrate = 36
rffreq = 5535
txpower = 9
cableattn = 7
rfstatus = 0
erxpkt = 54603
erxpktd = 0
etxpkt = 35250
rssimin = -67.44
rssimean = -66.69
rssimax = -66.69
sinadr = 20.64
wrxpkt = 3195632
wrxpktr = 1
wrxpktd = 0
wtxpkt = 3205747
wtxpktr = 0
wtxpktd = 0
calcdst = 0.42
hwrev = 3
odu = T54

Redline B1:

AN-50>show config
sysname = repeater to kantoor
sysdetails =
ipaddr = 10.32.248.17
ipmask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = 10.32.248.1
flowctrl = off
eth = auto
http = on
snmp = on
telnet = on
telnetport = 23
rffreq = 5535
autoscan = off
dfsaction = 0
antgain = 40
txpower = 14
atpcen = on
adaptmod = on
modreduct = 2
ubrate = 36
master = off
encrypt = on
encryptkey = ###
llmod = off
lmu = on
ll = 0
buzzer = off
radio = on
optionskey = ###
flash 1: 1.32.003
flash 2: 1.32.011 active

AN-50>show stats
macaddr = 00:09:02:00:38:A5
swver = 1.32.011
starttime = 0 day(s), 06 hr, 22 min, 25 sec
rflink = Yes
ubrate = 36
rffreq = 5535
txpower = 8
cableattn = 2
rfstatus = 0
erxpkt = 35481
erxpktd = 0
etxpkt = 54629
rssimin = -67.63
rssimean = -66.50
rssimax = -66.88
sinadr = 20.56
wrxpkt = 3218532
wrxpktr = 0
wrxpktd = 0
wtxpkt = 3208397
wtxpktr = 1
wtxpktd = 0
calcdst = 0.42
hwrev = 3
odu = T54






Cisco 350 B2:

Kantoor Express Setup Uptime: 2 days, 07:01:14

System [Name ][Kantoor ]
[Terminal Type ][teletype]
MAC Address : 00:40:96:53:d1:6e

Config. Server [Protocol ][None ]
IP [Address ][10.32.248.18 ]
IP [Subnet Mask ][255.255.255.0 ]
Default [Gateway ][10.32.248.1 ]

[Service Set ID (SSID) ][x ]
[Role in Radio Network ][Root Bridge ]
[Optimize Radio Network For ][Throughput] [Hw Radio]
Ensure Compatibility With: [2Mb/sec Clients][_]

[Security Setup]
[SNMP Admin. Community ][ ]



Kantoor Network Ports Uptime: 2 days, 07:03:26
===[Diagnostics]===
___________________________________
Name [Ethernet] [Root Radio] [Bridge:Magazijn]
Status Up Up Up
Mb/s 100.0 11.0 11.0
IP Addr. 10.32.248.18 10.32.248.18 10.32.248.18
MAC Addr. 00409653d16e 00409653d16e 00409653d16e

Receive
unicast pkts. 3745 39606 71609
multicast pkts. 51743 0 229323
total bytes 5525904 4282610 33605745
errors 1 0 0
discards 0 0 0

Transmit
unicast pkts. 3572 64618 73030
multicast pkts. 32460 3 460987
total bytes 3389515 12483286 118649149
errors 1 682 0
discards 0 0 0
(Auto Apply On) :BOttom, :Down, :Back, ^R, =, -, <ENTER>, or [Link Text]:


Kantoor Association Table Uptime: 2 days, 07:02:06
___________________________________


Settings: [Client][X] [Rptr][X] [Bridge][X] [APs][X]
[Infra.Host][_] [Multicast][_] [showAllNetwork][_]

Press to Change Settings:
[Apply] [Save as Default]
Restore [Current Defaults] Restore [Factory Defaults]

Existing Associations: [additional display filters]
____Device_____|___Name_______________|____IP Addr./Name___|___MAC
Addr.____|_VLAN_|_State_____|___Parent____________ _
350 Series Bridge | Kantoor | [10.32.248.18 ] | [00409653d16e] |
| |
350 Series Bridge | Magazijn | [10.32.248.19 ] | [00409653ae3b] |
| Assoc | [self]


Event Log

Time Severity Description
2 days, 06:31:41 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
2 days, 04:18:06 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
2 days, 04:18:06 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Authenticated
2 days, 04:17:17 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
Authenticated"
2 days, 04:17:06 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason
"Inactivity"
2 days, 00:16:22 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
2 days, 00:16:22 (Info): Disassociating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
Associated"
2 days, 00:13:12 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b roamed
2 days, 00:13:12 (Info): Disassociating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Sender
(Auto Apply On) :BOttom, :Down, :Back, ^R, =, -, <ENTER>, or [Link Text]:
2 days, 00:16:22 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
2 days, 00:16:22 (Info): Disassociating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
Associated"
2 days, 00:13:12 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b roamed
2 days, 00:13:12 (Info): Disassociating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Sender
is Leaving (has left) BSS"
1 day, 23:06:50 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
1 day, 23:06:50 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Authenticated
1 day, 23:02:48 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
Authenticated"
1 day, 23:02:32 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason
"Inactivity"
1 day, 23:01:57 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
1 day, 19:11:59 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
1 day, 19:11:59 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Authenticated
1 day, 19:10:08 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
Authenticated"
1 day, 19:05:05 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason
"Inactivity"
1 day, 17:09:07 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
1 day, 16:52:48 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated

Cisco 350 C1:

not reachable at the moment

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 19:03:10 +0000 (UTC), rel <relic@home.nl> wrote:

>let me first say that I know little about wifi and the situation makes
>me nosey at what is going on.

I'll try to answer your questions, but this is much too messy a
problem to solve with what information is supplied. Literally
everything you've supplied about the system makes me wonder what your
wireless experts were thinking.

(Slight redraw. Beware of tabs.)

> A1 B1 B2 C1
> ______|< >|_____|< >|_____
> | | | | | |
>
>Building A Building B Building C
>A1 = Redline B1 = Redl. C1 = Cisco 350 bridge
> B2 = Cisco 350 bridge
>
>So building B is higher than building C, that is why this 3 point
>setup is used.

So far no problems as long as you have line of sight. However, I'm
worried about interference pickup from the rooftop. The Redline
bridges are supplied with their own directional antennas, so I'm not
too worried about them. However, you didn't mention what the Cisco
350 bridges used for antennas. Hopefully they're directional and not
an omnidirectional.

>For what I know devices B1 and B2 are connected with
>a 75ohm COAX cable that spans the width of the the B building whitch is
>aprox 60 meters. My guess is that signal strenght is lost here.

There's no RF in the coax cable. The coax possibly carries only data.
I think you should check if it really is coax cable. There's no
evidence of any media converters in this system to go from 100baseTX
to 10base2 coax. In addition, the coax cable should be 50 ohms and
not 75 ohms. I've used 75 ohms, but only if there was no alternative.
Shielded CAT5 (required in some EU countries) looks very much like
RG-6/u 75ohm coax. Check the labels.

>> Yeah, I know RedLine claims that the AN-50 is NLOS because it does
>> OFDM. I think NLOS is science fiction and marketing hype.
>
>I've read on their site that they develop their systems by
>a mathimatically view on the concept. And so be better :)
>Aren't they all since it's all about EM waves.

In a past life, I played RF engineer for about 15 years. I'm not
totally up to date on everything, but I consider myself rather well
informed on the basics. As far as I'm concerned, Non-line-of-sight
(NLOS) is a marketing term and a theoretical exercise in reassembling
multipath signals into something useable. In my limited experience,
almost any NLOS system can be made to work for a while. The problem
is that the reflections and multipath move around as the objects
involved move around. The result is fatal un-reliability. What works
one day, fails the next. I can post MRTG graphs of signal strength
and S/N ratio of perhaps two NLOS links that I'm forced to deal with.
Huge random variations in both parameters along with signal loss for
extended periods are common.

>I'am a non native dutchy, so the right toplogy about somthing I have no
>knowledge of can be a bit lacking here. Sorry about that. I'll try my
>best.

No problem. Your English is much better than my Dutch.

>The distance between A and B1 is aprox 900 meters
>and from B2 to C is about 600 meters. There are no obstacles exept
>a lake between A and B1 (and a container terminal that doesn't reach
>above A and B, there is a lot of iron though, the containers.) This
>could influence the signal a little be I think.

Sounds like an ideal path. Both links are relatively short. 900
meters is nothing compared to the maximum 80km range of the Redline.
I'm a bit worried about why it has slowed down to 36Mbits/sec instead
of the maximum of 72Mbits/sec. At 0.6km, I would expect it to be
running at maximum speed. Lots of possible reasons including
interference, reflections, and improper setup.

>> Huh? Why a repeater? To what wireless device are they repeating to?
>> Methinks this is misconfigured or you're using the wrong buzzword.
>> Methinks both Redline boxes should be setup as a transparent bridge.
>
>The people who set it up told me that B1 is a repeater and also
>they named A1 as "office to repeater" and B2 "repeater to office"
>So they would be all transparent bridges? Makes much more sence indeed.

Well, they are correct that building B1-B2 is a repeater. B1 just
repeats what it gets from B2. Likewise, B2 just repeats what it gets
from B1. This is sometimes called a "back-to-back" repeater. It has
the advantage of being full duplex, where it can transmit at full
speed without any store and forward delays.

However, you stated that the radios were setup as repeaters. That's
not possible with either Redline or BR350 bridges. In order for this
system to work, *ALL* the radios must be setup as transparent bridges.
By transparent, I mean that it will pass more than one MAC address
allowing multiple computers to be bridged through the system.

>correct, they are bridges with a horrible web admin interface.

I've seen worse. Both the Redline and the Cisco have command line
interfaces. I've never played with the Redline version, but Cisco
BR350 uses IOS which are messy, but powerful. There are web
interfaces in both devices, but they are mostly front ends for the
command line interfaces.

>>>The ping results are good, 9ms peeks to 32ms. But when testing the speed by copying a large file from a fileserver, the download started at 30KB/s and then dropped to 8KB/s.
>>>Avarages at 12KB/s
>>
>> 9msec for such a system sucks. Something is wrong. Even the most
>> disgusting point to point wireless 802.11b link will do <3msec pings.
>> The Redline should do even less.
>
>Even worse, today (i was at the site for a half hour) the pings would go
>up to 1500, 3000 ms and back to 6ms. And other times stay just below
>50ms. Very weird situation.

Think about it. If there was a nice quiet link, with no interference,
the ping times would remain the same. However, if there was packet
loss anywhere in the system, it would manifest itself as wide
*VARIATIONS* in ping times. Traceroute should show what part of the
link is having problems. Again, I advise you to seperate testing of
the various parts of the system, and NOT test the entire system until
the component parts are proven reliable.

The large variations in ping time can be cause by packet loss anywhere
in the system. That includes at the interfaces to the bridges, the
coax mess in between bridges, NWAY failure, and wireless interference.
I'll bet on interference. It's common on tall buildings overlooking
areas where a large number of wireless users congregate. You might
look into the location of municiple wireless networks on 2.4 and
5.7GHz. Check:
http://muniwireless.com
for locations.
http://muniwireless.com/applications/737

>Good tip. But what if B1 or B2 is a faulty one. I would get bad
>ping results from A or C, because they have to go trough B1/2.
>A traceroute would workaround this, not?

You can ping from the other end of the link by logging into the
wireless router at the other end and pinging from there. It will be
slothish due to high packet loss, but the number will be real.
However, it might be best to do some travelling. 1.5km doesn't sound
like much distance to walk.

>Beter yet, the whole thing costs 10.000 euro's.
>I will call them tomorrow but have no fate in them fixing it.

That's $12,360 dollars. The hardware costs about:
RedLine AN-50 boxes and antennas are $3,455 each.
Cisco AIR-BR350-A-K9 bridges, plus antennas and coax,
are about $600 each.
for a total of about $8,100 list price plus incidentals.

I can see why they did not supply another pair of Redline routers.
The total cost for 4ea Redline boxes would have been $13,780, which
would have cost more than they bid on the project. There was no
shortage of Redline routers. They just replaced what was necessary
with whatever they had available and was cheap enough to make a
profit.

I don't want to get in the middle of a debate with your vendor. The
bottom line is that you paid a substantial amount of money for a
system that does not work even at the minimum theoretical level
(4Mbits/sec as limited by the 802.11b link). They also abandoned you
to do their troubleshooting for them. If you have some financial
leverage, I would use it.

>It's a backup for a fixed line whitch will arive within a month. We
>thought to bridge this perion with wifi. Sharing files with the
>fileserver on the other end would be great, but with this transfer rates
>this is not possible. Most important thing is stable connectivity with
>an AS400 application.

Well, it's certainly not stable with ping times varying all over the
place. I use the ping time (using pingprobe and MRTG) to measure the
system latency of my links. When they start to vary, I know I have
either excessive traffic or excessive packet loss.

File sharing is going to require some substantial bandwidth. It can
be done at the theoretical limited bandwidth of 4Mbits/sec for
802.11b. It would be better if it were running at the 10 times faster
speed of the Redline routers. In the US, if I want reliable operation
with no suprises, I spend the money on licensed wireless, with
coordination, to insure no interference.

>The company left all in default, the passwords still admin/admin for the
>redline's and the cisco's hace no authentication at all. Wonder how
>security is done here :)

What security? Defaults are just asking for trouble and hackers. You
will not find them on the 5.7GHz Redline link, but the 802.11b 2.4Ghz
link if full of hackers like me just waiting to pounce on an
unsuspecting wireless link and give themselves a tour of your system.

>The http and telnet interface of the cisco is so bad. I can reach them
>by telnet now and below a paste of their configs. Maybe some misconfig
>can be seen here.

I'll try, but I don't see any wireless (MAC layer) error statitistics.
See notes with <----- arrows.

>Redline A1:
>
>AN-50>show config
>sysname = kantoor to repeater
>sysdetails =
>ipaddr = 10.32.248.16
>ipmask = 255.255.255.0
>gateway = 10.32.248.1
>flowctrl = off <----- I don't know about this.
>eth = 100FD <----- 100baseTX FDX. No coax. Huh?
>http = on
>snmp = on <----- set the SNMP community names
>telnet = on <----- yech
>telnetport = 23
>rffreq = 5535
>autoscan = off
>dfsaction = 2
>antgain = 40
>txpower = 14
>atpcen = on
>adaptmod = on
>modreduct = 2
>ubrate = 36 <----- seems slow for short range.
>master = on
>encrypt = on <----- well, at least it's encrypted.
>encryptkey = ###
>llmod = off
>lmu = on
>ll = 0
>buzzer = off
>radio = on
>optionskey = ###
>flash 1: 1.32.003
>flash 2: 1.32.011 active
>
>AN-50>show stats
>macaddr = 00:09:02:00:38:A2
>swver = 1.32.011
>starttime = 0 day(s), 06 hr, 21 min, 04 sec
>rflink = Yes
>ubrate = 36
>rffreq = 5535
>txpower = 9
>cableattn = 7
>rfstatus = 0
>erxpkt = 54603
>erxpktd = 0
>etxpkt = 35250
>rssimin = -67.44
>rssimean = -66.69
>rssimax = -66.69
>sinadr = 20.64
>wrxpkt = 3195632
>wrxpktr = 1
>wrxpktd = 0
>wtxpkt = 3205747
>wtxpktr = 0
>wtxpktd = 0
>calcdst = 0.42
>hwrev = 3
>odu = T54


>Cisco 350 B2:
> Receive
> unicast pkts. 3745 39606 71609
> multicast pkts. 51743 0 229323
> total bytes 5525904 4282610 33605745
> errors 1 0 0
> discards 0 0 0
>
> Transmit
> unicast pkts. 3572 64618 73030
> multicast pkts. 32460 3 460987
> total bytes 3389515 12483286 118649149
> errors 1 682 0
> discards 0 0 0

There are a few errors (682) on the radio link show, but nothing
serious. I would think this would be a good and reliable link.
Hmmm...


>Event Log
> Time Severity Description
> 2 days, 06:31:41 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated
> 2 days, 04:18:06 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Reassociated

The above means the signal was lost for some reason and the bridge had
to reconect.

> 2 days, 04:18:06 (Info): Station [Magazijn]00409653ae3b Authenticated
> 2 days, 04:17:17 (Info): Deauthenticating [Magazijn]00409653ae3b, reason "Not
>Authenticated"

I think (not sure) that this is a WPA encryption key exchange. Not a
problem.

>Cisco 350 C1:
>not reachable at the moment

Why not?


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Hi Jeff,

been so busy last week to forgot to reply.
You know that I metioned that the last end didn't reply on ping.
It was because I reached the ethernet of B2, but the radio to C was cut.

Well in short, all that was causing trouble was a _badly_ connected
connector (to the antenna) on B2. So the wind played with it resulting
in some high pings, very very slow pings and no reply's at all.

So the company that was hired, is fired. For all future jobs.

Jeff, just want to thank you for your great help!

kr, rel