On 4/12/09 4:18 PM, jay peltz wrote:
I"m wondering if there are any recommendations for wireless routers for an off grid application.
The best firewall solution and the best wireless solution may not come in the same box. I have a fair bit of experience in this area and can say with reasonable certainty that the combination of X-Wrt <http://x-wrt.org/> (a version of OpenWrt featuring a vastly improved web interface) and commodity consumer hardware can work quite well for basic office use.
If you need real firewalling with usable traffic shaping (maintain your VoIP quality even when several others are using the network) I think pfSense <http://pfsense.org/> does a stellar job running something like an Alix <http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm> board. You can drop a quality mini-PCI radio (try Ubiquiti or Atheros) into one of these and have something that will equal anything available at any price on the commercial market. The receive sensitivity of these is a good 10 dB better than the integrated Broadcom stuff in the commodity boxes and that (not to mention their 400 mW or even higher output capacity) can make a world of difference in marginal setups.
I'm looking for something that A works, B efficient, and C isn't an Apple.
The little Linksys and related boxen draw about 4-5 W if I recall correctly. My Alix 2d3 draws about 4-6W most of the time without wireless, probably closer to 7-8W if I were to drop a card in there. One caveat if you're looking at DC powering these: Almost all of them max out at 24V input. That means 24V, _not_ 25 or 26V (found out the hard way.)
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