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A few years ago, we made use of Apple Airport Extreme base stations mounted on the wall to provide a WiFi bridge to our LAN. This particular model makes use of 802.11af (Power-over-Ethernet, or PoE for short) to power the base stations. This worked out well, because we merely needed to supply a network jack, and didn't have to have an additional power outlet installed nearby. We used 3Com power injectors to supply the power.

Lately, in a completely intermittent way, the base stations have been going deaf. They work for 1-3 weeks after a power cycle, but then silently fail.

I've convinced the owner that it may be time to look for a replacement unit.

So I'm looking for a wireless bridge that can be powered by PoE.

This client is an Ad Agency, and a Mac shop.

Any recommendations?

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8 Answers 8

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My advice would be to start looking at a centrally managed Wireless Network setup (If your environment calls for a mid-size wireles setup - 2 access points or more). This is where you have a 'controller' managing your access points. With this model, scalability becomes a less of an issue, and implementing configuration changes is just a matter of doing it in one place and propagatting them to the 'thin-client-like' access points.

We've used Aruba for a few years now and they have been both cheap and reliable. A bit interesting to setup, but once it's up.. it's up!. The support on it has been pretty good. Their configuration page is very powerful, and easy to use once you get used to where everything is.

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I can highly recommend the wifi bridges from WiMo, they also support POE.

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There are couple of good brands especially designed for !home usage like that shop.

http://meraki.com/ http://www.ubnt.com/ http://www.arubanetworks.com/

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I don't know how much money you're looking to spend, but I've been really happy with my Cisco 1130AG. I previously had a Linksys Draft-N AP that I ended up rebooting every night and still remained unstable. I have had zero problems with the Cisco. Of course, it cost like 8 times as much and doesn't support N. (They have some now that do, I think.)

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If you need a rather cheep plastic box, go for Netgear, LevelOne, 3Com, etc. They all have PoE models. Or take a few more bucks an get a "real" access point. Trapeze MP-71 or Cisco or something.

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I have about 100 Cisco APs in deployment, 90% are PoE. We have Aironet 1131AG, 1141N, LAP1231G, and a few others. They all work flawlessly. The 1131AGs are the bulk of our deployment. We use LAPs that need a controller, but they make autonomous models that don't need this. Many of the 1131s that we have were autonomous when we purchased them, but were later converted to LAPs.

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Just in case anyone finds this thread while searching for Airport Extreme base stations over PoE, it turned out that the intermittent deafness was caused by having all of them plugged into a network switch that was itself failing intermittently. It wasn't ever the fault of the PoE injectors. The 3Com injectors are still highly recommended: Far cheaper than alternatives, solidly built, and have been working for years.

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Look at ubiquiti network, they have very nice PoE access points. I have two of them, one mounted outside in brittany, and I take the other in vacation. I recommend.

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