topic Re: SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs in Wireless Questions and Best Practices

SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs

marco_eichstet1 — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:17:27 GMT

Hello,

i have a question regarding to a planned SmartMesh Installation. Maybe someone has some experience and helping advices.

My Customer has two Buildings. Between this Buildings is a Distance about 40 Meters. One is the Main-Building. There will be the ZoneDirector. In the second Building will be a Network Camera and a few Windows Clients. My Customer want to connect the Building together and additionally use the Access Points for Wireless Clients like iPhone/Notebooks.

My Plan:
Use 2x ZF7982 Outdoor APs. Use the 2.4GHz Band to serve wireless to the Clients. Use the 5GHz to to a SmartMesh Connection. On the Mesh AP i will connect a Ethernet Switch where my Network Camera and the Clients connected to.

My Questions:
- Which Throughput can be expected over the Distance of 40m? Is there a Document from Ruckus where i can look for this?
- My Customer has some VLANs which i have to need on each Building Site. Is it possible to get multible VLAN Traffic over the SmartMesh link from the cabled Ethernet Switch to a Switch in my Main-Building?

If there are other things i should know, just post it.
Many Thanks for any help.

Best Regards
Marco

Re: SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs

lonnie_3404113 — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:22:45 GMT

I've tried to use Ruckus meshing and do use it yet at a few spots, and personally I would say 120 feet+ is way to far. Without knowing your setup more, my default response is that if I were doing this, I would use a point to point wireless setup to connect the buildings and avoid the 7982's altogether. Much cheaper too.

My experience is mostly with a 7982 as root and the mesh units being 7363's, so maybe there is possibility here when you are using two 7982's that I am not aware of.

Re: SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs

michael_brado — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:45:52 GMT

Marco, if you plan to use two 7782 Outdoor APs, meshing between your buildings
at 40m apart should be no problem, but throughput will depend on RF conditions.

You said two 7982s, which are INDOOR model APs. You might still mesh two of
these model APs, if they are in windows at the same height, across the street
from each other, but outdoor APs will perform much better.

But when you expand your proposal beyond wireless clients using multiple VLANs
to actual physically wired VLANs and a switch on the other side, you will have to
use the 7731 PtP bridges. All VLANs trunked into one side 7731 switch port can
be trunked out on the other side 7731 switch trunk port (including additional APs).

Re: SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs

marco_eichstet1 — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:57:17 GMT

Hello,

thanks for your answers!
I will take a look at the PtP Bridges from Ruckus or use a simple other PtP Bridge.

you've helped me!
Thanks.

Best Regards
Marco

Re: SmartMesh Building to Building Connection with VLANs

john_d — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:17:35 GMT

As an oddball home Ruckus user, I have abused meshing across buildings like this — mainly to extend my apartment's wifi network across into a fitness center about 50 feet away. And in fact, I am using 2 7982's for this purpose.

As Michael said, having the height line up is key to getting good meshing range out of this arrangement. The gym is 3 floors down from me, and even using a vertical dome-toward-window velcro mount of the 7982, the mesh link only runs at about 10mbit for me, but that's plenty for streaming workout music.

As an experiment, I was able to go to the 3rd floor of the apartment building across from mine, and established a mesh link double this speed. Definitely the height line up makes a big difference. The vertical vs horizontal mounting orientation made less of a difference than I expected, though.

All in all, it works, but I'm streaming music on a treadmill and if I had an enterprise customer, I would rather they use hardware built for this purpose 🙂