[afnog] need to identify low priced but good wi-fi bridge set

[Brian Longwe]

On 18 May 2005, at 01:19, Dr Paulos Nyirenda wrote:
>>
>
> We would like to make this significantly less expensive compared to  
> the current rate
> for putting a solution similar to a cisco aironet 350 workgroup  
> brdge. As cheap as
> possible without losing quality of delivering data and information  
> to the end user
> is the aim.
>
>

As a service provider who wants as many features for as little money  
as possible I've found the Mikrotick RouterBoard as an excellent  
price/features combination. Besides supporting A/B/G i.e. 2.4/5.1/5.8  
GHz it also provides:
- bandwidth management
- proxy (transparent or straight)
- firewall
- IPSEC
- PPTP
- PPP
- SSH
- FTP
- Hotspot
- PPPOE
- DHCP
- DNS
- and many others

This allows the same box to fit into many different situations. Which  
means less training for my field techs. We are using it as:
- point-to-point high speed wireless backhaul
- in-building client CPE (ethernet PPOE + Firewall)
- POP Level bandwidth manager
- Internal VPN to Corporate LAN

I must have about 40 or so of these deployed in various of the above  
settings. So instead of having router+firewall+proxy at a customer's  
presence I stick in one Mikrotik box (the dual ethernet Routerboard  
with full feature software retails at about $450!)

Brian