Design Question for Bridging AP

[andrew.bell]

I would like to deploy a wireless network to cover a large area. The problem being that only one location well be the root bridge and I would need all non-root bridges to be able to forword there traffic to the root bridge. In this situation I would need to have multiple non-root bridges forming connections wirelessly to the root bridge. So I might have 3 to 5 non root bridges connected to gether with only one of them having a connection to the root bridge. As well, each AP well need to be able to also forward traffic from wireless devices in it's cell to the root bridge. My questions are is this posible, if so is there a limit on how many non-root bridges can be connected together in this senario? The last question is what would be the best AP to do this with? Would it be a 1300 or can I get away with doing this with a 1200?

Thanks for your help

[smahbub]

I think for your scenario, the best approach is first you can look for any documents that explains in detail regarding Troubleshooting common problems in Wireless Bridged Networks. If you can find any related document, you will find the solution.

[sushilk]

Hi,

What i understand from your post is, you have a central location and 5 remote locations. All these remote loactions need to be connected to the central location. So you need to have one root bridge at the central location and 5 non-root bridges comming on to this root bridge.

Also regarding the APs are you planning to have APs at all the remote locations?

As such there is no specific limit of having non-root bridges connecting to the root bridge. However you have to consider few thing. First you will be using g-radio for this which provides a bandwidth of 54Mbps. However the real time throughput will be around 22-23Mbps. Thus 22Mbps will be shared between 5 sites which comes to 4Mbps per site. this may further reduce depending on the distance of the remote sites from the central site and the environmental factors.

Thus you will have to look into the amount of traffic flowing form each location to the central site.

The AP for indoor purpose you can go with 1100 or 1200 AP. 1100 comes with integrated antenna. So you do not have the flexibilityof having different kind of antennas. With 1200 AP you have the flexibility of selecting antenna from the available range.

Refer to the deployment guide-

http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/products_white_paper09186a00801d61a3.shtml

The following bridge range utility may also help you-

http://cisco.com/application/vnd.ms-excel/en/us/guest/products/ps5861/c1225/cdccont_0900aecd800f9155.xls

Hope this helps.

Sushil.

[jcornford]

I think, you'd be better looking at the 1500 series mesh APs. Assuming you're deployment is outdoors, this might suit better as you can use the dual interfaces to alleviate the radio contention. I'm assuming you're in a country where the 802.11 regulations won't inhibit you! As I think was mentioned, your true throughput is only going to be about 4Mbps half duplex at your core root bridge, unless you co-host with two, in which case you might get about double that dependant on obstacles and atmospherics of course.

Good luck!