New Space Question

Angel_Kwiatkowski · June 4, 2012, 2:55am

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.

We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

···

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

Angel_Kwiatkowski · June 4, 2012, 3:34pm

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

···

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

John_Wilker · June 4, 2012, 3:53pm

We’re probably a good model of overkill but we’re also hi bandwidth users. Our current setup is

Comcast Business gateway (50/10) that we can increase with a phone call if needed.

4 Airport Extremes extending a single 5GHz network, with a 2.4GHz network off of one unit for Phones to use.

Airports aren’t really business class robust they work and are low maintenance. On our short list of improvements is connecting them all over ethernet to reduce the wireless usage to clients only, but that’s a few weeks out as we figure out how to make it work

···

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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alex · June 4, 2012, 3:59pm

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

···

–

/ah

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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John_Wilker · June 4, 2012, 4:09pm

I can second netspot, we used it at Uncubed to see what was going on around the building and see where our weak spots were

···

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 9:59 AM, Alex Hillman wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected].

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OC_Houston1 · June 13, 2012, 6:48pm

This is REALLY making my head hurt!

Toni Hogan

···

On Jun 4, 10:59 am, Alex Hillman <[email protected]> wrote:

I'm working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we've grown for my blog, I'll share it here when it's done. Here's a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware fromhttp://www.hacom.net(http://www.hacom.net/) and it runs $800-1500.

It's a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000's of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It' usable, but you'll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage "network policy". You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it's causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don't' ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we'd never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn't seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don't get their enterprise support, but I'm not too worried about it. I'm very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We're using the Ruckus 7962 -RUCKUS Networks -- Purpose-driven enterprise networks

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I'm a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It's a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

--
/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:
> I lied, we use Netgear routers. They're odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

> On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:
> > We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that's hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don't.
> > We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

> > Angel

> > On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:
> > > Hey all,

> > > Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut right to it.

> > > I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet. We've got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people. It's a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

> > > Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I'm currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

> > > Would love some thoughts.

> > > Best,

> > > Josh Aberson
> > > i....@workmeso.com (mailto:i....@workmeso.com)
> > > m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

> > > 220 S. Phillips Ave.
> > > Sioux Falls, SD 57104
> > > fb.com/workmeso (Facebook)
> > > @workmeso
> > >www.WorkMeso.com(http://www.WorkMeso.com/)

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group.
> To view this discussion on the web visithttps://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/OnmcNoyj3esJ.
> To post to this group, send email to cowo...@googlegroups.com (mailto:cowo...@googlegroups.com).
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to coworking+...@googlegroups.com (mailto:coworking+...@googlegroups.com).
> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

alex · June 13, 2012, 6:59pm

My advice is to keep it simple and grow as you need.

A high-end consumer router (around $200) will and wifi access points handle <20 concurrent users without too much trouble. Once you break 20 people on the system at the same time, especially people who have a laptop + a smartphone with wifi, you’ll start noticing issues that can be taken care of by adding more additional wifi access points.

···

–

/ah

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Toni Hogan wrote:

This is REALLY making my head hurt!

Toni Hogan

On Jun 4, 10:59 am, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes…@gmail.com> wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware fromhttp://www.hacom.net(http://www.hacom.net/) and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 -http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.

We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected] (mailto:i…@workmeso.com)

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

Redirecting... (http://fb.com/workmeso)

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com(http://www.WorkMeso.com/)

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jacobsayles · June 13, 2012, 7:01pm

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

···

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

–

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alex · June 13, 2012, 7:09pm

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

···

–

/ah

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

–

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/OnmcNoyj3esJ.

To post to this group, send email to [email protected].

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected].

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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jacobsayles · June 13, 2012, 7:17pm

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members in the space.

Jacob

···

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

–

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/OnmcNoyj3esJ.

To post to this group, send email to [email protected].

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected].

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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alex · June 13, 2012, 7:24pm

Impressive. How many other wifi access points are within range?

I have a feeling that our signal to noise ratio was hurting our ability to run that many devices from even 4 Airport Extremes.

I guess the lesson here is “your milage may vary” on any of these pieces of equipment, so don’t expect a silver bullet.

···

–

/ah

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members in the space.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

–

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/OnmcNoyj3esJ.

To post to this group, send email to [email protected].

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected].

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

–

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To post to this group, send email to [email protected].

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected].

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

jacobsayles · June 13, 2012, 7:37pm

We have a lot of traffic with 4 apt buildings surrounding us so there are approximately 20-30 competing signals depending on where you sit. We still have issues if someone is on 802.11g only (2.4ghz) but most users are on the 5ghz band. The full place is wired though so if anyone has issues, we just tell them to plug in. When I hear “I’m having wireless issues” I check out their laptop and 9 times out of 10 it’s an older machine that only does 802.11g.

One piece of hardware I would love to find is a google cloud print server. Currently anyone needing to print from a chrome book needs Alexandra to be logged in to Chrome and it goes through her account. This is a horrible solution. Anyone got a better solution?

Jacob

···

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Impressive. How many other wifi access points are within range?

I have a feeling that our signal to noise ratio was hurting our ability to run that many devices from even 4 Airport Extremes.

I guess the lesson here is “your milage may vary” on any of these pieces of equipment, so don’t expect a silver bullet.

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members in the space.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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OC_Houston1 · June 13, 2012, 7:38pm

I had an Airport Extreme in my hands about an hour ago but I got
nervous. We only had 4 people here today and the Linksys and been
blocking additional users since yesterday. It's only letting on person
connect. The Netgear only works for about 10 minutes. I had to go home
to get my Clear Puck...imagine that. It's working just fine. We are
broadcasting two free coworking days next week and a few people have
already signed up for Wednesday so we have to be ready...and we will
be.

Toni Hogan

···

On Jun 13, 2:17 pm, Jacob Sayles <[email protected]> wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected
to the wireless out of 63 in the space... but it's also a quiet day. Last
Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can't
see how many of those were on the wifi. I say "devices" because most users
are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members
in the space.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolationhttp://www.officenomads.com- (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman <dangerous...@gmail.com >

> wrote:
> Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

> --
> /ah
> indyhall.org
> coworking in philadelphia

> On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

> We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over
> is a little clunky so don't expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10
> seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That
> said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That's why we pay
> $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having
> that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

> Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

> Jacob

> ---
> Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
>http://www.officenomads.com- (206) 323-6500

> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman <dangerous...@gmail.com > > > wrote:

> I'm working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking
> equipment as we've grown for my blog, I'll share it here when it's done.
> Here's a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

> On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called
> a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run
> on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick
> one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

> pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run
> it optimally. We looked at new hardware fromhttp://www.hacom.netand
> it runs $800-1500.

> It's a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling
> 1000's of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow
> down with anything north of 50 users. It' usable, but you'll start noticing
> problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and
> squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all
> users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need
> connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like
> Youtube and torrents.

> For us, that means a much easier to manage "network policy". You can use
> just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it's
> causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

> The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can
> install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that
> way people don't' ever lose their connection.

> On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with
> Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud
> Control system was badass, we'd never use 99% of it. The sales people were
> really nice and helpful, but it didn't seem like a good fit for us.

> Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their
> normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new
> AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don't get their
> enterprise support, but I'm not too worried about it. I'm very happy with
> the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100
> users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We're
> using the Ruckus 7962 -
>RUCKUS Networks -- Purpose-driven enterprise networks

> Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation
> Center crew. I'm a happy customer.

> I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site
> survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email).
> It's a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal
> to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the
> resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about
> last month!

> -Alex

> --
> /ah
> indyhall.org
> coworking in philadelphia

> On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

> I lied, we use Netgear routers. They're odd. They needed to be restarted
> constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

> On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

> We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice
> line comes in that's hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the
> coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think
> the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of
> switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority
> don't.
> We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class
> 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have
> some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large
> university here.

> Angel

> On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

> Hey all,

> Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut
> right to it.

> I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing
> details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet. We've
> got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for
> the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and
> what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people. It's
> a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people
> accessing the network at any given time.

> Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I'm currently looking at
> an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at
> 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the
> device.

> Would love some thoughts.

> Best,

> *Josh Aberson*
> i....@workmeso.com
> m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

> 220 S. Phillips Ave.
> Sioux Falls, SD 57104
> fb.com/workmeso
> @workmeso
>www.WorkMeso.com

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Coworking" group.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
>https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/OnmcNoyj3esJ\.
> To post to this group, send email to cowo...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> coworking+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
>http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en\.

> --
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> "Coworking" group.
> To post to this group, send email to cowo...@googlegroups.com.
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> --
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> --
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Matthew_Arkin · June 13, 2012, 7:41pm

Airport extremes are really awesome, much better than the more consumer oriented Linksys and Netgear stuff.

···

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Toni Hogan [email protected] wrote:

I had an Airport Extreme in my hands about an hour ago but I got

nervous. We only had 4 people here today and the Linksys and been

blocking additional users since yesterday. It’s only letting on person

connect. The Netgear only works for about 10 minutes. I had to go home

to get my Clear Puck…imagine that. It’s working just fine. We are

broadcasting two free coworking days next week and a few people have

already signed up for Wednesday so we have to be ready…and we will

be.

Toni Hogan

On Jun 13, 2:17 pm, Jacob Sayles [email protected] wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected

to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last

Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t

see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users

are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members

in the space.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolationhttp://www.officenomads.com- (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman <[email protected]

wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over

is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10

seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That

said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay

$200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having

that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation

http://www.officenomads.com- (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman <[email protected] > > > > wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking

equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done.

Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called

a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run

on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick

one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run

it optimally. We looked at new hardware fromhttp://www.hacom.netand

it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling

1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow

down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing

problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and

squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all

users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need

connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like

Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use

just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s

causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can

install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that

way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with

Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud

Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were

really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their

normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new

AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their

enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with

the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100

users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re

using the Ruckus 7962 -

http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation

Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site

survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email).

It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal

to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the

resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about

last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted

constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice

line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the

coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think

the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of

switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority

don’t.

We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class

50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have

some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large

university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut

right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing

details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve

got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for

the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and

what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s

a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people

accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at

an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at

801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the

device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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Matthew_Arkin · June 13, 2012, 7:43pm

Jacob, you should be able to “Share” printers with Google Cloud Print
http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1329537

···

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Jacob Sayles [email protected] wrote:

We have a lot of traffic with 4 apt buildings surrounding us so there are approximately 20-30 competing signals depending on where you sit. We still have issues if someone is on 802.11g only (2.4ghz) but most users are on the 5ghz band. The full place is wired though so if anyone has issues, we just tell them to plug in. When I hear “I’m having wireless issues” I check out their laptop and 9 times out of 10 it’s an older machine that only does 802.11g.

One piece of hardware I would love to find is a google cloud print server. Currently anyone needing to print from a chrome book needs Alexandra to be logged in to Chrome and it goes through her account. This is a horrible solution. Anyone got a better solution?

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Impressive. How many other wifi access points are within range?

I have a feeling that our signal to noise ratio was hurting our ability to run that many devices from even 4 Airport Extremes.

I guess the lesson here is “your milage may vary” on any of these pieces of equipment, so don’t expect a silver bullet.

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members in the space.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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jacobsayles · June 13, 2012, 7:45pm

Yes, that is what Alexandra did, and that is why it is linked to her account. If she doesn’t have chrome open, logged in to google, then the share doesn’t work.

Jacob

···

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation

http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Matthew Arkin [email protected] wrote:

Jacob, you should be able to “Share” printers with Google Cloud Print
http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1329537

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Jacob Sayles [email protected] wrote:

We have a lot of traffic with 4 apt buildings surrounding us so there are approximately 20-30 competing signals depending on where you sit. We still have issues if someone is on 802.11g only (2.4ghz) but most users are on the 5ghz band. The full place is wired though so if anyone has issues, we just tell them to plug in. When I hear “I’m having wireless issues” I check out their laptop and 9 times out of 10 it’s an older machine that only does 802.11g.

One piece of hardware I would love to find is a google cloud print server. Currently anyone needing to print from a chrome book needs Alexandra to be logged in to Chrome and it goes through her account. This is a horrible solution. Anyone got a better solution?

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Impressive. How many other wifi access points are within range?

I have a feeling that our signal to noise ratio was hurting our ability to run that many devices from even 4 Airport Extremes.

I guess the lesson here is “your milage may vary” on any of these pieces of equipment, so don’t expect a silver bullet.

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

Yes, just one Airport Extreme. At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space… but it’s also a quiet day. Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space. I can’t see how many of those were on the wifi. I say “devices” because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop. Today we have 26 members in the space.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great. The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don’t expect seamless transitions. It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped. That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down. That’s why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection. We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme. 5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

I’m working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we’ve grown for my blog, I’ll share it here when it’s done. Here’s a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500.

It’s a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000’s of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It’ usable, but you’ll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage “network policy”. You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it’s causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don’t’ ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we’d never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn’t seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don’t get their enterprise support, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We’re using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I’m a happy customer.

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It’s a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

–

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They’re odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that’s hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don’t.
We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

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Jordan_Running · June 14, 2012, 4:01pm

Jacob,

Take a look here: https://github.com/armooo/cloudprint

If your printer is on the network or connected to your pfSense machine you can install CUPS on the latter (there's a good guide on the pfSense forum) and then this script acts as a Google Cloud Print daemon. This depends on your willingness to SSH into pfSense and there being BSD support for your printer.

I haven't tried it since we don't have any ChromeOS users yet but it appears to be well-maintained. Hope it helps!

Jordan Running
Busy Coworking
Iowa City, IA
http://busycoworking.com/

leon.s · April 14, 2014, 12:54pm

Hello everyone,

if you are looking for a cloud-managed printing solution for your space that is set up in a few minutes and runs your complete printing management infrastructure, you should definitely check out our service at ezeep.com. It is used and loved by coworking spaces all over the world.

If you are interested in some more info, a short demonstration or a week of free trial, just get in touch with me.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +49 30 208 981 303

···

On Thursday, August 25, 2011 5:09:58 PM UTC+2, Josh Aberson wrote:

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I’ll just cut right to it.

I’m opening a space next week in South Dakota. Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I’m not too sure about is internet. We’ve got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space’s size and amount of people. It’s a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight? I’m currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up. Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

[email protected]

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com