Graves On SOHO VoIP

When last we left this story our protagonist had returned the Cisco AP to BUY.COM leaving le maison du Graves without functional wifi for about two weeks. Fortunately I was out of town a lot during that period so it wasn’t much of an inconvenience. If anything it gave me some time to evaluate my options regarding replacement gear.

I’ve noted that whereas I had a lot of problems with 802.11n type wifi APs I’d previously had far fewer issues with 802.11g type hardware. Very recently I was reminded by someone who should know that 802.11a/b/g is more mature hardware than 802.11n. This certainly rings true as my very old Linksys WAP-54G ran for literally years with no problems at all.

How I long for the Linksys of old.

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There are myriad inexpensive consumer routers available that include wifi functionality, but far fewer freestanding wifi access points (AP.) I surmise that this is because every broadband connected home needs a router and wants a wifi AP, so a converged device is the most affordable approach to this marketplace. Yet in many ways it’s less than ideal.

The fact that your router and wifi access point are in one device makes that device a major possible single point of failure. It dies and your entire network goes down. While merely inconvenient for the kids coming home after school to play World Of Warcraft, it’s a whole different kind of failure if you’re a full-time home office worker who relies on internet access to be effective in your job.

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This is part 2 in the continuing saga of my fight with replacing a dead Netgear WNR-2000 that had served a my wifi AP.  Please recall that I just RMA’d the Cisco WAP4410N that was to be its replacement.

Firstly, I think that I was a very early adopter of both residential broadband and wifi. Linksys was the obvious leader in devices for this market. I bought a Linksys WAP-11 when they were brand new and fairly pricey. I wired it into my trusty Linksys BEFSR-41 4-port wired router. That device was fed by a Time-Warner Road Runner cable modem back in 1998.

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One of the things that Santa brought over the holidays was a new Wifi access point. Back in November our Netgear router/AP just up and died. In fact, that was the third time in 18 months that the Netgear device has failed. It was twice replaced under warranty. On the occasion of this third failure it, and others of its kind, were not welcome to return….at any price.

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After my last post about Cisco’s TechWise TV I was a little surprised to be contacted by someone from Cisco offering me a pre-release look at the new episode that is due out later today. It’s episode #37 and all about “Redefining the Remote Office.” As a long time home-office dweller this sounded potentially interesting so I had a look.

The show covers a lot of ground including voice, data, VPNs, security, energy efficiency, SLAs, etc. There were some cool ideas in there. I especially like the idea of scheduled power-off/on of devices based on time of day, controlled by logic in the switch providing POE. That’s pretty cool for SOHO sites, and something I should do around my office.

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Funny the things you read when poking around online. From Junction Networks blog there’s a reference to Cisco planning to stop development of SIP images for their 79xx series IP phones.

This catches me by surprise since they made such a big deal out of embracing SIP back in 2006 when their Unified Communication Suite was released. So I’ve made a few inquires to see if this claim can be corroborated elsewhere.

To be honest, it wouldn’t bother me at all if it turns out to be true. Cisco phones were always very nice, but priced way beyond my means or their merit, IMHO. I’ve used the 7940 a fair bit since Continental Airlines lounges were all Cisco until late in 2007…and I spend a lot of time in their lounge of the course of a year.

From a Tweet received this morning I clicked through a few links to find a downloadable video series called TechWiseTV from Cisco. The shows are very polished and cover a variety of topics including VoIP and UC.

Looking at the full length videos requires that you create a login to Cisco’s web site, which is a pain but at least it’s free.

Matt Brunk is apparently getting a sample of the new Cisco/Linksys IP310. In the comment trail to his blog post he notes that, yes it looks like an 802.11 b/g device. The real question is its support for WMM, which can occasionally be found in the latest generation of 802.11g devices.

This is interesting to me as I have a couple of older Linksys WAP54G access points that I’ve been meaning to replace. These were the first generation hardware and have been a little flaky the past few months.

If I’m going to replace them then I’d like to know that I’m choosing APs that are well adapted to VoWifi should I later go that route. I also want POE capable APs so that I can mount them more located for more ideal range.