I am curious what people are using. I am hearing about so many different approaches to home networking and wi-fi, what’s your solution?

Check out Pakedge - They have great products and unbelievable tech support and customer support

I’ve heard nothing but good things about Pakedge for Access Points. They introduced a router at CEDIA made by Fortinet. They have a forum over on integrationpros and really seem to take care of their dealers.

As I’ve said many times, between working at Niveus, VUDU and Kaleidescape I’ve talked to thousands of dealers and there was one constant…Netgear did NOT work. I’m not making this up, even their highest end stuff did not work well at all with anything having to do with video streaming or UDP communication.

I recommended Dell PowerConnect switches to hundreds of dealers without any complaints. I use the older 2724, my only complaint is that it’s web managed without a telnet or serial console for admin. Otherwise I would definitely recommend them for switches.

I am using a Linksys RV-082 router which worked fine for many years, since being taken over by Cisco it has gone to hell. I had to track down a really old firmware pre-cisco days and finally the thing has stopped locking up again. People seem to think that Linksys is Cisco but my experience is that the only think Cisco like is the logo on the device.

My next router will be either a real Cisco, a Sonicwall or a Watchguard or possibly Pakedge.

In my experiece, only one brand consistenly fails to perform - D-link.

I’ve used a wide range of stuff over the years, I should point out that 99% of the time I never got to specify what I wanted to use or I was just not listened to   Anyway, lets see at one point in time I did a lot of jobs with Netgear for APs and Routers.  Kaleidescape systems always got Linksys gig switches though.  The problem with Netgear is their APs don’t play the best with Crestron devices in my experience.  When the 8X first came out they would work but not well.  Started using a business grade Linksys AP instead and that worked well but it still wasn’t a fully integrated solution.  More recently I’ve had to use a lot of WRT54GLs with DD-WRT, works great but I find “selling” it customers somewhat objectionable.  Besides at this point the network is the single most important system we as dealers can provide our customers now and in the future.  A little over a year ago someone told me about Ruckus.  Now big or small I can at least use all the same wireless access points and if it’s a big job I put in the wireless controller and all the AP programming is done for me by the controller.  I have also tested the Pakedge units but I found the Ruckus units before I was able to get any into a job and since the Ruckus price point is in range it is easier to just deal with one.  I’m still working on the magical combination for switches and routers though.  They both really depend on the job size and the customer.  If the home is smaller I’ll use something like an HP Pro Curve or a Dell.  If the house is 30,000 sq feet and fully integrated I’m gonna put in Cisco for routers and switches.  I’m still researching between the Cisco 800 series, Watchguard Edge Series, and SonicWall TZ series for smaller job router/firewalls.

Mark

Casey,

Nothing personal - this is just a pet peeve of mine. I am weary of any manufacturer going OEM on products. I still don’t get the Fortinet deal. The Fortinet router which PakEdge claims is “enterprise grade” is an unknown brand. By show of hands: Who has a Fortinet router and how long has it actually been flawlessly running?

This router is a part of a pre-configured “VLAN kit” and if you take a close look into how the network is designed in this case you will see it’s completely wrong.

http://www.pakedge.com/docs/RSB-KITBrochureFinalV1.pdf

Wireless: PakEdge wants you to buy access points for every VLAN you have – this literally guarantees you channel conflicts. Imagine having three AP’s in every location in the house – one for voice, one for data, one for AV. So if you have three locations that’s a total of NINE access points! And, what if we want guest access?

Core network: this color coded switch is hard-set. What if we need to change a switchport to another VLAN? What if we need more uplinks? What if I want to set an ACL for one VLAN not talking to another? Oh well, shoulda’ gotten a Cisco Switch.

Scalability: This design is limited – you can’t mold the network into what you want it to be, you have to go along with the flawed design until you hit the scalability wall.

Granularity: device wise, where is my log and what does it mean? Can anyone drill into the system and tell me hout to troubleshoot it? Oh yes, PakEdge says “additional support offered by Fortinet if needed”. I can keep going but its pointless.

To conclude:
There is no way to ship a “one size fits all” network. The network has to be customized to the project and supported throughout the process with a certified engineer. You do want to use best practices so your project is successful and your network is stable.

mdelzer - 10 October 2009 09:50 PM

I’ve used a wide range of stuff over the years, I should point out that 99% of the time I never got to specify what I wanted to use or I was just not listened to   Anyway, lets see at one point in time I did a lot of jobs with Netgear for APs and Routers.  Kaleidescape systems always got Linksys gig switches though.  The problem with Netgear is their APs don’t play the best with Crestron devices in my experience.  When the 8X first came out they would work but not well.  Started using a business grade Linksys AP instead and that worked well but it still wasn’t a fully integrated solution.  More recently I’ve had to use a lot of WRT54GLs with DD-WRT, works great but I find “selling” it customers somewhat objectionable.  Besides at this point the network is the single most important system we as dealers can provide our customers now and in the future.  A little over a year ago someone told me about Ruckus.  Now big or small I can at least use all the same wireless access points and if it’s a big job I put in the wireless controller and all the AP programming is done for me by the controller.  I have also tested the Pakedge units but I found the Ruckus units before I was able to get any into a job and since the Ruckus price point is in range it is easier to just deal with one.  I’m still working on the magical combination for switches and routers though.  They both really depend on the job size and the customer.  If the home is smaller I’ll use something like an HP Pro Curve or a Dell.  If the house is 30,000 sq feet and fully integrated I’m gonna put in Cisco for routers and switches.  I’m still researching between the Cisco 800 series, Watchguard Edge Series, and SonicWall TZ series for smaller job router/firewalls.

Mark

Mark - Cisco just came out with the SA500 series firewall. Its all web-programming so you can do it yourself and it will support UPNP (first ever for a Cisco firewall). There is also support for IPSEC VPN and SSL VPN as well as failover, dual WAN, DDNS (although you do not need it if you have a Ruckus system) and a host of other cool features.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9932/prod_models_comparison.html

Pak Edge has a great product.

However for small installs and general use I have had a lot of experience with DD-WRT on Linksys hardware.

If you are at all up on networking I would highly recommend looking into this open source project.  After re-flashing a wrt54g it can do much more than Linksys ever intended.  For networking it’s my swiss-army knife.

Also I’ve had good experience with the Bountiful BWRG1000,  Noisy fan but I typically stick them in a closet or somewhere else.

ackray - 24 October 2009 12:24 PM

Pak Edge has a great product.

However for small installs and general use I have had a lot of experience with DD-WRT on Linksys hardware.

If you are at all up on networking I would highly recommend looking into this open source project.  After re-flashing a wrt54g it can do much more than Linksys ever intended.  For networking it’s my swiss-army knife.

Also I’ve had good experience with the Bountiful BWRG1000,  Noisy fan but I typically stick them in a closet or somewhere else.

- ACK,

no matter what firmware you put on a WRT54G, you still have a WRT54G chassis. As far as DD – to me it’s just putting a client in harm’s way. Selling a box with firmware written by anyone other than the manufacturer has some obvious issues.

@ NE

Thanks for the reply!

I’ve been working with odd routers and firewalls for years, from Mandrake MNF, Smoothwall and the SG20 which are some of my old favorites,  to some recent Cisco equipment.  And I have to say I’ve been very surprised by the DD-WRT and linksys combination. 

I am currently ‘putting the boots’ to this combo in two locations.  A hotel where I get up to 150 DHCP requests a day and a nightclub where we are running Pelco camera to an off-site monitoring location.

At the Hotel I’ve seen up to 20 people on at once without bogging the connection down.  I didn’t break it down to bandwidth per client or run a wireshark but it seems to be handling it without a problem.

At the nightclub we are pushing Gigs of data off site everyday as well as the internal traffic.  While the pelco units are running static the DD-WRT handles general DHCP client routing, PPTP VPN, and a splash page as well as the sec cam data to an off site location.  So yes, I’ve been presently surprised.

Personally I’m a huge fan of the open source philosophy and methodology BUT I realize that each, open and closed source,  has it’s strengths and weaknesses.

I’m here to learn as I am new to AV so I’m not trying to start a flame war here.  Just interested in passing along my experience.

A big consideration for me here was that the night club owner is a friend and fellow techie and the hotel has worked with me for around ten years.  So in both cases I felt free to suggest we try something experimental without worrying about how a failure would reflect on my company (me).

highstone - 10 October 2009 12:31 PM

In my experiece, only one brand consistenly fails to perform - D-link.

but my experience is different from you :(

Whooper,

Whats the deal with your signature?

Wow,  I find it very interesting that NetworkEngineer from Access Networks is knocking Pakedge,  can’t blame them they re-sell a competing product…  Any respectable company would not knock their competition in a public forum like this…  You don’t see AMX employee’s starting conversations about what touch panel you use and then when someone says they use Crestron, that same AMX employee posts that Crestron touch panels suck!  I’m so glad i’m not doing business with a company like that.  Surely you know this since your profile says you’re the CEO of Access Networks.

Stop starting threads to promote your own business.  We can see right through these tactics.

We have standardized on Cisco (http://www.cisco.com), HP Procurve (http://www.procurve.com) and Fortinet (http://www.fortinet.com) depending on the job.

I have used for two years the Apple Airport Extreme 802.n router. It has performed flawlessly and I highly recommend it.

George Pro
Pro Sound and Vision
http://www.prosoundandvision.com

Here lately I have been using Cisco products, they have a reseller/partner program that you can sign up for through dandh.  I am still in the process of getting setup, but you are suppose to receive better pricing & training.

David