Zyxel ZyAir G3000H Wireless Access Point

I've spent half my day setting up a small wireless network with a couple of Zyxel ZyAir G3000H Wireless Access Points. What an absolutely stonking bit of kit! Full retail price is £130 but the street price is lower.

You might be forgiven for thinking that an access point is an access point... You would be wrong in this case though.

The first fantastic feature is the Multiple ESSID mode, a single access point that can support up to 16 individual SSID's, each SSID can have a it's own security profile. The security profiles include a choice of encryption protocols, WEP, WPA or WPA2. The usual mac address access control can be turned on if you wish.

The G3000H is designed for use in hotel environments. It's important that individual users aren't able to access one anothers computers over the wireless network... they're not going to use your wireless network if they think they might get hacked are they? Anyway, the G3000H has a Layer 2 Isolation feature, turn it on and that's it, individual users can only access the devices you allow. The first thing that happens when you turn it on is that your network access stops! You need to program the mac address of your default gateway into the L2 Isolation allow list to get things moving, it makes sense to enter the mac address(s) of the access point too.

It's very rare that a wireless access point needs installing in a spot that has a mains power point handy... Good job this device supports power over ethernet too, another great feature. Attach a power over ethernet injector somewhere between the access point and your switch and that's it, plug the data cable into the access point and it powers up too!

Nice bit of kit, well worth the extra cash and interesting to play with.

Smarter networking

Network cabling really is the simplest thing. Bits of wire stretched between two points.... That's it. So how come the ends are always in the wrong place and the cable gets damaged right in the place where you can't see it?

Well anyway, the thing I've noticed is that as we trundle along to an ever more connected world we're relying more and more upon our cabling to string together our IP networks. It's all very well when you've got the wiring in place or if you're building a new place and can flood wire it in the first place, in other circumstances it can be a bit of a pain. Try telling a hotel manager that in order to install an IP network so that he can have broadband and an IP Phone in every room we need to tear up his hotel and disrupt his guests to run cabling everywhere... you can see his blood running cold. Try adding cabling to an existing office in an old building, crikey what a nightmare... moving desks, drilling walls, mess, noise and disruption, never a nice project.

That's how I ended up looking at ADSL and VDSL technology. Both of these technologies allow me to create IP networks in buildings that have nothing better than an extensive telephone network.

With ADSL I can easily create a huge IP network suitable for IP telephony and Internet access. 800Kbps+ on the upstream and up to 24Mbps on the downstream. Fantastic, and no mess either, just whack in an inexpensive ADSL switch next to the telephone frame and then a few hours wiring, a cheap ADSL router for each node and there you go, an IP network node at every telephone point.

I can do the same with VDSL, same idea but I end up with up to 16Mbps in both directions. The switch equipment costs roughly the same as the ADSL kit but the end nodes are probably three time as expensive. You pay for the bandwidth you get.

Time was when such technology could only be found at your local telephone exchange in huge great frames serving thousands of nodes... Not any more! Great technology available to all, giving us smart solutions to messy problems .