I needed a heavy duty super secure and bullet proof access point for a new client. I am familiar with Cisco products and the Cisco IOS, and I currently have Cisco Wifi access points deployed at 4 location. I was pleased with the capabilities of the aironet 1100 series, but as they are not being produced anymore, Cisco has replaced it with the Aironet 1140.
Some highlights of the specs are Gigabit Ethernet, multiple antennae, and the ability to broadcast multiple SSID’s on seperate VLan’s.
I ordered it from amazon here; for about $650, unfortunately the package we received was lacking the 48v power supply. When we called amazon, they offered to reimburse us if we purchased one from another vendor because they did not carry that part in stock. I thought that was cool, I like amazon sometimes.
Once we received the power supply, thanks to the folks Domino Computing in New York City, I was able start configuring the aironet. My first obstacle is that Cisco ships the aironet in a super secure mode that only allows consoles access via serial port and hyperterminal (yes, I actually have a pc with a serial port) on the Cisco serial to console cable, thank god I had one, because making one would have been a real pain. I then discovered that the firmware it ships with does not have a web based administration console, and in order to get it I had to upgrade the firmware on the unit.
And of course upgrading the firmware on any Cisco enterprise products is less then *trivial*. In order to flash the firmware on the unit I had to connect it to the local network and let it grab a DHCP lease and then I had to setup a TFTP server so that then instruct the aironet via the console to grab the firmware binary and update itself.
After futzing around with several different TFTP alternatives I finally settled on the gui TFTPserver.app, told it where I was hiding the binary, plugged my a laptop into the network (it did not let me when I tried to do it over wifi), told IOS that i was the super user and then told it grab the file from my laptop running the TFTP server. After about 10 minutes of grinding and a reboot or 2 the Aironet came up and lo and behold it had a web interface….awesome.
In my next post I will explain how we set up and configured the Access Point.
|joeNYC|