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I have had good luck with Linksys routers. If you get a bad one it is a bother and something anyone would remember. I hope their Quality Control is not getting worse. I have never had a bad power connector on a Linksys router.
I have been experimenting with Linksys routers and Access Points for about 10 years and have had good luck with them. I estimate I have worked with well over 200 of the routers and Access Points. About 1/3 of them I have purchased new, the rest I have picked up at garage sales or at a second hand store in Austin, Texas.
I have never gotten a bad unit, out of a factory sealed box. I check the used units for obvious mishandling. Antenna connectors do get roughed up at times.
The routers were intended for indoor use, so for outdoor use I recommend putting heat sinks on all the large chips, putting a conformal coating over any exposed areas on the circuit board not covered by the solder mask, especially the legs of the chips (to keep moisture off). Then mount the circuit board vertically in the outdoor enclosure so any condensing water vapor will run off.
Paint the enclosure a light color, and put a weep hole in the bottom to let condensed water vapor out of the enclosure. Do not assume you can keep water vapor out. Provide a weep hole. A hole about 1/8” will usually work. Don't go up to 1/4” as that invites lots of insects.
That said, we have at least one unit that is just an unaltered WRT54GL in a good enclosure that has been running for over 3 years in the triple digit Texas heat, with no problems.
Do what you can to run clean power to the unit if you are using Power Over Ethernet.
Lightning protection is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Cisco owns Linksys, and makes “professional” mesh nodes. From what I can tell they charge from about $1,200.00 and up for these units and for that kind of money, they put it in a nice box for you, and expect you to use the unit outdoors.
Note that in Berlin, Germany and Athens, Greece, they have been running mesh systems with hundreds of WRT54G routers, for years before hams got interested. They seem to have acceptable results with the hardware.
If it is a hard to get to place, consider using more than one mesh node. The cost of the enclosure will usually swamp the cost of the electronics inside.
Even an expensive “professional” mesh node can get blown away in a direct lightning strike, no mater how much lightning protection gear you have on it. Consider putting up a second unit.
Use every trick you can afford on the cables coming off the roof or down the tower to keep lightning out of the building. This is a large topic in itself and is nothing unique to mesh nodes. One thing you might consider is a sacrificial Ethernet switch for all outside mesh nodes and isolate the power for it. It may be able to keep lightning from coming further into the building and its equipment. It is worth a try in some of these switches are quite cheap. (Don't forget to check them for damage if your mesh node seems to go quiet.)
-Glenn
KD5MFW |
