5354 AP1 ARIES2
(Also Known As 5354AP1)
Atheros Chipset
AR5312
System
AR5112
2.4/5 GHz dual band radio
AR2112
2.4 GHz radio
The Access Point can be purchased from Netgate.
Please Note: As of 3/1/2005, the firmware for the AP is showing its age.
Many of the SuperG and SuperA features do not work/are not compatible because of this.
Senao/Engenius has not released a new firmware for this product since 12/31/2003.
I simply cannot recommend anyone to buy this product in its current state.
During my tests, using the 5354AP1, the 3054 PCMCI, and the 5354 MiniPCI,
all SuperG connections were broken after ~10 minutes of a file transfer.
SuperA connections seem to only have 1/2 the range of SuperG, and therefore are not
any faster than standard 802.11G.
Testing with other Atheros Based 802.11 equipment shows complete incompatibility
for superA and superG.
Using a standard 802.11A/G connection works normally.
Background
I have compiled information about this product in an effort to make the information more available to the general public. It seems radio chipset information is kept secret by manufacturers these days.
Why do I want the latest radio chipset? Simple. Subtle improvements over previous chipsets. Every year (or product cycle) a manufacturer (in this case, Atheros) will release a new wireless chipset. Small improvements, and sometimes new features, are often added to the new chipsets. With wireless radio technology improving so quickly, these small improvements can be quite noticeable.
You may be wondering what radio chipset is in your wireless product. If it is an Atheros based chipset, you can check their online database on this website: http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts/. You'll notice that there are very few products using the newest wireless chipset. You should also notice that many products use chipsets that are more than one generation old. Depending on what you are looking for, these older chipsets may or may not be what you want. You can visit www.atheros.com, click on products and technology, to see information about each generation of Atheros chipset, along with each chipsets features and abilities. I chose the 5354 AP1 from netgate because it is running the latest chipset available in a dual band access point (as of Nov, 04). I highly recommend someone looking to buy multiple wireless products to buy products containing the exact same wireless chipset. This is the only way to guarantee the added benefit proprietary features on that chipset.
However, one should be aware that just because a product has a recent chipset doesn't mean it is the latest and greatest. Newer chipsets mean even newer firmwares. A newer firmware has not had much time for testing, and is most likely going to be unstable or missing features. You should be sure that the company you are buying your wireless access point (AP) from releases new firmwares for their products often. You should check older model AP's and Routers for the date of the last released firmware. EnGenius (Senao outside of the US) released the 5354AP1a2, and from previous experience, they are not too bad releasing new firmwares/drivers for their products. Currently, the firmware is a little old, and therefore this AP is missing a few features common to other AP's, but on the plus side, it has been very stable, and very fast.
This AP is quite a bit more expensive that other access points, but considering that it is considered a corporate level AP, it is worth the extra money. It sports a long range radio, which simply means it has extra transmit power for reaching those far away corners of your house/office. If you don't need/want the extra transmit power, you can adjust the transmit power on the AP's configuration page. It also has replaceable antennas, which 'could' be nice if you ever need to use it for a point to point application, such as a 1+ mile site to site link. You will need to buy your antennas with a U.FL connector, or a pig tale to convert U.FL to whatever your antenna uses. http://www.netgate.com/ has a few of these, but I had to get mine from http://www.demarctech.com/.
Another benefit of using a corporate AP is more functionality. This AP supports client mode and wireless distribution system mode. Client mode allows the AP to function like a wireless bridge, which is basically the opposite of an AP. Is it confusing enough yet? Its all about connections. An AP is what you plug into your wired network to give wireless clients access to the wired network. A bridge does the opposite. It is what you plug into your wired network to give your wired clients access to a wireless network. Whew. Then there is wireless distribution system (WDS). WDS allows multiple wireless APs (theoretically, even from AP's built by different manufacturers) to work together as a unit. This allows wireless clients to roam seamlessly anywhere there is coverage between each AP within the WDS. A comparison would be like driving down the interstate talking on a cell phone, your cell phone will bounce from tower to tower maintaining the connection.
Connections and Setup
After connecting the AP to my laptop, and visiting the AP's configuration pages, I noticed the AP did not come preloaded with the most recent firmware. I soon realized that upgrading the firmware was going to be a nontrivial task. The web configuration does appear to support a firmware upgrade, but how it works is extremely vague. The following is a screen shot of the firmware update page...
Luckily, directions were supplied with the firmware image I downloaded from Netgate. It turns out, the only way to send the firmware image to the AP was to place it on an FTP server, and use the AP to download the firmware image. I downloaded and installed a free FTP server from Filezilla. (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/). The directions provided by Netgate were easy to follow at this point, and I was soon running the latest firmware version. I should mention that the firmware upgrade process was done via telnet, not via the configuration page. While this procedure is not as simple as other AP's on the market, I don't upgrade the firmware often, so its a small price to pay for a corporate level AP.
The rest of the configuration was a snap. Took me about 15 minutes to read through all the options and pick what I wanted. Amazingly, this AP has two distinct radios, and both radios can be configured separately. I can run WPA on the 11A radio, with a hidden SSID, and at the same time I can run WEP on the 11G radio, without hidden SSID. I could run one radio as a client, and one radio as an AP, or both radios in repeater mode, or an 802.11A AP with an 802.11G repeater. There are many different possibilities.
Another impressive feature about this AP is its serious wireless statistics. Via the web configuration, the admin can monitor all kinds of statistics, on both radios. Here is an example of the information available under one connected client...
|
2.4GHz BSS Statistics -> |
|---|
| 00:02:6F:--:--:-- | |
|---|---|
| Association ID: 1 | |
| Wireless Mode: 2.4GHz 54Mbps (802.11g) | |
| State | Power Save |
| associated | off |
| Encryption | Advertised Cipher | Unicast Cipher | Multicast Cipher |
|---|---|---|---|
| yes | AES | AES | TKIP |
| Authentication | Deauthentication | Association | Disassociation | Reassociation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | 21 | 22 | 10 | 0 |
| MSDU | Data | Multicast | Management | Control | Errors | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receive | 2898 | 2901 | 92 | 22 | 0 | 178 | ||||||
| Transmit | 3215 | 3101 | 0 | 32 | 0 | 0 |
| Signal Strength (RSSI) | Data Rate (Mbps) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receive | 53 | 54 | ||
| Transmit | 54 | 54 | 54 |
| Receive Errors |
Discarded Frames |
Duplicate Frames |
CRC Errors |
Decrypt Errors |
PHY Errors |
DMA Errors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 178 | 15 | 4 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 0 |
| Transmit Errors |
Discarded Frames |
Excessive Retries |
DMA Errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
I have removed some tailing statistics.
Speed Testing (with interference)
This test was performed for real-world performance. I am using a 3054CB from netgate to connect to the AP. For the test file, I am transferring a zipped ISO image, about 600 megabytes. The machine serving the file is on the 100Mbit LAN. Throughput monitored by Emsa Bandwidth Monitor, as well as Windows Task Manager. For all tests, WPA-PSK was used for security, and output power is set one one-quarter. In my office, there are many other access points within range to cause interference.
802.11G test results (3ft range):
| Bit Rate (Mb/s) | Throughput (KB/s) | Signal Strength (dB) |
| 108 (SuperG) | 4871 | 61 |
| 54 | 2270 | 56 |
| 12 | 891 | 60 |
802.11G test results (25ft, 1 wall):
| Bit Rate (Mb/s) | Throughput (KB/s) | Signal Strength (dB) |
| 108 (SuperG) | 4490 | 38 |
| 54 | 2145 | 44 |
| 12 | 895 | 35 |
802.11G test results (45ft, 3walls):
| Bit Rate (Mb/s) | Throughput (KB/s) | Signal Strength (dB) |
| 108 (SuperG) | 488 | 20 |
| 54 | 1387 | 25 |
| 12 | 705 | 25 |
As you can see, SuperG under this firmware/driver version does not cope with interference well. The setup works very well until I start getting some distance between myself and the AP. Newer versions of the atheros driver/firmware will disable SuperG in order to better deal with interference (called 'dynamic superG'). I have tested the Netgear AP with dynamic superG, and in my opinion, it disables 'superG' too quickly. It works by detecting nearby AP's, and if any are around, it will disable SuperG. I would not have gotten a SuperG connection in my office if I were using 'dynamic SuperG'.
These test results show how having too many 802.11 devices can seriously affect wireless usage. The 2.4Ghz spectrum around my office is saturated by campus supported AP's, severely degrading the range of my own testing. In the next section I will test this AP in an area with no interference.
Range Testing
(to be written)
Security
(to be written)
Conclusions
So far I have enjoyed the 5354 AP1 Aries2. Its high speed is seemingly relentless when compared to dynamic SuperG.
http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts/
http://www.senao.com.tw/
http://www.netgate.com/
http://www.demarctech.com/