RE: Handheld bar code scanners

1) Our vendor charged £500 for the site-survey, which was knocked-off the
final bill when we ordered. Our 3,400 square meter warehouse is served by
four access points, although there is a bit of overlap for redundancy. The
warehouse has a lot of racking and is full of product, which is not great
for the wireless signal. When we took on an 8,600 square meter warehouse
with no racking and product stacked no more than one pallet high, we were
able to cover the whole lot with one access point which we installed
ourselves.

Don't forget that each access point will require cabling from it to the
nearest network cabinet, and will also require power. It is often easier to
get Power over Ethernet devices so that electrical cabling does not need to
be run to various points across your warehouse.

2) I never heard of access ports, but the supplier of our Cisco access
points fitted their own antenna, which were much more substantial than those
pen sized aerials you see on access points these days. They were very proud
of the extra coverage they gave.


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeff Crosby
Sent: 11 June 2008 15:09
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Handheld bar code scanners

Two questions to all of you regarding warehouse modernization -
specifically access points.

1) Are vendors willing to come in and determine for you how many access
points would be needed in your warehouse, at no cost? The first thing I
will get asked is how much will it cost to 'wireless enable' the
warehouse. I at least want an idea of that to start with.

2) At COMMON, I attended a session expounding on the benefits of 'access
ports' vs 'access points'. Access ports are simply disconnecting the
antenna from the rest of the electronics in the access point. Several
antennas can share an access port thereby lowering the cost. Anybody
done or doing this? Makes a lot of sense to me.

Thanks.

BONUS: Is there a single word term to indicate wireless enabling of an
area? Something like "wirelessification"? <g>