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taking the "B" (rates) out of BYOD

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  • 1.  taking the "B" (rates) out of BYOD

    Posted Feb 05, 2014 09:11 AM
    I was just wondering how everyone is managing their handheld barcode scanners, in a manufacturing environment?  Where I work, a lot of the scanners are a decade old now. Management just doesn’t understand, that its time to get new equipment.
     
    We are talking 802.11b devices here,  sticky clients,  bad roaming, it’s a real task to keep these things going. I will tell you one thing, they sure don’t play nice with all those high metal racks. Multipath has me tearing my hair out at times.
    Flash, Ahead to today where everyone wants BYOD and High density wireless, with the latest in policy control and 802.11ac. the business types just want to throw it all together and expect it to just work.
     
    What I try to do, if I have to support legacy 802.11b clients, is to turn off all the data rates except for 11, this seems to help somewhat. But some of the devices just don’t work right with just 11 turned on. And if your noise floor is too high, it just won't connect.
     
    I am wondering what the future holds for handheld devices, in this case barcode scanners, has anyone implemented 5ghz in a manufacturing environment? Are there 802.11n scanners?
     
    Will there ever be an end to sticky clients, and will we truly get some granular policy control over these devices? I sure hope #genmobile can help out with  the next generation of modern barcode scanners.
     


  • 2.  RE: taking the "B" (rates) out of BYOD

    Posted Feb 08, 2014 02:24 PM

    I used to work in a manufacturing environment and we had 802.11b equipment when that's all anyone had.  It's been a while, so I haven't kept up with the manufacturing side.

     

    As far as sticky clients go, Client Match in AOS6.3 should alleviate client stickiness.

    For what reasons do you feel you don't have granular policy control over your scanners?  Are you locking down their access with user roles?



  • 3.  RE: taking the "B" (rates) out of BYOD

    Posted Feb 08, 2014 06:22 PM

    thanks alot for the tips,

     

    as for the scanners, we have anywhere from the oldest scanners to the newest.. its like the wild wild west.. there is no one person that owns the scanners , their used to be but that group was disbanded years ago. and things have went down hill a tad from there.

     

    they now use group accounts, instead of individual accounts, and i just haven't found a real easy way to lock them down and manage them.. since capabilities vary so differently from model to model.

     

    its a combination of  office politics and a technical solution, that is needed.. 

     

    but hoping to make progress and things advance..