Wireless access point is primary used to extend the LAN network wirelessly. Wireless LAN offers apparent benefit – no wires. Wireless is very helpful in extending the network in the areas where running network cable is not possible such as in harsh outdoor or critical industrial environments. Therefore, if you need to reach the harsh areas such as in plant environments into the network, you should consider deploying wireless access points (AP).

Typically placing the electronic devices in the outdoor or critical environments is prone to weather changing, water leakage, rust, vibration, wind, and lightning strikes. Are you confident in placing your wireless access points in those harsh environments? Wireless manufacturers understand those factors that can affect the performance of your wireless access points. They ship the wireless access points which are particularly designed to work in those harsh environments – the outdoor wireless access points. OWL800 is one of the best outdoor wireless APs which is designed for heavy duty tasks in critical industrial environments.

What this Product Does

OWL800 outdoor wireless access point is specifically designed for extending the network wirelessly in harsh outdoor or critical industrial environments. OWL800 is manufactured with rugged housing and industrial-grade components to allow the devices to operate under extreme temperatures ranges from -30~70 degrees C and embedded with the surge protection to immune up to 15 KV, it’s a weather-proof, water-tight, and rust resistant. OWL800 is ideal for your requirements to build wireless network in harsh outdoor environments.

The good news is that OWL800 provides multiple operating modes that is very ideal for your plant environments, including Point-to-Point Bridge, Point-to-Multipoint Bridge, AP station and AP Gateway. Besides, OWL800 supports WDS (the wireless distribution system) which allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple APs without the need for a wired backbone to link them, as is traditionally required.

The following figure describes general deployments of the OWL800 wireless access points in plant environments.

OWL800 outdoor wireless access point is powered by two built-in 802.11 a/b/g dual-radio both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands with more channels. To support the video/voice/data traffic prioritizations, OWL800 supports the QoS tagging and VLAN tagging which is typically used by enterprises. To provide the IP configurations to the clients automatically, this AP supports the DHCP server.

As general wireless security features, the OWL800 outdoor wireless access points support the following:

• Support the recent wireless industrial security encryption WPA/WPA2 and also support legacy clients with 64/128/152 bits WEP encryption.
• Allows you segment the wireless LAN and disable SSID broadcast.
• Client-isolated features to lock the clients to work under one AP.

Building a wireless networking environments, you should consider the attenuations factors such as radio interference, metal surfaces, the walls, and so on. Read also considering the wireless installation considerations.

Compare to other outdoor wireless access points from other manufacturers such as D-Link DWL-7700 Wireless Access Point which is also built in a die cast watertight housing – an Access Point Bridge with dual-band. It is also ideal for businesses in need of an outdoor wireless solution supports Power over Ethernet functionality and is easy to deploy.

See also:

• Wireless cable modem and gateway – introducing CGD24N / CGE24N by Netgear
• DHG834N wireless ADSL router – with 2 Voice lines gateway
• Guidelines in router connections – general guidelines
• General wireless router problems and solutions
• Guidelines in troubleshooting wireless network
• Actiontec GT701D Ethernet DSL modem with router