We’ve been playing with PowerStations for a couple of months over at Metrix, and have found them to be pretty cool, but the new NanoStation2 (which we just got in stock) is just awesome. A little bigger than a beer bottle, and under the cost of a good bender, the NS2 is a community wireless networkers best new friend. Waterproof, pole mountable (with zip tie mounting!), 400mW atheros radio, 10dBi built in antenna, External SMA, POE, Linux based OS, and a spiffy LED display.
Fresh out of the box, AirOS is pretty good. I wish it had SSH and iperf, OLSR, and a kitchen sink, but these things will come in time and by other people. You can set the NS2 as an AP or a Client, do WDS, encryption, MAC Clone, bridge, route, and a slew of other things in the simple but AJAX’d web configurator. AirOS is linux under the hood, so you can enable telnet in case you need to set some routes or do something outside of the capabilities of the standard stuff. It shouldn’t take long for an OpenWRT build, so just keep your eyes on the NS2 Support Page.
These should make for an Interesting HackNight next week, and if you’re local and interested in picking one up, just let me know.
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