The Ubiquiti Nanostation 2 (NS2) has been a fast mover since it was introduced. We order a bunch, they all go out the door, we order more. Rinse, repeat. For us as a store, it’s a great product. We don’t have to do any custom work on them, and though the margins are thin, they don’t sit in our inventory long. For you, the customer, it’s a powerful piece of hardware at a rock bottom price.

By the specs alone, it’s a very impressive device. The Nano Station 2 is a small, waterproof CPE with a 400mw 802.11b/g radio and a dual polarity 10dbi antenna. It does POE (with included adapter), mounts to a pole, and has an external SMA (regular, not reverse polarity) connector. Added bonus, LEDs for RSSI while you set it up. It runs AirOS, which is Ubiquiti’s linux variant, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re running OpenWRT (check the support page for updates on firmware). As far as price goes, nothing out there beats it. It even comes with an offer for a free shirt!

Today I decided it was time to open one up and see what it was made of. The nanostation is very smooth, and it took me a minute or two to figure out how to get it open. Of course, rule #1 of taking apart stuff is to find out what the stickers are hiding. Underneath this little guy’s mac address are two small screws. Unscrew, and the board just slides right out. You really can’t get any easier than that. I was pretty happy I didn’t have to squeeze, twist or bust a fingernail trying to crack open the case.

The board is a bit longer (a little over 8 inches) than I had imagined, especially after seeing the pictures of the upcoming picostation, but it makes sense that it’d be the length of the device (just over 10 inches). The antenna is actually mounted right to the back (front?).

One nice surprise for the hardware hackers is the serial port, which is already pinned out. No need for solder! If you want to JTAG, the pads are exposed and ready, but I imagine the serial will fit most people’s needs.

Here’s the front (back?) of the board.

Here’s the back (front?) with the antenna.

After much discussion and musing we have finally launched “Wires are Evil”, the official Metrix blog. The name “Wires are Evil” came up last year while thinking of a tag line for the new version of our online store. I wanted something that illustrates the excitement we have for wireless and also the excitement we experience from peers, customers and other folk in the wireless industry. At the same time I wanted something sticky and funny. When it came time to setup our blog it the name seemed to carry over well.

Why a company blog? Customers like talking to us because we are able to provide them with good information that has technical merit rather than a canned sales pitch. Wires are Evil is a vehicle for us to provide more of that to everyone who reads the site, not just people we talk too or exchange email with. Additionally through comments and track backs it opens up a two way communication channel so we can hear more for our customers and visitors.

As for me, I bought my first piece of wireless networking hardware in 1999 around the same time I met Matt and got invovled with Seattlewireless. Over the past 13 years I have run the guantlet of the tech industry, from broke startups to fortune 500 companies, Systems Adminsration, Network Engineering and Information Security, I have left very few stones unturned and keep looking for new ones to peak under. A couple of years ago I decided to become a partner at Metrix and haven’t looked back since.

Hello, and welcome to Metrix Communication’s new blog. We decided that even after four years of adding to wikis, and maintaining relationships through email and phone calls that we really haven’t been doing a good job at keeping people informed of what’s going on around here. We’ve had the capability for sending out a blanket newsletter for a couple of years (since we upgraded the store software), but in total, I think we’ve sent out one. Partially, it’s because we hate spam and unwanted marketing, but also because we’re around this stuff every day, and it’s easy to forget that what is old to us may be new to you. We’ve been thinking a bit more about our position on opt-in newsletters, how they affect us and even remind us of things that we’ve put off, and will probably start sending them out in the coming months.

On reflection, for a company that sells networking equipment, we’ve done a poor job of communicating to our customers as a whole. We hope this blog and our newsletters will change that. If you want to subscribe, just use the RSS feed in your favorite online or offline reader. If you want to unsubscribe from the newsletter, just log into your account, or click the link that comes in every mail.

For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Matt Westervelt, I started the Seattle Wireless project back in 2000, and helped kick off what has become an international movement of FreeNetworkers. I live in Seattle, Washington in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the northwestern United States. I have been working in Internet software and hardware companies since the early 1990s and believe that communications technology not only provides better communications between people, governments and business, but it creates new marketplaces as well. Although this blog is new, I have maintained a Seattle Wireless Blog for several years, and have recently started writing about the neighborhood I live and work in.

I started Metrix four years ago because what I needed in my networking hardware (an open and extensible platform to develop new networks and applications on), just wasn’t available, or required buying parts piecemeal from a multitude of sources, some of which were very hard to get to. Products were either pushed through consumer channels (Linksys, Netgear) or business/government channels (Cisco, Tropos, BelAir), but there was nothing for the individual enthusiast, researcher or wireless ISP who wanted quality networking hardware that was also free from a locked in feature set, was upgradeable, and easy to work on. And there was certainly nothing out there that was affordable.

Our first product was the Metrix Mark I kit, a product that has been used to jump start mesh networks, wireless ISPs, and community wireless networks. The Mark I kit has been used all over the world as a teaching tool and a communications device, in far off places like Malawi, Ghana, Mumbai and Peru, or closer to home in big cities like New York and Chicago, smaller cities like Champaign-Urbana, Cambridge Mass and Sisterdale Texas. A simple embedded computer in a waterproof box, It can be used as an access point, a client device, a network sniffer/analyzer, a node in a mesh network, or as a component in a networkable sensor device. Originally shipped with Pebble, a linux distribution by fellow FreeNetworker Terry Schmidt of NYCWireless, then Metrix Pebble, an updated version with a web interface, and now Pyramid Linux, a completely revamped Operating System based on Ubuntu, the Mark I is probably the most flexible access point on the market. I am constantly amazed at the things our customers have told us they’re using our products for, and I know that although it is possible to repurpose channel marketed devices for these tasks, it’s a much easier path when you’re buying something that starts out with open access in mind.

One of the things that you may notice when looking around the store, is that all of our products are picked for their power, flexibility, and extensibility. When we first started out, we had a very limited catalog, because few manufacturers believed in the idea that the customer should know what’s going on under the hood. Fortunately, the winds have changed, and more and more manufacturers are hopping on the open source bandwagon. We are going to start taking an unbiased a candid look at these products, talking about what makes them interesting, and starting the conversation. We hope you will participate.