Installing Commercial Grade Wireless for Hotel

[thegpfury]

Recently, I was contacted to put a quote in to fully update the wireless the wireless system of a large hotel in the area. They are currently using WRT54G v8 access points running DD-WRT, and barely 50% of the building is covered. They want to pull those out and go with "commercial grade" wireless.

The building is large, I don't have a floor plan in front of me, but it looks something like 2 Ls end to end.

I was looking at the ZyXEL NWA-3163 to use as an access point. I'd probably need 4 of them minimum, but I'm not 100% sure. Depends on how much gets blocked by the firewalls between the rooms.

Does anyone have any suggestions for maybe a better commercial grade router? or whether they have any experience with that one?

 

[Modelworks]

I'm going to seem like a sales rep if I keep recommending them but
http://www.bountifulwifi.com/B..._Long_Range_Wi-Fi.aspx

 

[imagoon]

Without a floor plan you cannot design an effective system. Also, my personal experience from this is often that "throwing more AP's" at it will not have the effect that you or your customer want.

This is commercial grade wireless: (examples) like all products there are tons of "grades" of these units. Those unit you listed are not "bad" but when you get to a potentially high density (happens if you have poor signal points and just throw another AP in) of wireless systems, all the noise from other AP's / computers can bring the system down. Central units like these do "cloud" wireless since all the AP's work together and will not compete with each other and beacon excessively etc.

http://www.arubanetworks.com/index.en.php

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10315/index.html

 

[Ka0t1x]

At work we've used Aruba and it was 'okay', granted we're all Mac... but that still shouldn't matter.

HP also makes a nice product on the Pro Curve line, however again we're having problems with N on the Pro Curve solution with MacBooks. HP's line to use was that they are targeting the big brother Cisco in the controlled wireless arena.

But I will have to agree, a wireless system with a centralized controller is what is needed.

All I can say from my experience with controlled wireless environments is that it is NECESSARY to do demos and make sure everything is working PROPERLY before signing anything.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: Ka0t1x
At work we've used Aruba and it was 'okay', granted we're all Mac... but that still shouldn't matter.

HP also makes a nice product on the Pro Curve line, however again we're having problems with N on the Pro Curve solution with MacBooks. HP's line to use was that they are targeting the big brother Cisco in the controlled wireless arena.

But I will have to agree, a wireless system with a centralized controller is what is needed.

All I can say from my experience with controlled wireless environments is that it is NECESSARY to do demos and make sure everything is working PROPERLY before signing anything.

Ouch everything Aruba I've used has sucked pretty hard.

When he says commercial grade I think of Cisco lightweight APs', but that may be overdoing it as I doubt guests need to roam from one AP to another.

 

[Emulex]

depends on whether you wish to use a smart controller switch (procurve or cisco) with a bunch of dumb AP's

or MESH network.

there are benefits for both thats for certain.

look up ubuity they make some powerful AP's with multi radio.

mesh basically uses some custom code so

AP -> channel 1 send & channel 6 receive (directional)

goes to

AP2 -> channel 1 receive & channel 6 send (directional)

and so on. this eliminates WDS bridging loss; the smart mesh software is able to reroute overlapping AP's in case of signal LOS.

the last bit of mesh is a 3rd (and/or 4th) radio that is used for customers say on channel 12 or 3 or whatever you choose. (OMNI)

It is far superior for long haul where you don't have ability to drop cat5.

If you have cat5 run to every area then perhaps the procurve controller with a bunch of dump AP's in control by the master would do better.

remember AP's like ubiquity have MUCH higher power output than consumer gear.

Also be sure to site survey and learn about how the various antenna choices (omni esp) fire.

It would not be unheard of to have a CCDA with wireless specialty come out and do the survey and look for interference points etc. they have the gear and should have the brains to do a real site survey.

HP procurve will be glad to take a blueprint and give you a "Good idea" of what's necessary. but that is only a start.

modern wifi cards (intel 5100/5300) have pretty good roaming. it's not cell phone quality but not terribly unusable. the first gen cards were kinda miserable they'd seek out the wrong AP (signal based) more often than not.

 

[thegpfury]

I was looking at the MESH routers. That seems to be the best solution, as they've also got a second building that requires wireless as well.

What kind of MESH providers have you used and what would you recommend?

 

[thegpfury]

Ok, I did some research, found Meraki, seems to do everything I'd want it to, along with being easy to setup and reasonably priced. Anyone have any experience with it?

 

[drebo]

Xirrus has an interesting product that might get you where you need to go. Google it.

 

[Emulex]

why don't you use a wimax for long haul? i wonder how expensive that would be. wifi is better for short haul.

ubuity 400w to 600w wifi is pretty badass.

keep in mind 2.4ghz is pretty polluted. 4.9 is for EMC services only, 5ghz you need twice the power to reach the distance.

also the lower symbol rate you'll get longer range. so it may be you can afford to have some endpoints running slow (B speeds) if you don't need voip to space out the mesh even more.

wiki mesh networking you'll find some active folks. they just use the generic router(3 or 4 mini-pci-e) with ubiquity cards. throw it in an enclosure and rig up some real antennas.

mesh is superior when you don't have enough cable run and need time-sensitive (aka not lagged all to heck) runs for miles.

node 1 and node 10 are not going to be super way lagged like a traditional bridged wifi setup.

linksys wrt54g are what? 80w output? so you understand that with proper antenna type and sizing you should see much better performance. it's not cheap but there are resorts and cities that WORK with mesh; that failed with traditional controller/wire/AP

 

[thegpfury]

I've been looking at Miraki, mainly since it's a decently large building, and several cabins and other buildings that need wifi. I need something that's easy to set up and maintain, which Miraki seems to be...Ubuity seems a bit overkill...

 

[imagoon]

One of the large advantages with the central unit AP systems is that they are configured from the central unit. Even with multiple buildings, something like an SSID change is done once on the main controller and the controller handles pushing it out to the AP's. Also AP's do not have to be "attached" to the controller view CAT6 etc. You can uplink the controller to a switch, vlan it in to the production network, send that over fiber (for example) then out to switch port to the AP. Use a PoE switch or an injector to power the AP.

Sad to hear Aruba is "bad" the system we have here is pretty sweet and we have had no problem with it failing. We have some of the AP's attached to the MPLS network even. The AP is configured so the "guest" SSID is routed back to corporate (and out to the internet), but a successful connection to the inside SSID causes the AP to drop the connection locally allowing local users to access the local systems without being fed to the MPLS line. This avoids the "double wan" issue. (AP > MPLS > Controller > MPLS > Local Server) It is great because the AP is still controlled and configured via the controller but acts like a local unit when needed. They also still handle roaming connections well in this configuration. We have wireless VoIP phones using them without issue.