Multi Access Point Network

[Matt R]

Hello All!

I'm looking to build a fairly basic network for a Church. I would like to use distributed access points and a centralized router. There may be up to 150-200 clients online at any time at absolute maximum, it's assumed that there won't be more than 30-50 on average.

What would be the best course of action? I'm looking at two product lines for Access Points --

1) Microcom Ubiquiti UniFi Access Point Long Range
2) Cisco WAP121

Configuring them in a clustered configuration appears to be simple and straight forward. What does not appear as straight forward, however, is what to use as the router. I was considering a standard business class VPN Router to use as the system gateway. Plug each access point into the VPN Router directly (or into an intermediate switch) and use the VPN Router as the DHCP Host.

Are there more efficient ways of going about doing this? I've never really dealt with anything that's not exactly datacenter grade.

Any assistance is appreciated!

 

[JackMDS]

Since you are talking about large number of users we can assume that there will some people that have modern devices that can support 5GHz too.

Using Dual Band Wireless would provide more bandwidth with smaller number of APs.

There is No real precise answer since it depends on the specific nature of the physical environment.

If it was my project I would start with two of these.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Netwo...uiti+unifi+pro

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Hello All!

I'm looking to build a fairly basic network for a Church. I would like to use distributed access points and a centralized router. There may be up to 150-200 clients online at any time at absolute maximum, it's assumed that there won't be more than 30-50 on average.

What would be the best course of action? I'm looking at two product lines for Access Points --

1) Microcom Ubiquiti UniFi Access Point Long Range
2) Cisco WAP121

Configuring them in a clustered configuration appears to be simple and straight forward. What does not appear as straight forward, however, is what to use as the router. I was considering a standard business class VPN Router to use as the system gateway. Plug each access point into the VPN Router directly (or into an intermediate switch) and use the VPN Router as the DHCP Host.

Are there more efficient ways of going about doing this? I've never really dealt with anything that's not exactly datacenter grade.

Any assistance is appreciated!

Nope, that's pretty much it - a bunch of WAPs more or less in "dummy" mode that are centrally managed by a controller, which may or may not be operating as the router. If there's already a small business router and/or security appliance onsite (most larger churches these days have office staff, web sites, onsite schools or classes, study areas, etc., so there's probably already some wired infrastructure) then you can probably just run it off of that for DHCP, etc.

I haven't used Ubiquiti, but I know that Cisco's WLAN management is pretty good. That said, I haven't heard anything bad about Ubiquiti.

The only thing I'd say is 1) PoE, PoE, PoE, and 2) Do a good site survey before you install so you don't have dead spots.

 

[drebo]

UniFi is the better solution here. Cisco's "small business" access points are f**ing awful. Don't use the "long range" ones, though. You're engineering for density here, not range. For 200 clients, you'll want at least 6 APs, depending on what the user profile will be. I would recommend the UniFi Pros, as they're dual-band, gigabit, and compatible with standard PoE (the regular UniFi APs are not.)

In regards to router, you're going to want something capable of handling 200 users. Your standard off-the-shelf SOHO router isn't going to be able to handle that. Hell, most small business routers won't handle that reliably.

Additional concerns are if this is for public wifi, you will want to look at content filtering. If this network is shared with the rest of the church network (servers, etc) you're going to need to firewall off that section of the network from the public component.

Remember, the organization is responsible for the actions of its wifi users.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I say Unifi as well. Maybe even experiment with lowering the range and adding more APs. In a wireless network you need to think of an AP as a hub. Only one device can communicate at a time per AP.