Can this be done?! Portable wifi network

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defishinsea

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#298640 3-Jul-2022 13:36

Firstly thanks to all of you for providing amazing advice to tech newbies like myself. It is appreciated!

I want to create a portable wifi network to be used for connecting multiple devices to share viewing an Apple Keynote live presentation.

Basically, I need any advice out there as to whether this is gonna work? And be a decent enough bandwidth for the experience?

I'm thinking of using this to capture cell data, then distribute via wifi

https://www.netgear.com/nz/home/mobile-wifi/hotspots/ac797/

users connect to my wifi network

then I send them an invite via airdrop for my keynote live presentation

They accept the invite and the presentation starts up in their phone/tablet

I'm wondering if 400mbps (the speed on the wireless router) is going to be enough for an nonlaggy experience for 32 users?

The presentation is mostly static images, with two very short videos.

Any advice appreciated!

Steve

Technofreak

6530 posts

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#2937903 3-Jul-2022 16:01

I think that device is designed for sharing one mobile data connection (3G/4G etc) with up to 32 devices. From what I understand of your requirements you are not wanting to share mobile data but share a presentation from your device. I am I correct?

Samsung have a share with nearby devices which might be something like you're after but I think it only works with other Samsung devices. If Apple has something like this I suspect it will be Apple to Apple only as well.

Also you'd need to check whether Airdrop works with non Apple devices. Being Apple agnostic I have no idea how Airdrop works.

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gbwelly

1243 posts

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#2937904 3-Jul-2022 16:01

Perhaps describe what you are wanting to achieve rather than outlining a proposed solution to a problem we don't yet understand?

I have questions, like who is going to be where. Will the participants be passively viewing or interacting with you? Will you be addressing the viewers via the app or will you be in the same room and the screen sharing is in lieu of content that would normally be displayed on a projector?

cshwone

1070 posts

Uber Geek

#2937924 3-Jul-2022 16:49

Teams, Skype, Zoom there are all sort of apps to share information rather than the tortuous process you appear to be trying.

fe31nz

1229 posts

Uber Geek

#2938010 4-Jul-2022 00:24

I have a much older similar device. It is just a simple router with the WAN port capable of a cellphone data connection and the LAN port running a WiFi access point. In my case, the WAN can also be a WiFi connection. It provides a NAT firewall. I have used it when on holiday to connect to a local pay WiFi service on the WAN side and then connect to my devices (phone, tablet, laptop) on the LAN WiFi port. It works well for that, but mine only supports 2.4 GHz as it is too old for anything else. These devices are called travel routers.

You can do that same thing by just using any WiFi router. If you need a cellphone data connection on the WAN side, you just put your phone WiFi into hotspot mode and connect the router WAN port to the hotspot. You can, of course, just connect devices directly to the hotspot, but cellphones do not usually support huge numbers of WiFi connections and huge throughput, as a modern WiFi router does.

If you want to have your Apple Keynote presentation on your laptop, you should be able to get software to just make the laptop's WiFi port into a hotspot and have everyone connect to that. Any Linux can do this, so I would hope that Apple laptops (which run on top of a modified Linux) would be able to do this also. The downside of this is getting an Internet connection at the same time. It can probably be done by connecting your cellphone in hotspot mode to the laptop and setting up the routing manually to make the default route go to the hotspot, but that would require some networking knowledge and would likely limit you to using the laptop's 2.4 GHz radio for the Internet connection and the 5 GHz radio for the laptop's hotspot. You might not get enough Internet bandwidth with 2.4 GHz.

cyril7

9058 posts

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#2938018 4-Jul-2022 07:02

Hi, you seem to be relying on that device to use is CA features to give you a 400Mb/s upstream WAN connection and the WiFi to support that for 32users. My only comment is good luck with all of that.

Cyril

miked

207 posts

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#2943237 17-Jul-2022 21:23

I was chatting to the OP the other day, and they were trying to explain their tech needs to me....asking me if this would work. Not my area of expertise, and seemingly not theirs either!

My understanding is that they want to do a mobile presentation in external locations. The live presenter will be there for the presentation in-person, but being mobile (and outside), there is no wifi or projector screen available. Therefore, they want to present the visuals for the presentation (mostly images, but a couple of simple videos) to users, on their own phones.

OP has a working setup using Keynote via icloud. This appears to endusers on a webpage, as synchronised, changing presentation of images/videos. I saw a sample from my Android phone using Firefox as my browser, and it worked fine, albeit we were on fibre network at the time of demo! The biggest drawback of this "solution" is that it needs users to use their own phone mobile data to access the page for the presentation.

So one idea (as outlined by OP above), is to provide the presenter with a mobile 5g router on their person, so that the presentation comes from the web, but is accessible using provided 5g data, shared with everyone via wifi. The potential issue is with 20 phones, all trying to access the keynote presentation from icloud, at once... will the realworld bandwidth of the router be sufficient for that many users and use-case... (we all know spec sheets and marketing blurb often doesn't deliver when used in the real world!)? I get the impression, the exact timing of the visuals isn't crucial, and that a few seconds lag will be acceptable and fine, as a variation between user devices.

The advantage of this current setup, is that most of the solution is already working, and is understood by the OP. The part in question is providing 5g data to many users. Is it likely to work at a fast enough speed for everyone? Or will it lag with that many user onboard? Fortunately, the locations being used, theoretically have good 5g reception (according to maps - no tests run!).

Of course, the easiest way to test this is with getting hold of the actual router, and running realworld tests with real users... but that is costly if it doesn't work.

Equally, there might be better approaches to the whole setup.

When I was asked by the OP if this would work, my mind instantly heads towards offline (non-internet) based presentations, being delivered over wifi (or even bluetooth?) from the mobile location... on the basis that removing the internet aspect, will increase reliability and reduce ongoing costs! However, I didn't have any better suggestions of actual products or platforms to use for this!

Mike

fe31nz

1229 posts

Uber Geek

#2943253 17-Jul-2022 23:57

If I wanted to do something like this, I think I would just set up a web server on my laptop or even my phone and put all the files on it. Then run a WiFi hotspot and have everyone connect to it.