Installing wireless into a hotel

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gareth41

645 posts

Ultimate Geek

#92786 5-Nov-2011 23:50

I've been offered the job of installing wireless into a small hotel, about 120 rooms single building with main corridors down centre on two storys. Its an older building and no network cables running anywhere apart from around the main reception area at one end downstairs which is where their adsl router is. Now I was planning on using something like a zenbu router as the gateway and bridging this to two high power directional POE access points which i'll install and point down each corridor on both floors. There are no brick walls isolating the rooms anywhere. Would this be the way to go, or could someone suggest a better method?

The directional high power access point I plan to use:
http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=NETTPL5210&name=TP-Link-TL-WA5210G-54M-2.4GHz-High-Power-Wireless-

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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#541630 6-Nov-2011 09:51

First of all you need to understand the key differences between sectorised panels and omni's, and the effect they will have on coverage. You also need to understand that "high power" isn't the solution, that will merely have the ability to create more problems, and having a high power AP means very little if the device trying to connect back to the AP is a phone with very low power output and minimal antenna gain.

oxnsox

1923 posts

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#541647 6-Nov-2011 11:15

sbiddle: First of all you need to understand the key differences between sectorised panels and omni's, and the effect they will have on coverage. You also need to understand that "high power" isn't the solution, that will merely have the ability to create more problems, and having a high power AP means very little if the device trying to connect back to the AP is a phone with very low power output and minimal antenna gain.

LennonNZ

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#541651 6-Nov-2011 11:32

Depending on how the Hotel is set up a number of Unifi's (http://www.ubnt.com/unifi) would work well. But getting Ethernet to at least some of the floors would be needed. You'd really need to get one and see what coverage you would get in the situation as. They can do wireless uplink to other unifies if needed but every situation is different.

You'll have 1 central SSID spread across multiple AP's.
Auto Roaming.
Wireless Uplink for places with no ethernet from other unifi's
Centralised Portal system you can give people tokens to use. Can limit speed.data.time based etc
1 centralised management system for all even on different L3 networks.
Different SSID's per VLAN if needed (i.e. public and different private SSID)
If you have control over your DNS then just plug in and and will auto provision etc
+ lots more

And I have used them

sbiddle

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#541663 6-Nov-2011 12:29

+1 on the UniFi's. I've installed a lot of these in the last few months and they're a fantastic product.

Like most Ubiquiti products recently they seem focussed on getting products out the door and tend to fix software issues later, however this is now a pretty stable product with a lot of features being added.

shrub

552 posts

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#541719 6-Nov-2011 16:33

have a look at www.gowifi.co.nz they will be able to get what you need.

webwat

2021 posts

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#541842 7-Nov-2011 00:16

High gain antennas are more useful than high power because most user devices only output a weaker signal. You will probably find that more access points would be the solution, but you then have to manage more radio congestion so I'm thinking set RTS on the accesspoint to 1024 and use a different channel for each one with b/g only. Good luck finding a good cable pathway to connect up the accesspoints.

Time to find a new industry!

LennonNZ

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#541854 7-Nov-2011 01:27

sbiddle: +1 on the UniFi's. I've installed a lot of these in the last few months and they're a fantastic product.

Like most Ubiquiti products recently they seem focussed on getting products out the door and tend to fix software issues later, however this is now a pretty stable product with a lot of features being added.

They work well .. IF.. you are running the 2.1 Beta Software.. the "stable" software sux :-)

1 Controller.. controlling many Unifi's is good..

DonGould

3892 posts

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#541911 7-Nov-2011 09:15

LennonNZ: 1 Controller.. controlling many Unifi's is good..

+1

I'm just getting going with unifi... but ubnt's AirControl software for it's other radios was very cool...

What's different in the 2.1 beta software guys?

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#542006 7-Nov-2011 13:28

LennonNZ:
sbiddle: +1 on the UniFi's. I've installed a lot of these in the last few months and they're a fantastic product.

Like most Ubiquiti products recently they seem focussed on getting products out the door and tend to fix software issues later, however this is now a pretty stable product with a lot of features being added.

They work well .. IF.. you are running the 2.1 Beta Software.. the "stable" software sux :-)

1 Controller.. controlling many Unifi's is good..

http://ubnt.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173423&postcount=1

"We're releasing 2.2.0, the official V2 release. For people running 1.x, this update brings many major/useful features. For people running 2.x beta, we believe you'll be pleasantly surprised, too."

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz