12 Houses wifi

Pataman

Hi all. I have to cover 12 houses with wifi.
They are all terraced together, with no 12, the end house, having the broadband.

A) Would i be better to put in 6 access points, 1 for 2 houses, wired back to no 12, via a switch and then the router.

Another option I was old about is wireless distribution system.

If I go for option A, do I have to run just one wire backbone or 6 wires, cat5, one to each access point.

Thanks
Pat

ttm

If there are any back gardens then put one wireless adaptor in a waterproof box on a pole in the middle garden power it POE from the middle house and run a cable from the end house broadband router to the middle house then out along the fence (if there is one).

That way you only have to set up one DHCP range. There are lots of enclosures that would do the job and some include a better anntena.

Pataman

Is it the structure of the house that has the biggest bearing on signal loss. I like the idea of the adapter in the garden. The gardens are open plan, but I could put it on the back of 1 or 2 houses spaced apart. Any idea of adapters that have an external aerial to put outside the box or waterproof routers?

Thanks

dahak

Pataman wrote: »

Hi all. I have to cover 12 houses with wifi.
They are all terraced together, with no 12, the end house, having the broadband.

A) Would i be better to put in 6 access points, 1 for 2 houses, wired back to no 12, via a switch and then the router.

Another option I was old about is wireless distribution system.

If I go for option A, do I have to run just one wire backbone or 6 wires, cat5, one to each access point.

Thanks
Pat

The problem with WDS is that you have your bandwidth with each hop.

In your case:

House:      1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12
AP:         1         2         3         4         5           6
Hop:           --1--     --2--     --3--     --4--      --5-- 
bandwidth            1/2       1/4       1/8       1/16        1/32

1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/32

Assuming you were using 802.11g with a maximum throughput of 54 Mbit/sec you just brought your maximum down to 1.6875 Mbit/sec for the final hop, that's assuming that you've got perfect reception on each AP.

Assuming you were using 802.11g with a maximum throughput of 54 Mbit/sec you just brought your maximum down to 1.6875 Mbit/sec for the final hop, that's assuming that you've got perfect reception on each AP.
That's not mentioning the channel noise with a lot of people connected at peek times.

The potential problem with a wired connection through the attics of the buildings might be electrical with different ground levels (electrical) coming into play. There might be also be fire regulation issues, you should really have a chat with a sparks about that.

Another solution would be two wireless networks. One does the backbone transmission and the other allows the clients to connect.
An example of this would be:

              2
               \
                \
10   -------    12    -------   8
               /  \
              /    \
             /      \
            6        4

House 12 connects directly to each of the other houses which will access contain points. This network will be on a different channel to the channel that the access points in the houses will use.
The backbone could be done using 802.11a (5GHz) using something like Nanostation loco 5 units mounted on the outside of each of the houses.

Each of the Nanostations would connect through a wired ethernet connection to an AP inside of the house. This AP would be using 802.11b/g and this is the wireless network that the clients in each of the houses would connect to.

The advantage of using the 5GHz is that it should be a lot easier to find an uncluttered frequency and a lot less chance of interference especially if you're in an area with a lot of wireless networks.

ttm

Really depends on the way the house is built. Anything with concrete reineforcement or steel girders tends to really limit the signal as does the metal skin on most modern warehouse type buildings. Most WiFi signals from a shop bought router are good to go through std Irish double blockwork OK but the foil skin on some modern insulating foam can also limit the signal.

Look at it this way anyone who has an Eircom router and default wep key can be hacked by someone 50yards away in the street and those are the sort of distances you are dealing with.

Try http://www.irishwireless.eu/shop/category.aspx?catid=62 for enclosures - no connection just one I googled. From the same site http://www.irishwireless.eu/shop/item.aspx?itemid=124 might be all you need plus POE injector.

Pataman

Thanks for all your help. it seems it would be better to place at least 2 access points outside on a pole/ high wall to service the houses. I think I will run the cat 5 directly to these, either through the attics, will consult sparks re fire safety etc or get external cat 5 to run outside. Would this be ok? Do you think 2 would be enough?

ttm

If you have access to all the houses say via a roof space or if this is a new build then why use WiFi at all? It may be trendy but not as fool proof as a Cat5 termination in each house. Don't forget you will need to give each resident the access code which will leak out and may be used by others so it will need changing ocasionaly. The only issue I'd have with a wired connection is that users might add there own unsecured WiFi which isn't a problem if you put in a secured WiFi system. Two access points should be fine and if you are putting them outside you need to consider the following, secure mounting and location (theft and anyone getting to the Cat5 cable could own your network), cable runs (so they don't get damged), getting power to them, external infulence (ligtening - you can get devices to help limit damage, rodent damage - rare but does happen) and setup. The setup should be easy enough if you set the devices up as Access Points and the router hands out the DHCP addresses, and don't forget it will help if you use different SSIDs and channels on the AP's. One last point those 2 WiFi AP's will work fine for one side of the houses but could leave blind spots in some locations so you might like to investigate a wireless extender option (just an AP that rebroadcasts what it recieves) for users that insist on puting their computer in a location with the least signal strenght. I'd also use a broadband router that allows you to add rules to it (like a Draytek router) so you can lock down the system a little bit by allowing only ports for HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP and SMTP, so mail and browsing will work fine but you won't get so many internal issues like viruses taking up bandwidth however you will also stop VOIP, GAMING etc which your users may want. Once you have the connectivity working you've only just started :eek:

Pataman

Hi, these are houses which will be rented out for weekends / 2 weeks max. This is for the renters, mostly foreign to check their emails, works, check out local attractions etc. I like the idea of limiting their access, ie not allowing them to download movies and screw it up for everyone else. I have access to the attics, however it is in a rural part of Ireland so theft shouldnt be a problem, I think. I will investigate the draytek router, thats a good idea.

edanto

When you say they are all terraced together, do they run in one straight line, from 1 to 12? If so, what's the distance between house 1 and house 12?

Unless they're tiny houses, I can't see 2 APs covering that distance, but I'm no expert.

ttm

Draytek arn't the only router that will do this for you just one of many that will http://www.draytek.co.uk/support/kb_vigor_filtering.html has some details, a bit complecated but your rules would need to be something like...

• Packet Direction : Outward (to the Internet)
• Source : Any
• Destination : Any
• Protocol : TCP
• Outbound Port No : 80
• Matching Criterial : = (Matches)
• Action if Matched : Pass the packet

then 3 more rules allowing 445, 25 and 110 with the final rule blocking if not equal to that port number.....

• Direction : Out
• Source : Any
• Destination : Any
• Protocol : TCP
• Port : 110
• Matching Criteria : !=
• Action if not Matched : Drop (Block)

...but check and test that as its ages since I set up a Draytek router.

@ edanto, I see you're point if the AP is on the wall of the actuall terrace as some users will be looking at the AP though 6 foot of wall (diagonal) and get no signal, but here the idea is to put 2 AP's in the garden one to cover 4 houses so all users can get to within one wall and a few yards of an AP.

Pataman

Yep the 12 houses are in a line. I am there next week so I will have a better idea of length involved. The reason I was swaying towards externally on the back of the houses is the gardens are open plan and usually kids have a soccer match over all the gardens, and I didnt want somebody running into the pole or kicking the ap with a ball.

Pataman

Firstly thanks for all your help. I happened to be running satellite cable throught the houses, so took the opportunity to run some cat5 also.
House 12 has the router. House 6 is a wireless router, with dchp turned off, wired back to house 12 router. i also have a wire from house 6 to house 2, not used yet. Can i put a wireless access point in house 2 plugged into house 6.
Also If thats not enough, and I suspect it wont be, can I just cut the cat5 in house 9, for example, and plug the 2 ends into another access point to give me more coverage?

thanks again
Pat