Access point for 50+ concurrent users

wingnut

I have been doing some digging on the net but would love someone with first hand experience to recommend some hardware.

We have a wireless network in the school using WAP54G access points (about 10). They can't handle the traffic.

Aside from flooding the school with access points is there any hardware (enterprise grade) out there that can handle 50 - 100 connections per AP.

We have 100 mbps connection to the outside world so a lot of potential traffic.

Hoping to get gear under €400 / unit.

We can have large units with big antennas etc.

abakan

I think I can help you out.

We use an application called airmagent to survey sites and determine exactly how many access points you will need and more importantly where to put them.
the access point we use aree enterprise grade Cisco 1252's or motorola 7131's.

We have successfully surveyed numerous sites around ireland and europe

cargo

Motorolla, Cisco, arubanetworks.com would be the big enterprise players that require a central controller for large deployments. (need to factor that in as well)

Aerohive.com would be one of the biggest mesh solution that works without a central controller (can be controlled over the cloud). invisiblelink.net deal with them here in Ireland and could give you more info and there's a good few guys doing the motorolla / cisco AP's around also.

Haven't used any of the solutions above, just had to investigate it for someone a while back.

abakan

depending how large the site is I would think that having a WLAN controller would be overkill for the site.
Mesh networks - in our experience, we only use them if we cant get cat cable to a location but there is power. Its works but with 50users running off a AP's, I would think the mesh would grind.

wingnut

Thanks guys. The main problem is we will be having the whole network upgraded in about five months time but there is a whole tendering process etc so we NEED something for the five months of school to tide us over. Hence we don't want to spend big.
We are even thinking of redeploying our old B Orinoco units.

Even better would be somewhere that would be willing to rent us decent gear for a fixed period of time C. 6 months. Haven't came up with anywhere.

Second hand units would be ideal, even some good B/G units to tide us over. Reliability is more important than speed. We could have c. 400+ wireless users knocking about the campus on a given day.

bhickey

It'd be useful if you could provide a bit more information on how your current WAP54G units are deployed and networked. Also are there just a few areas where the 50+ user requirement exists or does every access point have to have that capability?

In my opinion, the "Enterprise" routers probably won't make as much of a difference in your situation as you might expect. These routers typically distinguish themselves from the cheapo consumer models by having the following features :

• Robust : wider operating temperature range for survival in cabinets and ceilings.
• POE : Power Over Ethernet
• Wall- and/or celing-mountable
• Remote Management : settings controlled from a central management software. Useful for 100+ accesspoints but not a factor for 10 units.
• Detachable antenna options : choose suitable antennas and even run cables to them if necessary
• Radius support : for hotspot functionality & central authentication

Their actual wireless performance isn't significantly better than the higher-end consumer routers in a 10 access point scenario.

Depending on how things are currently setup, you might find that replacing just a few of the WAP54G units with something in the €100-200 range will give you the breathing space that you need until a more permanent (and very much more wastefully expensive) setup can be arranged.

wingnut

Well we won't be paying for the new setup so not an issue.

Our campus has a lot of prefabs. We have the 10 WAPs scattered throughout the school to give coverage in all areas, but there are some weak spots. There are 850 students around the campus. There could be a class of students (c. 25) on laptops. There could be up to 3 classes trying to pull from one AP, so there is no specific area of heavy usage it varies.

We administer them remotely. We tried some of the open source firmware and while having good features (auto powercycle) it didn't improve things.

bhickey

wingnut wrote: »

Our campus has a lot of prefabs. We have the 10 WAPs scattered throughout the school to give coverage in all areas, but there are some weak spots.

I think that no matter what you end up doing, the first thing you need to do would be a basic wireless site survey of things as they stand. To do this, download Netstumbler and install it on one or more laptops. Then go around to every area in the campus and make a note on a spreadsheet of the signal strengths that you see at each location.

I assume that you have ethernet cabling throughout the campus and that you can mount POE units on walls or in whatever locations give ideal coverage?

There are 850 students around the campus. There could be a class of students (c. 25) on laptops. There could be up to 3 classes trying to pull from one AP, so there is no specific area of heavy usage it varies.

Well having access points that are capable of handling 50+ client wireless connections is one thing, achieving 50+ connections in a given location is another thing entirely. You'll have to careful with how the units are deployed (guided by your site survey) and also plan the channels used to avoid unnecessary interference.

Again guided by the site survey, I'd try deploying something like the Netgear WAG102 and see if you notice a major improvement. Its datasheet optimistically says it supports up to 128 simultaneous wireless clients but you can take that number with a large pinch of salt.