Providing Free Wifi in a Guesthouse

Zzippy

Hi. I'm working with the manager of a guesthouse, and have suggested he provide free Wifi for guests. They currently have Eircom broadband. The guesthouse is a fairly large building, with some thick walls. Its pretty hard to get a mobile phone signal inside the building. What are the options in terms of wireless routers - is there a router that will cover a large building like this? Any suggestions if so? Or does it require a booster/relay somewhere else inside the house?
Cheers for any advice, I'm obviously not up to speed on building a wireless network.

seamus

You won't really know what you need until you install the hardware.

There are a couple of ways of doing it. One way involves running network cable around the building and installing a wireless router/AP onto the network at various points. Each router has its own network name (e.g. Guesthouse 1, Guesthouse 2, etc) and the guests connect to it.
Running cat6 around the building may not be a goer in an old building with solid walls.

The other way to do it is to install a single router/AP connected to the internet, with repeaters located around the building to increase the range of it. In this case, the repeater doesn't need a connection to the hardline, and guests only see a single network name to connect to, theoretically giving seamless network coverage across the building.

Initially I would just take a bog standard wireless router that you have (e.g. from your house), plug it into the internet connection and then wander around the house with both a laptop and a mobile and make a map of the signal strength per room on all floors. Then you should be able to see where the signal drops off and any places where there's significant interference from a solid wall or whatever.
While you wouldn't use a bog standard wireless router as the main gateway (you'd use something with more range and bandwidth), this should give you some kind of indication on how to cover the whole building.

Zzippy

seamus wrote: »

You won't really know what you need until you install the hardware.

There are a couple of ways of doing it. One way involves running network cable around the building and installing a wireless router/AP onto the network at various points. Each router has its own network name (e.g. Guesthouse 1, Guesthouse 2, etc) and the guests connect to it.
Running cat6 around the building may not be a goer in an old building with solid walls.

The other way to do it is to install a single router/AP connected to the internet, with repeaters located around the building to increase the range of it. In this case, the repeater doesn't need a connection to the hardline, and guests only see a single network name to connect to, theoretically giving seamless network coverage across the building.

Initially I would just take a bog standard wireless router that you have (e.g. from your house), plug it into the internet connection and then wander around the house with both a laptop and a mobile and make a map of the signal strength per room on all floors. Then you should be able to see where the signal drops off and any places where there's significant interference from a solid wall or whatever.
While you wouldn't use a bog standard wireless router as the main gateway (you'd use something with more range and bandwidth), this should give you some kind of indication on how to cover the whole building.

Cheers seamus, very helpful.
Will try get my hands on someone's wireless router and do that first.

Any idea what spec you would be looking at for something with more range and bandwidth? Any good brand names to look at?

kc66

Good advice there. I setup a network in a pub before with 3 of these. I installed Tomato firmware and increased the signal power. Used WDS to connect the devices. The signal strength in these is excellent. Won't break the bank either.

seamus

It all comes down to budget in the end and how many repeaters you'll need. Cisco, Netgear and D-Link would produce wireless kit specifically for this kind of application and there's functionally no limit on how much you can spend.

At basic functionality, your main router needs to be 802.11n Dual band @ 300Mbps. More money effectively gets you a more powerful signal and more features in the router.

h57xiucj2z946q

If your sticking with the standard Netopia router that Eircom provide, you can create a separate VLAN that the guests use that will be separated from traffic that you use. You can also create a separate SSID with different credentials. Look here fore more info:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72541693&postcount=25

Snazzy_Chazzy

What about a home plug or 2?


http://techlogon.com/2011/07/18/using-a-powerline-wireless-adapter-to-extend-wireless-around-the-house/

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/2x-200Mbps-Powerline-Ethernet-Wireless-Network-Adapters-/250992334775?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item3a704f17b7