Setting up a network for a 41 bedroom "house", tell me if I'm way off

StoneTZ

Under the Man's Thumb...waaaaaa!
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Oct 12, 2009
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Ok guys, thanks in advance. I'm setting up a network for a 41 bedroom "house". It was a hotel once upon a time and is essentially turning in to a non-douchebag co-ed frat.

My awesome blueprint (building is a square:

X0_________________0






0___________________0


Here's what I'm thinking.
Hallways are about 100ft in length each.
Nice room where the cable comes in where the X is in the corner.
Build a PFsense linux box with 4 LAN cards
3 cable modems going in and a line going out to switches. all in the corner with the X
2 switches (also at the X) 24 port each maybe cisco 3550? Suggestions?
4 edimax wireless access points. One in each corner. 8 if needed. Linked here and 0's on my awesome layout.
Ethernet in every room (I hate wifi)

I'm planing on going in the ceiling at the X and running the cables to the rooms and the WAP's I think I will be pushing the range on the CAT5e at some points so might have to make some changes. I'm also wondering if there is simply a way better way to set this up I'm not thinking about. Basically looking for wifi over the whole 12,000 sqft and ethernet lines in all the rooms plus a few spots.

I'm not a newb but I'm not a seasoned networking professional either. I understand all the basics and subneting and the difference between a switch and hub etc but I could be missing a lot.

If any of you are in San Francisco you're welcome to drink my beer as a way of saying thanks.
 
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I'd not cheap out on access points. Get some Ubiquity or something that won't choke so quick. It'll save you a ton of head ache down the road.
 
I'd not cheap out on access points. Get some Ubiquity or something that won't choke so quick. It'll save you a ton of head ache down the road.

Thanks, I appreciate the advice. These are already in the mail (due tomorrow) and only $30 a piece so I'll probably throw them up there now and just swap them out when people start to fill rooms. I'll be able to use my cell phone wifi anywhere in the house then while we finish construction.

Edit: wow lots of options for ubiquiti, any particular models you'd suggest?
 
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Thanks, I appreciate the advice. These are already in the mail (due tomorrow) and only $30 a piece so I'll probably throw them up there now and just swap them out when people start to fill rooms. I'll be able to use my cell phone wifi anywhere in the house then while we finish construction.

Edit: wow lots of options for ubiquiti, any particular models you'd suggest?

All you need is their Unifi AP's most of their other stuff is for point to point wireless.

http://www.streakwave.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=UAP-3-US
or if you just need one
http://www.streakwave.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=UAP-US
 
I'm not clear on the floor plan. Based on your "drawing" I don't see how you will be running tight for cable lengths.

However, I would find a closet midway down each of the hallways to mount a switch. If a closet isn't doable there are small single switch racks that can be mounted in the hallway and keep a clean look. 3550's should be plenty, but I am a Cisco guy. I am sure there are decent HP's and such out there that are just as capable.

I wouldn't place the AP's at the ends of the hallways - you are losing half of their range by doing that. They should be mounted about 1/3 and 2/3's down the hallway. I suggest you restrict the type of traffic that can flow over the AP's. Your users will try to stream video and audio and overload them. If you restrict the traffic then you can force them to use the wired access for heavy usage.
 
i agree with Shawdospawn if you can find something in the middle of the hall way and branch out that way. Depending on if your going to drop network drops in the rooms might want to look doing a couple of subnets per floor to make sure your not going to run out of IP space for people bringing every networkable device known to man there.

I personally would do a vlan for just the network gear, firewalls, aps, switchs, etc then 2 vlans per floor in the sense of a FL1-S & FL1-N (or east / west however you want to define that).

I'm a cisco fan too, but check out and see what HP and other vendors have to offer. Could save a bunch of money and still achieve the same results. We used Dell Powerconnects at my last job and had lots of good luck with them and they were not that expensive for everything they offered
 
might want to look doing a couple of subnets per floor to make sure your not going to run out of IP space for people bringing every networkable device known to man there.

Why? IP space should be the least of your worries.
 
Why do you need to go all out with Cisco switches?

The model he specified is EOL and can be had on ebay for $50. If he doesn't need gigabit most old Cisco switches will be fine for what he wants. I would suggest a WS-C2950G-48-EI, cheap (less than $50), 48 10/100 ports and runs IOS.
 
Why? IP space should be the least of your worries.

He could always run a /23 subnet that gives him 512 IPs. However I personally like running separate vlans to manage my network from my guest network.
 
To the OP: Let's start at the beginning and decide specifically what services that you are going to provide before we all run off half-baked with our favorite products.

You mentioned Wifi, How many SSID's? Any Guest network functionality?

Live hardwired ports in rooms? How many ports per room? What speed of port? Any/all clients visible via network?

Any Phone Service? Direct pair to the room or VOIP?

Internet Access? What are you planning on limiting available bandwidth per user to?

And last but not least, is there any sort of budget?
 
You also need to consider QoS. You want to be able to monitor and throttle usage to stop bandwidth hogs. And with that comes an Acceptable Usage Policy and a good think about what gets logged, how long it's kept, and to whom it's visible.

On the physical infrastructure side, I would put a single port in each room and expect the room's occupant to have their own router to handle their own infrastructure. You don't want the IT geek accidentally overloading the network just because you put 4 ports in the room: far better to explicitly mandate it. Indeed, you might buy a stock of routers and just put one in each room. You're gonig to have a switch on each floor: make sure you have a spare. Maybe two. Not only will this save your backside when one fails (and it will), but you'll be able to use the spare for those LAN games when everyone and their guests brings their kit into the dining room for a deathmatch or whatever.

Umm... you have considered the issue of power, haven't you?

And document everything!
 
You could go with Unifi APs with an HP Switch for the VLANS (if that's what you want) and then Mikrotik for the routing. You can do the routing between VLANs too with the Mikrotik if need be. You can limit each person by bandwidth with a Mikrotik using queues. You could easily build a solid network for under $1000 easy.
 
Why? IP space should be the least of your worries.

Why Not?

Think about it. Lets assume two people per room... 41 rooms, 82 people occupying the house.

/23 network Gives me 512 address. 1 of them burnt for the firewall, 2 for the switches, Lets say he does 3 aps per floor there is 12 burnt. So 497 Address over 82 people gives each person roughly 6 devices per person. Desktops, Laptop, Phones, Tablets, Gaming Systems, wireless printers.

Personally In his design I might look a few more drops per room and switch per floor which burns more IP space

There are some big assumptions there, but again I ask why not?
 
You could go with Unifi APs with an HP Switch for the VLANS (if that's what you want) and then Mikrotik for the routing. You can do the routing between VLANs too with the Mikrotik if need be. You can limit each person by bandwidth with a Mikrotik using queues. You could easily build a solid network for under $1000 easy.

I would agree this would be a good route to go. Save money for sure and be able to control everything. Then VLAN yourself out of the main group if you live there so you don't get viruses from all the Gay-Bro-Porn that will be shooting across that network lol
 
There are some big assumptions there, but again I ask why not?

Why not what?
If you want to run multiple subnets, be my guest. But don't say you're doing it to avoid IP space constraints. You could just run /16 or even /8 to avoid space issues.
 
Yes make sure you go a little overkill for IP space. Personally I'd even put the management stuff (router, switches etc) on a separate range on a separate vlan. If this is public, you want at least double the IPs as you need. Even more. Think about guest coming in with their smart phones which auto connect etc... it does not take long to run out of IPs. Used to happen all the time at the hospital I worked at because they only had a /25 and all the guests walking in with their cell phones would use up all the IPs. Then we start getting calls that "the wireless is down" lol.
 
/23 network Gives me 512 address. 1 of them burnt for the firewall, 2 for the switches, Lets say he does 3 aps per floor there is 12 burnt. So 497 Address over 82 people gives each person roughly 6 devices per person. Desktops, Laptop, Phones, Tablets, Gaming Systems, wireless printers.

Keep it at 1 IP per room, each room with its own router.
 
82 people with 6 devices are going to destroy those APs you bought.

Send them back and get 4-6 Unifis assuming you don't need more because of poor radio environment.
 
We had a couple college apartment complexes a long time ago as clients. At the time we had expensive Nortel switches at each end of the buildings and cable modems.
Managed switches are your friend. Anything that can do network segregation (for the wifi too) is a big help.

The problems weren't really in picking out the hardware - it was the users.

Packet shaping because you'll get people who run P2P and hog bandwidth. People plugging routers into the network the wrong way and DHCP servers fighting each other. Viruses spreading across the whole network in just minutes. Luckily there wasn't wireless back then, that's a mess I wouldn't want to deal with. And the kids were constantly trying to crack the Cisco router (they exploited them a few time).
 
8 Unifi with 10 users on each is nominal load for those units. They function well up to 20 users. More than 20 "active" user per AP and you'll start to notice it. Those unifi's can handle 200+ clients connected, but practically, they won't route traffic at any reasonable speed under that kind of load.

(8) APs and you 'll be covered for a normal load of 80 wireless users and still functional at 160 wireless users. Microtek or PFsense would be a good choice for the management end. You can user cisco, Procurve, or PowerConnect for the switches.


I'd do one port per room and (if you are not using VoIP) force each room to link at 10Mbit if possible at the port.

Call it Instant QOS

Connect the AP's at rated line speed

Use redundant gigabit or lag between your switches

Make sure you have a spare switch.....AND some sort of spare emergency router. It doesn't have to perform well...just long enough for someone to repair the main unit. Use any old thing that will work, just make sure you have something.
 
I'd do one port per room and (if you are not using VoIP) force each room to link at 10Mbit if possible at the port.

Call it Instant QOS

Pfff, is that the best we can do in 2012?

BTW, 10 mbit/s upload might still choke the cable connection.
 
Personally if I was in a hotel or some sort of resort, I would be thrilled to have 10/10Mbit internet.

What I think OP is doing is trying to aggregate three cable internet connection into one resource pool. As long as his router maintains the sessions to the correct WAN and has any inbound services tagged to a single WAN or has a router that can user dynamic DNS to ensure inbound services get mapped correctly
 
Pfff, is that the best we can do in 2012?

BTW, 10 mbit/s upload might still choke the cable connection.

It would choke the connection to the internet and piss off everybody that wants to share files or play games.

You should be offering the highest possible speed within the network and throttling access to the internet.
 
If you read the previous posts.... The tenant for the room would be responsible for having their own network. The OP is just providing internet access. File Sharing and playing games across the building was not part of the requirements.
 
Why not what?
If you want to run multiple subnets, be my guest. But don't say you're doing it to avoid IP space constraints. You could just run /16 or even /8 to avoid space issues.

Pfff, is that the best we can do in 2012?

BTW, 10 mbit/s upload might still choke the cable connection.

It would seem you have alot of knowledge in this area why not tell us how you would do it start to finish?
 
We still haven't heard from the OP specifically what he wants to provide. The rest of this is just speculation :D
 
Personally if I was in a hotel or some sort of resort, I would be thrilled to have 10/10Mbit internet.

What I think OP is doing is trying to aggregate three cable internet connection into one resource pool. As long as his router maintains the sessions to the correct WAN and has any inbound services tagged to a single WAN or has a router that can user dynamic DNS to ensure inbound services get mapped correctly

one cable modem would still handle the traffic. i see no difference having 1 or 3 cable modems

unless there from different companies. but there still coming across one cable.

im sure he can get teh same bandwidth from 1 cable modem then 3. (for what hes paying for)
 
I hope you know I am insanely jealous, living in a motel/hotel with all my friends has been a long time dream.
 
I hope you know I am insanely jealous, living in a motel/hotel with all my friends has been a long time dream.

I'll let you know how it goes and we'll see if we end up wanting to kill each other.

--

First off my apologies for starting an interesting thread and then dipping out. I hate it when people ask for advice then don't even answer the follow up questions. I took my first vacation in way too long and just got back.

You asked for pics:

Here's a video on the place we're setting up
We're building a livespace in San Francisco for tech / startup people.

Thanks for all the advice. I'm probably going to go with 8 unifi APs and depending on how well they reach the roof I'll put some more up there. I think I've got the rest figured out as well but I'll let you know if I run in to any problems.

I'm going to throw up a big theater on the roof most likely as well. We'll probably have to provide wifi for a few hundred smart phones when we put events on. I don't think there's anyone in SF that doesn't have one.
 
Given the relative cheap price of the UniFi's, get another 3 pack at least. You didn't say Tech people before, nor did you mention events. :D At this point it's more about load balancing than coverage.
 
As a former network admin for my fraternity in college let me warn you. You are biting off alot more than you can chew.

First off you are going to need a very robust firewall that can handle all the network traffic (cisco asa for example).
You will need a way to separate the rooms so that one person can not mess with another persons stuff(I used vlans on managed cisco switches)
You will want a robust wireless system at a minimum something like unifi, but i would recommend something with a controller like cisco. This is an old building so AP density will be the name of the game.
You may want to look into something better than a cable modem, I am sure you can get metro ethernet in san fran.

The people living here are going to expect the internet to be just like the water. It should always work, without question. Dont try and cheap out with crappy hardware or you will have 41 pissed tenants. It would be better to buy several year old used cisco equipment that will create a robust network than buying a bunch of junk and cobbling together a slow unreliable network.
 
A higher end Mikrotek unit, a good HP or Cisco Switch, Unifi APs.
Place each room in its own Vlan, place the access points in their own Vlan. Turn on Guest isolation, and configure per user bandwidth management on the Unifi's, along with captive portal and 24 hour tickets.

Make sure you enable and use fair querying on the router for each Vlan and you should be good to go.

http://routerboard.com/RB1100AH

http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/HP-V1810-48G-Ethernet-Switch-48-Port-4-Slot/6101778/product.html
48 ports Loop protection, 64 Vlans, 801.11p QOS

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW


This setup is low powered, reliable, rock solid and should scale with your available bandwidth. You are the ISP for the building. You may want to add a small server to log what your users do on the connection for security reasons. Otherwise, just sign up for OpenDNS filtering and hope for the best.
 
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I'd be interested to see what kind of permit you get for putting anything on that roof that allows people up there. We looked at that for an old car dealership that we turned into office space, and it just required to much structural work (aka money) to meet current codes, never mind all the accessibility issues.
 
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