Commercial Grade Wireless

[_desert_mouse_]

Hello All,
I am looking for info/articles on a professional grade wireless setup for one building. The building is an apartment complex w/o RJ45 jacks in each room, hence the need for wireless. About 1/3 of the rooms have consumer grade wireless devices in them now, but the "reliability" is certainly lacking. I will not go with Linksys/D-Link as that is what is currently deployed and never functions correctly. I am hoping that just one unit could service the entire building, if necessary I can easily install 2.

Building specs are appx. as follows:

150' long
50' wide
2 stories

There are actually two complexes but I would prefer to have a working unit first, before dropping the cash on the second. I am open to roof-top mounted, although I don't see what advantages that would have seeing as how the end users are all inside the building. Also of note, I can put equiptment in any room, access to the rooms is not limited, I just don't want to have to power cycle the bloody things every few days, weeks, months!!!

VERY important, ALL of the users are using consumer grade recievers/integrated notebook recievers.

Honestly I don't know where to start, and I am asking the [H] networking gods for help.

Thank You.

 

[shade91]

I used Cisco wireless access points in four of my company's warehouses. Smallest warehouse is 90,000 sqft the largest is 200,000 sqft. No issues with reliability and I can power cycle them by just unplugging their RJ45 from the server room (thanks to 802.11af PoE). I used a mixture of WEP and EAP-TTLS for security.. then again being in an apartment complex environment what exactly are your security needs if any?

First thing I did in each warehouse though was bring in a professional firm for a site survey. After that I did the install with our own scissor lifts since I already knew where each device should be placed and with what style antenna.

 

[_desert_mouse_]

Thanks for your response.

PoE = power over ethernet I am assuming? Cool, not necessary in my situation *hopefully* but neat none the less.

As far as security goes, none needed, none expected UNLESS the client computers have to do nothing different. I hate saying that, actually gives me chills, but I can't spend my day fixing everyones computer with new WEP codes or whatnot.

I guess I'm looking for some sort of idea if one device could penetrate the walls to each end of the building. It's not a really long run either way if I put it in the middle, and I could use some sort of bi-directional antenna I would assume?

I'll take a look-see at the cisco products, on my list, I just can't seem to find any documentation about range.

*goes back to looking*

Thanks.

 

[ktwebb]

Hard to say definitively but the chances of you covering a building of that size with one AP is basically nil. I'd really be suprised if you could two it with two 100mW Cisco AP's. Reliably anyway. You won't know until you do the survey however. Nobody can tell you what the range in your building will be. All anyone can say is that a Cisco or Proxim AP will have better range than a budget AP infrastructure. My recommendation would be Cisco is money is no object, Proxim if it is a slight issue. Both are excellent AP's. You can get one and put it in the middle of the building, if it is symetrical and go from there. To do an accurate site survey put it in one corner of the building, test out. Then move the AP to the spot where you started losing the signal. HOWEVER, since you'll have a hodgepodge of client devices no site survey is going to be completely accurate because you can't test with all of them to find out where your deadspots will be for that particular card. WIthout seeing the building, just going by measurements and not knowing the building makeup, I'd guess in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 AP's. For complete, reliable and strong wireless cells anyway. You could probably get away with less if your not all that concerned about some areas being spotty.