apartment wifi

[regencymanagement]

Hi all,

I am trying to figure out the best and cheapest solution for a 20 unit apartment complex. We need hotspot management software and router configuration.

my thoughts.

option 1

1. outdoor access point en genius enh210
2. connected to win 7 machine running hotspot software from http://www.antamedia.com/

they say that it is only an outdoor access point but can you use it to get signal indoors? that would cut the cost of running many indoor wifi routers and all the power and cat 5 to them

option 2

1. purchase multiple cheap wifi routers- home class ones and string up about 6 of them all to cat 5 and a switch
2. switch connected to win 7 machine running hotspot software from http://www.antamedia.com/

any recommendations? or better hotspot management software? or any better ideas?

 

[tipstir]

Are all the units on the ground floor or are there different levels or floors? How is the structure constructed? Drywall, Cement, Brick, Any metal or mostly wood? How many sq ft is the property?

Is this structure in the USA or is this outside it. Reason being directing you in the right direction for hardware and such from me or the other members would help us.

 

[stevech]

For a 20 residence building, my first thought is who's going to sustain this and avoid being Mr. IT Help Desk 7 days a week? And deal with bandwidth hogs, etc.

Me, I would help engineer the thing but no way would I sustain it for free.

 

[EndeavorOR]

I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti's Unifi products. They have indoor units and outdoor units. Indoor units look like smoke detectors and cost about $70.00. Outdoor units cost about $130.00.

All controlled by a central server that you run on a windows machine. Once you have all the devices adopted to the server, you can make any needed changes in one place and they propagate automatically to all the devices. They even support wireless repeating.

If you plan to allow public access, Unifi's server has a captive portal to accept terms and conditions. You can also limit access via password.

if you plan to charge or limit access using something other than a WPA2 key or a password, that's beyond my level of expertise.

I would not use consumer grade products. Most of the stuff on the market today is terribly unreliable.

Hi all,

I am trying to figure out the best and cheapest solution for a 20 unit apartment complex. We need hotspot management software and router configuration.

my thoughts.

option 1

1. outdoor access point en genius enh210
2. connected to win 7 machine running hotspot software from http://www.antamedia.com/

they say that it is only an outdoor access point but can you use it to get signal indoors? that would cut the cost of running many indoor wifi routers and all the power and cat 5 to them

option 2

1. purchase multiple cheap wifi routers- home class ones and string up about 6 of them all to cat 5 and a switch
2. switch connected to win 7 machine running hotspot software from http://www.antamedia.com/

any recommendations? or better hotspot management software? or any better ideas?

 

[tipstir]

Interesting all the nodes are controlled by one Windows PC for Ubiquiti's.

Those disc for WNAP do you know what type of Network Controller is in there, CPU and RAM.

Cheapest one is 20dBm, then there is 27dBm and the most expensive one is 30dBm for WNAP.