Building LAN network with AP's without cabling

[xelion]

I provide network solutions to buildings, we basically do things in a simple way. we always do the cabling to the upper floor when the building is in construction stage. but what will we do if a building has been already built and we need to fix AP's to the upper floors. Lot of the people ask us if there is any option to fix AP'on upper floor's without "Cabling".

Basically what i need is an expert opinion on how to do that without reducing much of the AP's signal. As i've been working i came to know about WDS "Wireless Distribution System" which is exactly what i'm looking for! WDS has it's own con's and pro's, I tested WDS by myself on Engenius product and the results are good, certainly not excellent could be the AP's problem which i was using. I don't have much acknowledgement of WDS. I'll be more than happy to hear it.

In most buildings we fix 3-4 AP's. For me it'll be easy to use a solution like what Ubiquiti offers, which is an controller based Wi-Fi Device Management software. I'm looking for an high class AP which is capable of proving WiFi signal to 50ft floor, most of the building we work has rooms like hotel so the wall penetration should be good. the signal should be able to go any corner in the floor.

So that's it, I hope i'll be hearing from you guys soon thank you.

 

[sfx2000]

For something like this, might consider the Meraki line from Cisco...

A bit spendy, but probably fit to your needs...

 

[xelion]

For something like this, might consider the Meraki line from Cisco...

A bit spendy, but probably fit to your needs...

Sure, I'll take a look!

 

[azazel1024]

Downside to WDS or any wireless distribution system is you lose half your bandwidth at every hop between access points. One way to avoid this, but with a kludge, is either use dual radios, or two access points.

One AP or one of the radios is running on a band/channel that does not interfere with the actual user wireless network. That will work as a backhaul between the various access points.

You still lose bandwidth, but you don't lose the initial repeated hop bandwidth loss. Also if you are using 5GHz with the clients and 2.4GHz for the backhaul with the dual AP setup, you can use APs in such a way that one AP is setup as a "receiver", the other AP as a relay. Receiver is setup on channel 1, relay on channel 6 and one of the APs then broadcasts a 5GHz network for clients to connect to. Next hop one of the pair runs on channel 6 as the receiver and the relay AP runs channel 11.

Then you just have to figure out your layout so that you don't have interference with any of the access points.

You potentially have an all wireless network with no relay loss then. Takes a lot of leg work and planning, but it'll maximize user bandwidth.

With some good 3-stream dual radio APs, you can potentially have 100Mbps or so of usable wireless bandwidth (counting on some attenuation losses between APs) for clients to access.

 

[stevech]

Dual radio APs (one on 5GHz) to support a mesh backhaul - is the usual way to distribute APs and use wireless to link to the router.
Tropos networks has the best, IMO, having done a big project with them. They were acquired by ABB some time ago. Cisco and Aruba have good ones too.
I'd avoid the SmallCo attempts to compete with the above.

 

[xelion]

Dual radio APs (one on 5GHz) to support a mesh backhaul - is the usual way to distribute APs and use wireless to link to the router.
Tropos networks has the best, IMO, having done a big project with them. They were acquired by ABB some time ago. Cisco and Aruba have good ones too.
I'd avoid the SmallCo attempts to compete with the above.

Openmesh seems so far promising, what do you guys think? / https://www.open-mesh.com/

 

[stevech]

Open-mesh... Nah, not for an important business app.
It's languished for years.

for a home hobby non-critical thing. Maybe. If you want to spend your time with that.

 

[sfx2000]

Open-mesh... Nah, not for an important business app.
It's languished for years.

for a home hobby non-critical thing. Maybe. If you want to spend your time with that.

Tend to agree - it's ok for experimenters and developers - the local ARRL chapter has been exploring this for emergency communications, and they're pretty smart about things..

Meraki is a commercial realization of MIT-Roofnet if I recall correctly...

 

[stevech]

Well, I'll reiterate post #5 which seems to have gone unnoticed as to vendor names.

If you want a wireless backhaul for APs, and one that's not power line based, and suitable for important enterprise usage, don't hack.

 

[xelion]

I would like to hear some good AP's that are able to do that right. WDS or Open-mesh. have snb have a review about it or somewhere else?

 

[sfx2000]

With some good 3-stream dual radio APs, you can potentially have 100Mbps or so of usable wireless bandwidth (counting on some attenuation losses between APs) for clients to access.

Another way to look at it - an AC1900 class AP can offer up to 120MHz of useful spectrum...

with 120MHz of spectrum - Shannon tells us that it will be fast...

 

[sfx2000]

I would like to hear some good AP's that are able to do that right. WDS or Open-mesh. have snb have a review about it or somewhere else?

Challenge with both OpenMesh and WDS is that they're fragile by nature... There's also unresolved issues related to sub-optimal packet routing within the mesh and entrance in to and out of the mesh to the WAN.

Like I mentioned earlier - Meraki was probably one of the better solutions for Mesh - they solved most of the problems that RoofNet discovered.

 

[zakoh]

Do you really gain anything by using dual radios in WDS mesh network setup? Let's say you have only two access points, and you dedicate the 2.4GHz radios to the task of WDS link, while the 5GHz talks to the clients. In an AC1900 router, the 2.4GHz link rate is 600Mbps, and the 5GHz link rate is roughly 1300Mbps. So the clients will have effectively 600Mbps wireless link to the next hop router. But that's effectively the same half of the 5GHz radio's bandwidth. The 2.4GHz band suffers from the fact that the widest channel you can use is still half the width of the 80MHz channel in the 5GHz band. I guess you gain distance, with the 2.4GHz going through obstacles better.

 

[System Error Message]

You can use a combination of wire and WDS. For example where you can use ethernet or MOCA or something like homeplug and where you cant just use the AP which will use either WDS or bridge to the nearest wired AP.

Since you are relying on wireless links you may want to limit the total number of hops that packets can take from one place to another. I know WDS will automatically hop to the nearest AP with a wire connection but if traffic had to go through 10 APs before reaching it than it would mean very slow networking. Try limitting it to at most 3 APs before reaching wire.

Some buildings have ceilings or walls that have space for cabling which can be serviced and are covered using panels. Offices have panel based ceilings where you put cables for example. There are different ways that buildings handle cabling and some are serviceable which you should use to your advantage where available.

Dual band in a mesh network can increase bandwidth if 1 band is used for inter AP communication, 1 band connects the clients.

 

[stevech]

I would like to hear some good AP's that are able to do that right. WDS or Open-mesh. have snb have a review about it or somewhere else?

read about the enterprise products with wireless backhaul from Tropos, Cisco and Aruba.
The other meshes are science experiments or toys.

It's not an AP problem. It's a managed WiFi netowork solution. Controller-based.

WDS is a repeater. Not relevant.