Descent router to cover 1 floor 300m² office space

[NoOne]

Hello everyone,

I don't know weather it is a lot of space to cover with today technology so i need your advice. I need to cover 300m² quiet rectangular shape office space. Also it will act like router for basic network administration task, nothing fancy.

So the main problem is to provide enough coverage. Is it possible without repeaters?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nullity]

Hello everyone,

I don't know weather it is a lot of space to cover with today technology so i need your advice. I need to cover 300m² quiet rectangular shape office space. Also it will act like router for basic network administration task, nothing fancy.

So the main problem is to provide enough coverage. Is it possible without repeaters?

Thanks in advance!

Are walls involved? If so, no... you need maybe 6+ APs (wild guess).

I have read about some APs/antennas going that distance with no obstructions, but that is only under uncommon condition with high-end equipment.

 

[NoOne]

Hmm, ok, i guess it was a bit dumb question from my side I guess best thing will be to get some test router and do some measurements...

Is it OK to use something like Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector to get basic view of signal strength?

And the office has corridor through all the office and rooms on both sides of it, with glass walls. So shouldn't be a big problem for signal.

 

[L&LD]

NoOne, it will depend on the type of glass in those walls too.

What are the actual dimensions (LxW)? Square (17.35M x 17.35M) is very different from 5M x 60M. How many users will be connecting wirelessly and wired? Are the wireless clients capable of 2.4GHz band and 5GHz band connectivity? What type of load will the clients run typically?

I would suggest playing with software like you suggest is a good way to spend time without getting any useful information that you can use.

Set a budget, ask or buy an appropriate WiFi router (I can see the RT-AC5300U or the RT-AC88U being the ones I would lean towards for this type of setup) and test it in actual use (don't use a software analyzer at this point either). You'll know very quickly if it will work or not and you'll only have 'wasted' the time to set it up instead of that plus gathering info that will translate to varying levels of usefulness depending on the specific environment you have.

 

[sfx2000]

Hello everyone,

I don't know weather it is a lot of space to cover with today technology so i need your advice. I need to cover 300m² quiet rectangular shape office space. Also it will act like router for basic network administration task, nothing fancy.

So the main problem is to provide enough coverage. Is it possible without repeaters?

Thanks in advance!

How many people? Is it open floor plan, or offices?

As a rough estimate, figure 3 devices per person (most will have 2, their smart phone and the PC/workstation), but this gives a bit of headroom for the shared devices...

Based on 300 sq meters, that's about 3200 sq ft - figure about 1000 sq ft per 2.4GHz AP (and that's a generous estimate) - 500 sq ft for 5GHz - and about 15 devices per AP

 

[joegreat]

Are walls involved? If so, no... you need maybe 6+ APs (wild guess).

I have read about some APs/antennas going that distance with no obstructions, but that is only under uncommon condition with high-end equipment.

Or at least two (or more) of kind of router beasts like Asus AC87U/AC88U/AC5300 to have the processing power (2 separate CPUs) and range for 2.4 and 5 GHz! To be placed on good spots to cover the wohle space equally.

In offices it's not only about range but also about processing power to give the speed to all clients with Multi-User-MIMO-Technology (MU-MIMO) in the 5 GHz WLAN band!

As you can see from my footer, I am also using 2 routers to cover a challenging building (my flat)!

Of course you can go for professional equipment, which will do a beautiful job, but it will have a much higher price...

 

[sfx2000]

Or at least two (or more) of kind of router beasts like Asus AC87U/AC88U/AC5300 to have the processing power (2 separate CPUs) and range for 2.4 and 5 GHz! To be placed on good spots to cover the wohle space equally.

Actually, in a Production Office Environment, I was thinking something along the line of the dedicated AC1200 class AP's from Engenius, Zyxel, or Ubiquity, and get a small business class router (EdgeRouterLite?) to to the ingress...

They can't afford downtime - consumer grade Router/AP's have no place in a small business situation...