Equipment for a 1000 sqft (see pic) wifi network

[kinjibro]

I am planning to build a wifi network to cover a very densely populated area as you can see in the images.

This is a small commercial project. I am planing to provide a 50 MBPS wifi connection.

I am thinking about buying a Nighthawk X4S to plant it in the middle of the area and use 4 range extenders in each direction or 8 if it did not suffice.

Billing will be done physically so i dont need a managemnt system for the but i would like to log internet usage for security and legal purposes.

Below is an image of the area with measurements in foots.

Though i am running a profitable internet/gaming cafe but i guess fairly new to what i am trying to achieve. So any comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

[L&LD]

How many concurrent users will be on this WiFi network? If 50Mbps is to be provided to all, even 8 additional AP's will not cut it, depending on the terrain and AP placement and connection (wired is highly recommended).

 

[kinjibro]

How many concurrent users will be on this WiFi network? If 50Mbps is to be provided to all, even 8 additional AP's will not cut it, depending on the terrain and AP placement and connection (wired is highly recommended).

On 200 connections, 50-60.

I will using load sharing so if i have 50 people using at the same time each could get 1mb.

By owning a cyber cafe i am very well aware of the usage patterns.

I am running 8 pc's on 2×4MB connections and goes pretty smoothly. Most people use facebook and youtube and my internal server for watching movies.

Technical knowledge is at grandpa level for 90% as i 2-3 customers every week ask to make facebook and playstore id's etc.

Yet there could be quite a few people who will be using torrent and idm on my wifi network.

My target customers are mobile and tablet users who with low budget can get a decent enough, unlimited and most of all cheapest service around. For me they are good in terms of usage as most will be using fb, skype, and youtube as an extreme case etc. 3g services here cant even 480p vids and charge 3 times more than what i am offering and they have download caps.

So i will be charging higher for pc connections. I am also thinking about 2 main 50 mb connections, 1 for mobile devs and 1 for desktops

 

[TonyH]

1000 sq. ft.(1000 or 10000?) and 50MBPS(hope this is typo)? Yes. have to include wired connection for sure(like POE)

 

[kinjibro]

1000 sq. ft.(1000 or 10000?) and 50MBPS(hope this is typo)? Yes. have to include wired connection for sure(like POE)

Sorry yes its 50mbps and 1000 sqft.

This is what i am trying to do as he did not use any POE.

http://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Build-a-Large-Citywide-WiFi-HotspotZone

One thing i need to ask is after youblook at the article is that my wont be able to create a mesh network like he did?

 

[L&LD]

Your indicated area in your image is a lot larger than '1000SqFt'.

 

[System Error Message]

50Mb/s is easy with wireless N so you can save on that but no reason not to get wireless AC for better chips.

Range extenders arent as good as you think unless you do it right. Its better to plant multiple APs and wire them together. Other things you could do are create wifi to wifi bridges and have wifi APs at the other end. With that area you are at the limits of the ethernet standard so POE will be difficult and you will need good cabling. You can use a wifi router for internet for more wifi but wire the APs together.

If you want to do range extending right you need 3 APs, 2 of them for bridging with directional antennas/dishes. Pick an AP, try one out and move around with it to see how the performance differs and how much range it covers. This will help you determine how many you need and where you need to place them. Its not as simple as placing them equally all around rather its more on covering areas you want and getting the best placements for each area right.

I know you can use mikrotik APs (9xx series) for both bridging and wifi distribution because they have mini PCIe so you can add more cards and antennas based on what you need but this cant be done with other wifi APs/routers that have multiple radios because of firmware limits. They also have SFP so you have the option of wiring things with fiber optics.

 

[sfx2000]

Your indicated area in your image is a lot larger than '1000SqFt'.

If those are feet - it's pretty close to 240,000 sq feet...

Sounds like Ubiquity BM2 bullets with high gain omni antennas... and more than 8 of them...

https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/bulletm/

 

[sfx2000]

I know a guy over in Denver, Colorado who has a lot of experience doing large scale WiFi deployments... he's not cheap, but he's very good - PM me if you want his details...

 

[stevech]

If those are feet - it's pretty close to 240,000 sq feet...

Sounds like Ubiquity BM2 bullets with high gain omni antennas... and more than 8 of them...

https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/bulletm/

Access is the easy part in these large-coverage area projects. Backhaul is the hard part. And often, so too is power to pole-mounted APs; cost$$$, fire codes, labor unions, aesthetics, easements/right-of-way, and on and on. I speak as one who had the task lead for covering all of several big cities, not the least of which was San Diego with its terrain. That was to be a giant mesh network using Tropos/Canopy. Houston was hard due to the sheer size.

 

[sfx2000]

Access is the easy part in these large-coverage area projects. Backhaul is the hard part. And often, so too is power to pole-mounted APs; cost$$$, fire codes, labor unions, aesthetics, and on and on.

What's worse - things look good from the street - but punching thru walls and making it useful inside the home...

Not so good...

 

[stevech]

What's worse - things look good from the street - but punching thru walls and making it useful inside the home...

Not so good...

Indoor penetration was where Ruckus came in ... like the clean-up guy behind the parade's elephants. No one wants to see the brooms.
Lots of Aruba wannabes.

 

[kinjibro]

If those are feet - it's pretty close to 240,000 sq feet...

Sounds like Ubiquity BM2 bullets with high gain omni antennas... and more than 8 of them...

https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/bulletm/

Im sorry i messed the calculations up, its 770,000 sqft.

 

[kinjibro]

Sorry guys i was running around town for a dealership from ISP's. I will upload some pic of the area tomorrow from a high building.

@System Error Message Range extenders would be the ideal setup for me. 2nd thing would be what @sfx2000 suggested but i dont know that those AP's could still get the job done, Last option is POE which pretty much as tiresome as running a wired network.

I will post some pics tomo and see what everyone says.

 

[L&LD]

770,000 SqFt huh?

Recommend that hiring a 'pro' would be the cheapest way to go here. Unless you value your time (to install and maintain) at less than zero per hour with your currency of choice).

 

[System Error Message]

Sorry guys i was running around town for a dealership from ISP's. I will upload some pic of the area tomorrow from a high building.

@System Error Message Range extenders would be the ideal setup for me. 2nd thing would be what @sfx2000 suggested but i dont know that those AP's could still get the job done, Last option is POE which pretty much as tiresome as running a wired network.

I will post some pics tomo and see what everyone says.

you are clearly out of the ethernet standard range so POE is not an option (unless you are wiring the AP as a centralised option in bridging and such).

To clarify, point to point directional/dish can have a very far range that you can make a base station in the middle and just send dishes out everywhere. So for my suggestion if you're not using wire than the correct way to range extend is [switch]---AP)))))((((AP--((((AP))))
So from your central switch you connect an AP with a dish/directional at it and point it to where you want. You put an AP there with the same antenna pointing in the opposite direction and you connect a standard AP via ethernet to it. This is the correct way to do range extending not some weird mesh style network because your requirements and range far exceed the practicality of range extenders. If you dont believe me try using range extenders and the latency and throughput will be bad that people will complain. Even a pro will say the same things that i do.

Some have gotten away using directionals and having 2 APs pointing to the same AP at the base. In this case POE can be used as you would have more than one device in an area to power so that can be used. You can even mix using the bridging i mention in which you wire the same AP to a few APs but you spread them out much further. Planning is important and as i advice, choose a wifi AP, go around and see how it performs as a way of seeing how many APs do you need to cover the area and where do you need to place them. By doing this you can also see if the specific wifi AP does what you want before you start ordering.

with mikrotik's 9xx series you would still use the same topology but the ethernet would be replaced by mini PCIe so you wire the antennas seperately from different radios.