Old building Wi-Fi Solution

[heartl3ss21]

Hey guys,

I have an old multi floor building that consists of apartments. I would like to offer the people living inside, a cheap wi-fi solution. Since the building is old, I cant run new wires through every room or even a few of them. I have a small storage room at the bottom of the building that the central switch and modem/router will be located. I have made colored references on the attached image, in order to help you figure out what i'm talking about.

https://imgur.com/A48v1Nb

The small orange square with the yellow outline, is the small storage room with the central equipment (switch, router, modem etc.).
Each color on the access points represent a different solution.
From there I have figured out three ways that i can implement this:

1) RED - Run outdoor wiring to the two long poles, where i can mount one outdoor access point on each one, that will be facing all the balconies of the complex. Usually the signal will go through the balcony and inside the apartment itself, depending on the AP.

2) GREEN - Do the same but only with one outdoor access point that transmits towards the building, if it should prove enough to do the job with only one piece.

3) PURPLE - Mount two access points on the walls of the balconies, however im not so sure on how good the wi-fi coverage will be.

Please give me your advice on which way would be the most efficient and what kind of access points do you recommend i should buy?

Thanks a lot!

 

[lighting]

Have you looked at the local wifi environment? (I use wifiscanner.) You're likely to have to stick with 2.4 GHz to penetrate multiple walls, and a factor is going to be what the local noise level is like. If half the apartments are already cluttering all the 2.4GHz channels (there are really only three that don't overlap) you may not have a good solution at all. Not to mention neighboring buildings if they're close.

And how the building is constructed is a consideration. If it's all concrete or brick, including interior walls, you're going to have more trouble than if it's framed.

Are you thinking directional APs? That would be the main reason to go with multiple units, I think. I use an Engenius ENS202 (now discontinued) to share my Internet with a house next door. It's effective, but doesn't get adequate signal through to the far side of a wood frame house.

In any event, if you're not already discouraged I don't think there's a good way to proceed without testing something. I'd try one AP on the pole, if the pole already exists, or on a balcony if not. If the 2.4 GHz competition isn't too fierce, or if you try 5 GHz I'm guessing it will work fine near the front of the building and lousy in the back, especially on the floors farthest from the height of the AP and the apartments farthest from the pole. It's going to depend in part on the material of the external face of the building, too.

Another option to consider: Is there any way to get an AP on each floor in some internal shaft space? Then you wouldn't be going through the outer shell of the building and the floors, which might be less permeable than the interior walls. A simpler test that might be illuminating is to just put an AP in the room with the modem and see how many apartments away you can get a good connection.

 

[pege63]

Is there cabel-tv in the building, because many homes are connected with coaxial cables.
I believe that MoCA 2.0 is the most reliable solution for providing stable and consistent networking in a home, so use that if its so as a backbone.

 

[coxhaus]

I don't think either one is a complete solution. If you need to cover the whole building then I think you need to hire someone. You did not mention whether you need to cover the roof. I can't tell if there is a sitting area on the roof. The poles are probably best for outside.

 

[Trip]

@OP - When you say "cheap wifi solution", do you mean cheap for the tenants (as in, included with rent, or a nominal extra fee), or cheap for you? The former could be accomplished, of course, but the initial cost to you likely won't (or shouldn't) be cheap, at least not if you want to guarantee a result that the tenants will actually prefer to use, thus justifying all the time and effort in the first place...

IMHO, the first and best option would be to farm this out to a local/regional IT/AV/wifi outfit that can handle the site survey, build out and setup, even ongoing management if you desire. In that scenario, you completely offload the burden and build out the end result exactly as you'd like it in terms of performance and user experience. This will come at a cost, of course, but if that cost is anywhere close to a reasonable ROI, then I say you go that route 100%. I'd at least get a couple quotes and see; the estimates and the business case you might be able to build around the additional value you'd be buying may surprise you.

In terms of doing this all yourself, we could definitely get into it, but I'd want to see if the outsourcing option is possible first.

 

[L&LD]

Hey guys,

I have an old multi floor building that consists of apartments. I would like to offer the people living inside, a cheap wi-fi solution. Since the building is old, I cant run new wires through every room or even a few of them. I have a small storage room at the bottom of the building that the central switch and modem/router will be located. I have made colored references on the attached image, in order to help you figure out what i'm talking about.

https://imgur.com/A48v1Nb

The small orange square with the yellow outline, is the small storage room with the central equipment (switch, router, modem etc.).
Each color on the access points represent a different solution.
From there I have figured out three ways that i can implement this:

1) RED - Run outdoor wiring to the two long poles, where i can mount one outdoor access point on each one, that will be facing all the balconies of the complex. Usually the signal will go through the balcony and inside the apartment itself, depending on the AP.

2) GREEN - Do the same but only with one outdoor access point that transmits towards the building, if it should prove enough to do the job with only one piece.

3) PURPLE - Mount two access points on the walls of the balconies, however im not so sure on how good the wi-fi coverage will be.

Please give me your advice on which way would be the most efficient and what kind of access points do you recommend i should buy?

Thanks a lot!

How many floors/levels will require WiFi? What are the buildings outside dimensions for each floor?

How many tenants and possible devices each tenant will have? With consumer routers, you will need to consider the 32 client limit for each band/radio in use. Are there airports or other radar installations close by? This may further restrict the available channels that are usable.

I would recommend separate SSID's for each area covered. I know these will be 'shared' by the tenants, but a simple SSID change will put things back on track again if too many are using a single router/radio/band, etc.

 

[heartl3ss21]

Guys thank you all so much for your valuable information and time spent replying.
So, let me give you some more info so you can have a better view of the situation.

The building has 12 rooms in total, 4 rooms in the ground floor, 4 on the first floor and 4 on the second floor. All rooms are next to each other in a series. It is built with concrete, so the real challenge is to get something to penetrate the walls. Although they do not look too thick.

The building is located in a somewhat isolated area, so there isn't any real issue with Wi-Fi interferance from other houses or buildings.

@coxhaus The roof doesn't need any coverage, so that is out of the way.

@pege63 No cable TV wiring of any sorts in the apartments unfortunately.

@lighting Exactly, I think testing might be the best way, but unfortunately i dont much much equipement to do any sort of real testing. With a bit of research i found abou the CPE510 directional access points from TP-Link which are affordable and if mounted on the two poles facing the front of the building, i think they might be a decent enough solution. There also isn't any internal shaft space. The room entrances are outside. I can provide pictures if needed.

@Trip The apartments are used to provide free housing to the staff of a nearby hotel that is around 500m away from that building. So they all work different hours and shifts, i doubt there will be any need to do any sort of QoS or bandwidth management, except during late at night when everyone is off work and resting. What do you think? Will i need to get a really good router to do the job? The only available ISP in that area can provide a 24MBPs ADSL internet line, so they will all have to share this with their phones, laptops, playstations etc. So I don't have any obligation to provide real and stable internet connectivity or Wi-Fi coverage. I'm doing it simply as a favor and act of good will, since there is nothing at the moment, but I want it to be as cheap as possible. Therefore, it will be a DIY project for me. No external hiring possible im afraid.

 

[heartl3ss21]

Also, i forgot to mention that i also figured out I can use some powerlines with integrated Wi-Fi to do the job. Maybe 4-6 powerlines split between every 2 or 3 rooms might do the trick. Opinions?

 

[L&LD]

12 rooms or 12 suites? With multiple rooms within each suite? You still don't indicate how many users and devices in total?

Powerline options may provide basic text-based internet browsing for 12 or more devices. I wouldn't be counting on it myself.

The actual square footage of the area to be covered is important too. What are the outside dimensions of the building (roughly)?

With what you have described so far, a 'really good router' is a must. The RT-AC3100 (0r two) would be my top suggestion depending on your answers to the above questions.

RT-AC3100 Report https://www.snbforums.com/threads/s...-go-with-the-rt-ac1900p-v3.34748/#post-281391

 

[coxhaus]

A couple of things come to mind is with a slow internet connection you will want cake at least on the router because the internet is going to be saturated most of time. Qos with limits on each connection will be best to stop video streaming. There was a router software that had good limits. I can't remember the name but it originally ran on a Linksys in the old days. I would find it but I have to run off to a Wedding.

The other problem I see is you may have good internet access and walk around a concrete wall and lose internet. Concrete is hard on wireless.

 

[Trip]

Hi heartless. Understood; thanks for explaining.

Regarding powerline, I'm leery to recommend, as it can be highly flaky and often tough to troubleshoot. I'm not saying it's never an option, but I would try an exclusively wireless setup for backhaul first.

In terms of where to broadcast from, I'm not convinced that any amount outdoor of directional gear, that's anywhere near your budget at least, would give you enough planar coverage and/or interior penetration to make it work and/or be worth the trouble of doing it outside. Instead, I'd go with omni-directional APs mounted indoors. Setup well enough and using the right product (that's key!) I think you could get enough 2.4Ghz throughout the building, with low-enough latency and jitter, that it would be plenty robust, especially for saturating a 24 Mb/s DSL line.

For specific products, I'll start from the ISP drop and work outwards:

Modem - Hopefully your ISP gives you a plain-Jane modem; otherwise, I'd run it as a modem only in bridge mode. I'd also make sure to vet your ISP's hardware as stable and well-proven. If not, then run your own modem. Additional edit: I know many may call this unicorn dust, even counter-productive, but I often find a high-quality RJ11 cable, like this one, from the modem to the DSL jack (or filter), can make a huge difference on the stability of the DSL connection.

Router - First, you absolutely want something than can do proper active queue management on the WAN interface, such as a Ubiquiti ER-X with Smart Queue QoS turned on and set properly (plenty of KBs, YouTube videos, Google links on how to do that). Second, running PPPoE authentication is often preferable and can be more stable, versus on the modem, if possible. You'll need login creds from your ISP to do that.

Switching - The ER-X's built in switch chip should suffice, and since you'd only be able to push PoE to the AP in the closet, a single Gigabit PoE injector will work for that.

Wireless - Here's where things get interesting, perhaps contentious from the peanut gallery. I'd choose refurb and/or working-pull N-class enterprise gear, running in mesh. It's important to remember we're doing this on the cheap, for a 24 Mb fairly latent DSL WAN link, in a 5Ghz-killing concrete structure. So newer AC wifi, heaven forbid AX, would likely be lost on most clients, even the AP-to-AP links themselves. For a product, I've had phenomenal results with 1-generation-old Ruckus; specifically the 7982 for an AP (<$50 a pop right now on eBay) and a ZD1100 controller (<$100 on eBay). The base ZD1100 includes an allowance of up to 6 APs in SmartMesh (12, 25 and 50 AP maximums are unlockable via license, for which after-market prices aren't all that bad). Even at 3+ hops out, I've found it to work really well, provided the APs are placed well enough and power levels are adjusted properly (more to come on that). The major benefits from a system such as this (and from Ruckus in particular) are: you can have seamless SSID(s) throughout the entire building, a captive login portal with user-based logins if you desire, so no need to reset guest passwords for everyone when tenants change, plus ChannelFly automatic channel selection for the least interfered-with AP-to-AP and AP-to-endpoint connections, continuously in real-time. The satellite APs can be powered by 12V/1.5A AC adapters with 5.5mm/2.5mm barrel plugs (getting plug diameter correct is important, as most blind purchases off Amazon come with the more common 5.5/2.1mm size -- which won't fit). Anyways, at $300-400 total for what was a few thousand in hardware 3-5 years ago, it's a really good option. As for how many APs and placement, as @L&LD has said, that depends on building dimension, square footage and a bit of trial-and-error as you build outward, AP by AP, from the root/master AP in the storage closet.

For some rough guidance on the core "stack" and AP layout, see the following modification of your original image. My AP placements and broadcast coverages are rough generalizations at best, based on pure supposition. Actual on-site testing would be needed for appropriate AP proximity and power level adjustments (which can easily be done from the ZoneDirector web interface).

As a primer, notice how the broadcast overlaps are in proximity enough to where each AP can grab a high enough signal from its nearest neighbor AP to create a solid AP-to-AP link. This prevents huge chunks of bandwidth loss per mesh hop. Also, overlaps are done in-duplicate, such that each AP has at least 2 peering APs to choose from; this facilitates faster and more resilient auto-healing if any single AP should go down, plus tenants connecting at hops further away from the failure still have internet (through the second AP that's still online) while the controller auto-heals and reboots the downed AP. A great feature, made all the better by locating APs properly.

...Phew. Now you see why I initially recommended just farming this out to a shop and having them handle it?

In closing, I know many will scream bloody murder at the made-up layout, or for proposing multi-hops across concrete with no wired backhaul. I'm not saying it's guaranteed to work, but I've done enough proof-of-concepts in buildings of likely similar size and makeup to know there's a damn good chance it will work, and would stay working with minimal fuss and muss after proper setup is done and acceptable service levels are confirmed. For well under $500, I don't think you can do much better for a purely wireless solution.

 

[heartl3ss21]

@L&LD So to give some more clarifications, I do not know exactly how big the rooms are, but as far as I know, they are one-room and bathroom apartments. Similar to how hotel rooms are. If I really need to know even roughly the square footage, I will have to go and measure it myself. Furthermore, up to 3-4 people live in the same apartment, which means 1-2 devices per person that needs a Wi-Fi connection. I know that this starts to count up a hell lot of users and if the ISP provides such a small bandwidth, people are really going to struggle. Will a good router like the ER-X one be able to limit each device for example to 3Mbps or even create some sort of captive portal, where I can create users and distribute them to the staff living there?

@Trip wow man, I have no words to express how grateful I am for the amount of time and effort you went through to write all this. Cheers to you!
From what I understand, a mesh Wi-Fi network consists of Access points that are wirelessly connected to each other and retransmit the network from the previous AP. Isn't this the same job that a repeater does? Sorry, im still an amateur in all this. It looks indeed like a decent solution, even though it might be still be double-triple the budget from just buying two directional outdoor APs and let them do whatever they can do best. Another obstacle, is that the hotel is paying for this equipment and I barely managed to convince the owner to shell out some cash for gear. So, buying stuff from ebay is a no-go, since they are used and I need some sort of official invoices for the stuff I get to go in the hotel expensives. Complicated right?
Truth be told, the hotel is work for, is using exclusively Ruckus network gear (switches, controllers, APs) and I am extremely satisfied with them. I dare say they are a lot better performers than Ubiquiti and Cisco that I have used in the past. Bad thing is that there is no official distributor of Ruckus in Greece, so its extremely hard to find them, except Ebay, not to mention they are expensive as hell. Wish I could just do exactly that though.
By the way, why did I thought exactly the "unicorn dust" thing when I saw you reccommending that shielded RJ11 cable, but I was shocked when i saw the reviews and how many people are actually saying it improved their DSL line speeds. I might actually buy one for my own house. Unfortunately, I cannot order from amazon from my country and I didnt find any sort of cabling like that on Ebay when I did a short search, or in my country's online stores. Still, very exciting!

 

[L&LD]

@L&LD So to give some more clarifications, I do not know exactly how big the rooms are, but as far as I know, they are one-room and bathroom apartments. Similar to how hotel rooms are. If I really need to know even roughly the square footage, I will have to go and measure it myself. Furthermore, up to 3-4 people live in the same apartment, which means 1-2 devices per person that needs a Wi-Fi connection. I know that this starts to count up a hell lot of users and if the ISP provides such a small bandwidth, people are really going to struggle. Will a good router like the ER-X one be able to limit each device for example to 3Mbps or even create some sort of captive portal, where I can create users and distribute them to the staff living there?

@Trip wow man, I have no words to express how grateful I am for the amount of time and effort you went through to write all this. Cheers to you!
From what I understand, a mesh Wi-Fi network consists of Access points that are wirelessly connected to each other and retransmit the network from the previous AP. Isn't this the same job that a repeater does? Sorry, im still an amateur in all this. It looks indeed like a decent solution, even though it might be still be double-triple the budget from just buying two directional outdoor APs and let them do whatever they can do best. Another obstacle, is that the hotel is paying for this equipment and I barely managed to convince the owner to shell out some cash for gear. So, buying stuff from ebay is a no-go, since they are used and I need some sort of official invoices for the stuff I get to go in the hotel expensives. Complicated right?
Truth be told, the hotel is work for, is using exclusively Ruckus network gear (switches, controllers, APs) and I am extremely satisfied with them. I dare say they are a lot better performers than Ubiquiti and Cisco that I have used in the past. Bad thing is that there is no official distributor of Ruckus in Greece, so its extremely hard to find them, except Ebay, not to mention they are expensive as hell. Wish I could just do exactly that though.
By the way, why did I thought exactly the "unicorn dust" thing when I saw you reccommending that shielded RJ11 cable, but I was shocked when i saw the reviews and how many people are actually saying it improved their DSL line speeds. I might actually buy one for my own house. Unfortunately, I cannot order from amazon from my country and I didnt find any sort of cabling like that on Ebay when I did a short search, or in my country's online stores. Still, very exciting!

Greece? Yasou!

@Trip has already given you the best you can possibly hope for, I can't add too much to what he has said.

I do know that 12 x 4 x 2 or about 96 clients on that network will not make anyone too happy unless they have a slice of half Gbps ISP speeds or higher (when they're all (or even half of them) on site and being used, of course).

The actual square footage doesn't matter too much, but 2,000 SqFt vs. 10,000 SqFt would be important to know.

I wouldn't recommend limiting the bandwidth for each user/device. Seems counterintuitive, but there is real science behind it.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/2019-wlpc-videos.56010/

What is your ISP speed right now at that location going to be? What will it be in the near future? The ER-X may not be capable enough if you actually want QoS to be used on this network at the higher ISP speeds you seem to need for this site.

 

[degrub]

From above (OP) "The only available ISP in that area can provide a 24MBPs ADSL internet line"

i would set up one or two rooms with wireless and run it like an internet cafe where people can get a slice of time to access.

Forget about wiring all the rooms if that is all that is available. a 100 Mbit/sec connection, then sure.

 

[L&LD]

From above (OP) "The only available ISP in that area can provide a 24MBPs ADSL internet line"

i would set up one or two rooms with wireless and run it like an internet cafe where people can get a slice of time to access.

Forget about wiring all the rooms if that is all that is available. a 100 Mbit/sec connection, then sure.

Good catch from post 7 above. I must have skipped/forgotten that when I did my drive-by reading before.

With only 24Mbps provided (with much less anticipated available over WiFi to most) more than a handful of users will easily overwhelm the ISP even streaming video or music on their phones/handhelds.

 

[Trip]

heartless: glad you found much of that post useful.

Regarding mesh, yes, that's the core concept. True enterprise mesh, however, is much more than just layer 3 repeating or layer-2 WDS. There is a good amount of extra intelligence baked into the controller and APs (and, for big-boy networks, switches as well) that give you a vastly increased feature set, to say nothing of more advanced radio tech and client handling itself. On the management side, you get stuff like AP auto-adoption, auto firmware updates, standardization and config loading. Overall, it's just a way more integrated and polished product, purpose-built for the role. That said, you might be able to get away with simple repeating, but I'm not sure you'll like the results by the time you're even 1 hop out from the root AP. I could be wrong, though. If you have the time to monkey around with it, perhaps give it a shot.

Re- the RJ11 cable: it seemed crazy to me at first, too... until I tried it. It wasn't so much a speed bump as much as reduced jitter and more persistent lock on the DSL signal, ie. smoother behavior and more reliable connections. I'd say in most scenarios it would give you a 5-15% improvement there, if not more.

Re- budgeting, I hear where you're coming from. You could certainly give a couple APs on the outside a go, although I still maintain it's likely they won't penetrate deep enough into the building. But let's say we try it anyways. You'll need to get backhaul and power to the pole areas. If there is power out there, then I suppose a point-to-point wireless link back to the storage room area would work for backhaul, but that would probably be at least $100 for a pair of bridges at minimum. In any case, assuming it's a short enough distance, copper wire is probably a better idea. If there's no power sources by the poles, you'll need to supply PoE from the building to them. If it's only 2 low-ish power APs, you can do that with a single burial-rated Cat6 with PoE+ from a 1-port injector, terminating to a 5-port PD PoE switch inside a weatherproof enclosure that splits data and PoE to the 2 APs, or, more preferably, run as many cables as you have APs inside a single burial conduit, with PoE on each supplied from a PoE switch or multi-port PoE injector in the storage closet. If the poles aren't already there, you'll of course need those, a way to anchor them into the ground properly, plus all the mounting hardware for the APs. Plus, you'll still need the ER-X as your router. For APs, I would stick to 2.4Ghz and maybe try 2 or 3 TP-Link CPE210's at $39 a pop.

Either way, I don't see you getting out of this for much less than about $200 in total hardware. Beyond that, I think we've exhausted basically all options, given the budget, the infrastructure and the DSL line.

 

[Trip]

I do know that 12 x 4 x 2 or about 96 clients on that network will not make anyone too happy unless they have a slice of half Gbps ISP speeds or higher (when they're all (or even half of them) on site and being used, of course).

I'm apt to agree with trying to squeeze 50+ peoples' traffic through a 24 Mb/s line. On the flip side, you'd be surprised how much general sluggishness can be alleviated with Smart Queue (HTB + fq_codel), assuming it's set properly.

Still, wait times will suffer once you get, say, 50-100Mb/s of would-be WAN traffic trying to clamor for room on that 24 Mb/s link -- regardless of how fancy the queuing and/or shaping policies are.

@heartl3ss21 - Assuming you can get this project off the ground, perhaps in the not too distant future you could upgrade the WAN to 2 DSL lines, and setup a 50-50 weighted or over-flow dual-WAN on the ER-X, or even better, have the ISP bring them in bonded for a single 48 Mb/s line (if that's even possible...?).

 

[coxhaus]

You are going to have to control connection through put per connection otherwise 1 person with a HD video is going to kill it for everybody. You need to punish only the person which abuses their connection. Tell them up front you will not be able to support internet video TV of any type.

 

[heartl3ss21]

Wow this place has awesome support. I am still an amateur in networking, but all this has me pumped to learn more and actually, since this DIY project is sponsored by the hotel itself, I am very curious to make this experiment and see how it turns out muahahaha.
I am actually considering upgrading my home's equipment now, since I want to gain more experience in the field, so I might start a new thread later on for suggestions.

@L&LD Yasou!
You don't think the Ubiquiti is a good router? I read excellent reviews for home/small business and apartment complex usage. Would you recommend something more advanced like Mikrotik? I know those are a lot better in capabilities, but i know they have require a high level of knowledge, which i currently do not have and it scares me. Any other recommendations in general?

@degrub That is actually a pretty good idea, which unfortunately did not meet the manager's approval, as there isn't a common room that can be used like that. We need every room to be used for people to live in it.

@Trip I just went to the building and took some new photos. You can see the rooms are not too big and the beds are actually next to the windows, so the wireless signal, should be just as good as in the balconies.

https://imgur.com/gfpWEFp
https://imgur.com/7RA8qYd
https://imgur.com/edRUtTh
https://imgur.com/xnAtmRA
https://imgur.com/4Ia2b9J
https://imgur.com/TSuY6HF
https://imgur.com/Xp5RYY0

I also talked to the management about the possibility of getting multiple ISP lines of 24Mbps, which they replied positively and its not completely off the table. This should give our project a lot more freedom. Having a second or mostly a third 24Mbps line should make things a lot more smooth, so the people will be able to watch YouTube and do video calls with their families abroad. But, how will I be able to somehow connect those 3 lines and split them between 2 Access points or 3 or the clients themselves? Is there a way to tell the APs or the router which client is used for which line? Is that even possible?

I think for now, im leaning more towards the solution of wiring the two poles on the corners on each side of the building and attach 2 EAP210 from TP-LINK, since they go for 30 bucks each, can withstand the beautiful weather of south Greece and transmit only in 2.4Ghz, since we are going for range and not speed.

What do you guys think?

 

[L&LD]

Going by the clues in the photos, the rooms are very small. I can't see up to 4 people living in each suite unless they're very good friends.

My best guess is that the coverage required only spans around about 60 to 70 feet (roughly 18 to 22 meters) from the front (or back) of the building. Putting the routers on each side would give a very poor performance for most of the tenants that would be in the middle suites through the concrete walls.

Ideally, I would put two outdoor AP's, one on each side of the building and at least 15 feet (about 5 meters) away from the building itself. These would be staggered on each side too, at approximately 1/3 the length of the rooms themselves (not the building as a whole). If you were also able to raise them closer to the center of the height of the building too, that would be extra bonus points.

Note that I am not counting the stairs in these measurements on either side.


.......X
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
..................X

In the crude diagram above, each set of 4 'T's represents the suites, the 'X' represents the best placement of the two outdoor AP's. (Please ignore the '.', they are just spacers so the 'X' lines up properly).

heartl3ss21, I didn't mean to suggest the Ubiquiti is a poor router. I mistakenly thought that you may have Gbps ISP service which it would not be ideally suited for.

With the stipulation that the interior is 'off limits' for our adding WiFi to this structure, I believe that the above will provide the best possible solution.

If/when the management approves multiple ISP lines to this property (and the ISP can do so), you will need a router that can load balance them. Ideally, the ISP will provide the proper equipment to do that so that your network will only 'see' a single WAN connection, but even consumer routers (most current Asus AC routers, for example) offer that ability.

Have a look at used Ruckus equipment on eBay and be sure to search the forums here for recent discussions by @Trip on their merits. They can be had quite inexpensively and are far superior to what you're considering now (and for very close to the same cost too).

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/r...iple-vlans-different-ssids.56434/#post-487615

Also, consider temporarily setting up a couple of AP's and see where the best position is for them before you go ahead and permanently wire and install them. Have a couple of long Ethernet cables and lots of extension cords and simply move them around while you have a few helpers inside the building with a device or two as you move the routers and/or AP's into different positions.

I think I have run out of ideas right now for you.

Others will join soon, I'm sure.