Outdoor AP for a hotel at the seaside

[svt11]

Hi, our company has property at the seaside with about 9 houses with 3 floors each and a central big pool. They have very strong concrete walls. It's about 2000-3000 sq.m. I want to cover it all using 1-2 AP like for example ENH210EXT. I don't know if they're reliable enough. Thank you.

 

[thiggins]

Thick concrete walls kill Wi-Fi signals. It is unlikely your plan will provide a reliable signal inside the houses.

 

[azazel1024]

No.

There is zero chance it'll work.

My property is around 4100m-sq. I can tell you my outdoor AP provides almost zero coverage (on 2.4GHz!) in the front of my property after traveling through my house (especially if I move away from my house a distance), and I have no thick concrete walls to contend with. It covers my backyard great and if I wanted to disable my indoor APs, it would provide fair to poor coverage of the inside of my house.

You really need one AP per residence plus probably one for the pool area. Possibly more than one AP per residence since you mentioned 3 floors and I assume they are concrete floors.

You can realistically cover around 1 acre with a single outdoor access point (about 4,000m-sq) if it is open space. You cannot hope to do anything like that and provide coverage in structures that have concrete walls, especially concrete walls, up 3 stories and possibly behind another structure if you are looking at line of site from the AP.

As I said, plan on one AP per residence (OR MORE) and one for the outdoor pool area. If you want it seameless you can have them all on the same SSID and then spread the channels around so there is low overlap.

Also since I assume you are talking 9 residences of that size they are probably not single family vacation dwellings, so if they are multi-tenant structures you are probably going to want a resonably robust router to handle DHCP for it all as I am guessing that is going to be upwards of 40-50 client devices at a time during busy times. You are also going to need to wire this all together. Too many structures in too close a proximity to use wireless bridges to connect the access points together.

 

[stevech]

Re Security: Do you understand networking enough to plan and implement VLANs to isolate guests from each other and from your business computers? Or do you have two internet service provider connections?

 

[svt11]

Yes, I do have CCNA. These new series - Neutron - EWS310AP for indoor 610AP - for outdoor, are they worth money and will they be better in coverage? And BTW how durable they will be?

 

[svt11]

Ekhm, sorry for the stupid question but at this complex at the sea there are many lightning strikes, one router falled down before 2 weeks, how can I protect this device for example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833168093
Thank you.

 

[stevech]

Ekhm, sorry for the stupid question but at this complex at the sea there are many lightning strikes, one router falled down before 2 weeks, how can I protect this device for example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833168093
Thank you.

I don't think you can do a lot about lightning.. I had a project with lightning spark gaps on the RF antennas, and filters on the cat5. Lightning hit nearby, not even a direct hit. Enough current got induced in the cat5 that it broke the ethernet NIC. Maybe if the cat5e had been in well grounded STEEL conduit.

But of course, do proper grounding of the AP's enclosure - short-direct to ground rod with proper gauge wire.

If you backup AP configs well, and are disciplined, it's probably cheaper to forgo costly lightning protections like conduit. Just use spare APs that can be quickly configured via a saved config upload.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We've enjoyed a lot of success with Ubiquiti's wireless hardware, including some pretty good outdoor projects.

Probably want a centrally managed wireless setup with 4 maybe 6 APs..depending on the physical layout.

Surge protection is easy, plenty of ethernet surge protectors out there, as well as power. Proper installation, grounding, will be required.

 

[azazel1024]

We've enjoyed a lot of success with Ubiquiti's wireless hardware, including some pretty good outdoor projects.

Probably want a centrally managed wireless setup with 4 maybe 6 APs..depending on the physical layout.

Surge protection is easy, plenty of ethernet surge protectors out there, as well as power. Proper installation, grounding, will be required.

Should still expect with any close strikes to lose something and any direct strikes to possibly loss multiple parts of the network. Surge protection on ethernet and on powerlines only works so well. Even with proper installation and grounding. The best you can do is make the installation lightning resistant, there is no such thing as lightning proof.

One thing that can help is installing lightning rods and proper grounding for the rods on surrounding buildings to increase the likelihood that any nearby strikes would be directed to the rods and down through the ground strapping to Earth. Induced current from a nearby strike can still kill equipment even if it doesn't ground through.

 

[svt11]

Thank you, but can I ask you what's the difference if I have EWS320AP and EAP600? EWS320AP has 6 antennas. Will I have better coverage? Thank you.

 

[stevech]

Thank you, but can I ask you what's the difference if I have EWS320AP and EAP600? EWS320AP has 6 antennas. Will I have better coverage? Thank you.

Vs. those models. . . The original posting was asking about OUTDOOR APs.
Don't buy an indoor one and put it outdoors. Even if it's under a shelter. Wind-blow rain, etc.

General advise: don't over-buy. Don't need 11ac's cost.

 

[fistv]

There is outdoor and there is OUTDOOR in SALT air. You are going to want those AP's enclosed, as a former submarine radioman and ET I've seen what happens to electronics exposed to that kind of environment, oh and lets not forget the sand, never forget the sand, you can be three stories up and the sand will still find the smallest holes and unprotected vents. You will need an enclosure that is RF transparent or that you can put external antennas on. Interesting project though, physical layout will have some weight here as well, hard cabling with copper or fiber to each residence back to a L3 switch so you can vlan each one, sounds interesting though. Salt air however is a very hostile environment so do your wiring closets with that in mind.

 

[stevech]

yeah. salt spray will kill all but good stainless steel in a few months/weeks.

Some of these enclosures avoid steel/aluminum screws/brackets. There are also a few pricey outdoor APs for boat harbors/yacht clubs.

Stick it in PVC (or a plastic container) along with good sized bag of desiccant - probably OK. With preventative maintenance every few months. Beware hermetically sealing and no way for heat to escape.

 

[azazel1024]

Plastic, stainless steel and titanium or short service life are the 4 options for salt water environments (within about 2 miles of the coast. The closer the worst). I have some very limited experience with a couple of marine (small sail boats) and costal installs. I've used outdoor rated plastic enclosures with a few minor modifications on each one. Direct bury rated flood cat5e in white sheathing and figure replacement will have to happen eventually on cable and AP. POE to AP.