Site Survey help please

[LoboX]

Sup all, i have a quick question, im doing a site survey on a small hotel 4 floors 16 rooms, the previous guy who installed the wireless there used Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater on the 4 floor he had the AP and only that AP giving internet to the 4 rooms on top, then he had in the 3rd floor the same AP in one of the rooms acting like a repeater and using that repeater to give WiFi to that room and the room on front, so he had per floor 6 repeaters in each floor 2 repeater in different rooms, i was testing everything and it was horrible the speed.

Now i want to fix that so my question is, is it better to have per floor a wired AP better than then Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater. I am just trying to see what would be the best way to have wifi on all rooms, any tips would be great.

Thank you

 

[stevech]

WiFi Repeaters, bad. Also called range extender.
You can't get cat5 wires in the attic/walls?

There are motel/hotel products that utilize unused pairs in the phone wiring.

 

[jimasek]

Wired installation will be very good solution in big house. On each floor you have to install access points and cables to main router with good parameters (bandwitch managment or QoS).

 

[LoboX]

Yeah i will see if i can wire every floor so there's a AP in each floor, i will let u guys know the outcome, i bought a WI-Spy to see if i have any interference and noise, have you guys used NetSpot?? for OS X it seems I'm able to view noise too interesting.

 

[stevech]

I don't think WiFi off-air survey tool are worthwhile...
because existence of and busyness of nearby WiFi is so time/day/hour/seasonaly variable. There really aren't trends beyond the evening rush hour.

The best WiFi tool is uncommon... it spends time measuring, automatically, and reports how busy each channel is. Average for hours/days to draw a conclusion. Tools that do this aren't free/inexpensive, though it's easy to do with tools. Often, tools simply tally-up SSIDs heard without averaging over time to tell you "channel utilization 0-100%" versus hour of day.

Besides an over-active video-streaming WiFi neighbor (just change channels +/- 3 to avoid that) - 2.4GHz analog video baby monitors are a big interferer.. they don't do listen-before-transmit as 802.11 requires. They just blast an analog video signal over 6MHz or so. Good news is that each of the 3 WiFi channels (1, 6, 11) in 2.4GHz is 22 MHz wide, so 6MHz video will wipe out just one channel, maybe two if it's in between two WiFi 22MHz chunks. Unfortunately, consumer WiFi doesn't do automatic frequency (channel) reselection to mitigate persistent interference from non-WiFi, or move to avoid a WiFi hog.

 

[sfx2000]

Sup all, i have a quick question, im doing a site survey on a small hotel 4 floors 16 rooms, the previous guy who installed the wireless there used Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater on the 4 floor he had the AP and only that AP giving internet to the 4 rooms on top, then he had in the 3rd floor the same AP in one of the rooms acting like a repeater and using that repeater to give WiFi to that room and the room on front, so he had per floor 6 repeaters in each floor 2 repeater in different rooms, i was testing everything and it was horrible the speed.

Now i want to fix that so my question is, is it better to have per floor a wired AP better than then Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater. I am just trying to see what would be the best way to have wifi on all rooms, any tips would be great.

Thank you

Yes - depends on the LoS/QoS for subs in each room, plus the lobby on the ground floor...

Recommendations - AP on each floor, Ch 1, 7, 4, 11 - co channel interference is less in this plan - on the ingress, have a dedicated/managed router - use common SSID, and I would recommend WPA/WPA2 with a common passphrase rather than open access. Depending on the controller, you can also add RADIUS authentication on a portal page, but this gets a bit more complicated unless you go vertical with an enterprise solution.

Use GIGe as a back haul - I'm assuming with 4 floors, there's an elevator shaft, so put the AP's in the middle of the floors.

Limit the subs to 500 Kbs per account with QoS - more than enough for email, facebook, and netflix, and still keep enough bandwidth for all.

sfx

 

[LoboX]

Thank you really for all the tips, i will keep you guys posted on the outcome.

sfx2000 you said "AP on each floor, Ch 1, 7, 4, 11" regarding the channels i thought it was best to only use ch 1, 6, 11, do i get the same speed using different channels?

Sorry for the question, is that is the only thing i have read about and seen use channel 1, 6, 11.

Thanks for the tips and help.

 

[stevech]

1, 6 an 11 are the only non-overlapping channels (in the US). Ideally, no one would use other than those channels. But not.

The only issue with speed is choosing a channel not within 3 of a neighbor that is very active. This is hard to determine (channel utilization) with free software tools. One indicator is to open a windows cmd windo and do
ping -t 192.168.1.1 (or whatever your LAN gateway is), via a WiFi device. Watch this run in the evening hours when people tend to stream video.

If times grow a LOT in the busy hour, you might try changing to a different channel.

 

[Mark Uhde]

Sup all, i have a quick question, im doing a site survey on a small hotel 4 floors 16 rooms, the previous guy who installed the wireless there used Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater on the 4 floor he had the AP and only that AP giving internet to the 4 rooms on top, then he had in the 3rd floor the same AP in one of the rooms acting like a repeater and using that repeater to give WiFi to that room and the room on front, so he had per floor 6 repeaters in each floor 2 repeater in different rooms, i was testing everything and it was horrible the speed.

Now i want to fix that so my question is, is it better to have per floor a wired AP better than then Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater. I am just trying to see what would be the best way to have wifi on all rooms, any tips would be great.

Thank you

Repeaters suck but those AP's are okay. They're hard limited at 45 clients which is reasonable, and I've got a couple in service. I'd keep those AP's and just get wired Ethernet to them. Just run a PoE switch to all of them. They're 802.3af PoE and can be installed really nicely. Setup a 1-6-11 or 1-5-9-13 channel plan, 20 MHz mode, all the same SSID and security settings, and call it good. They're fine AP's and will work quite well, just need installed properly and not used as repeaters

To answer sfx's comment - the 1-4-7-11 channel plan is silly. Common, but silly. The only channel that won't face fairly substantial packet loss under heavy load in that plan is 11. The others overlap by 25% which is WORSE than overlapping completely (where CSMA/CD can prevent conflict). Poor channel 4 is the worst in that plan - 25% overlap on EACH SIDE meaning under heavy load HALF of packets will theoretically need retransmitted. At least 1-4-8-11 spreads the hurt evenly. But both are bad plans.

GigE is also silly with AP's that both don't support it and aren't fast enough. Get a cheap 10/100 PoE switch to power and get network to everything

To answer lobo's question - I use NetSpot and have to pro version. It's a great tool and yes, it kinda measures noise - but not in a meaningful way. It tells you the noise reported by the Mac's Wi-Fi card at the time of the scan. This is only meaningful at the instant the scan is performed and is not an indication of actual average noise on the channel. The NetSpot guys sell it like it's a meaningful noise measurement, but it's not. Still, for $100 it is a VERY nice software package.

 

[LoboX]

Thanks for the replies guys, really helpful, i bought and i have been testing the UniFi AP the normal one and the LR one and let me tell you is pretty cool, but i am having a problem with the site survey cause when i put the AP in the middle of the hallway i get internet access to all 4 rooms in one floor, but the further you go into the room, yo lose signal and speed, i was checking with inSSIDer.

I setup the AP to channel 1 using 802.11n and 20mhz when i was testing with inSSIDer in each room there are a lot more AP on the area from different places i even saw a overlapping channel sometimes was on channel 3, well i am still checking how i can make the entire room WiFi friendly i was thinking 1 AP in each room but no, is going to cost more money to the client so no, I'm still checking some options i was reading also about the "Ripple Effect" but only using the 802.11g is that happens too with 802.11n?

What PoE switch you guys recommend? i would like to have a few in mind, to buy and test and learn.

 

[Mark Uhde]

Thanks for the replies guys, really helpful, i bought and i have been testing the UniFi AP the normal one and the LR one and let me tell you is pretty cool, but i am having a problem with the site survey cause when i put the AP in the middle of the hallway i get internet access to all 4 rooms in one floor, but the further you go into the room, yo lose signal and speed, i was checking with inSSIDer.

I setup the AP to channel 1 using 802.11n and 20mhz when i was testing with inSSIDer in each room there are a lot more AP on the area from different places i even saw a overlapping channel sometimes was on channel 3, well i am still checking how i can make the entire room WiFi friendly i was thinking 1 AP in each room but no, is going to cost more money to the client so no, I'm still checking some options i was reading also about the "Ripple Effect" but only using the 802.11g is that happens too with 802.11n?

What PoE switch you guys recommend? i would like to have a few in mind, to buy and test and learn.

The overlapping channel is an issue depending on the SNR:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2055709

That is to say if it's distant and it's signal is at least 29dB below the signal from your AP you're fine.

As for ripple effect, it can mean anything. It's when one thing causes you to need to upgrade others - what's the context?

 

[LoboX]

Sup all i have been testing, the site survey with a UniFi AP-LR (UAP-LR)

It says that the range can be up to 600ft, i know thats not accurate, but is it possible to not get enough Signal inside the rooms, in the living room is fine, but when i go into the room the signal drops a lot, hmm so weird, trying to see what i can do cause i really want to have wifi in the entire room, and not just only in the living room.