Hi, great forum with lots of good information here!
I'm in the process of trying to update an existing wireless setup for a fairly large building. It is an Inn with 6 floors and over 100 rooms. Currently the network consists of a (poor) DSL connection to the Internet using a Westhall modem, a Dell True Moble Router and 8 Netgear WG302 access points. The access points are all running on channel 11 and have a fair amount of overlap. They are also poorly placed in general.
Since this is a Inn, the sole purpose of the wireless network is to get to the Internet. It is also currently unsecured, although we may look into changing that as we go. I'm looking into better Internet service offerings to deal with that part of the problem but would like some feedback on my proposed hardware selections. I'm trying to use all commercial grade equipment. I'm also trying to stick with one equipment vendor to reduce the learning curve for others that might have to work with it.
Currently I'm proposing to add an additional 8 WG302 access points and to do a better job of spacing them, in addition to using channels 1, 6 and 11 to provide some seperation. I would be using a number of 10/100 switches to provide wired connections to the access points. I should have no problem running Ethernet cables in hallway ceilings but hope to be able to get power to those locations, if not then I might need to use PoE, but that would raise the cost of the required switches.
I would also like to replace the Dell router with a Netgear FVS336G, possibly using dual WAN ports to provide Internet connection. This is overkill as we have no use for the VPN and tunneling capabilities, but I did not see another commercial grade router offering (well at least from Netgear).
Probably a collection of FS116 and FS105 switches to connect it all together.
My rational behind these selections is as follows:
- G versus N, our Internet connection will be the limiting factor, N really does not buy us anything, not to mention we already have 8 G access points. Same for 100MB versus 1GB.
- Access Points versus Repeaters, better performance and I can deal with the wiring
- WG302's, already have 8 of them - making them all the same makes things easier and if we want to lock things down in the future these have sufficient capabilities.
- FVS336G - Just because I did not see a better choice and should provide plenty of performance.
Fairly big project for someone that does not have a network design background, however I am a software engineer who has spent the last 25 years designing an building networking equipment from two port orange cable bridges (remember those) to routers, to class 5 phone switches.
Any comments on this approach or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
I'm in the process of trying to update an existing wireless setup for a fairly large building. It is an Inn with 6 floors and over 100 rooms. Currently the network consists of a (poor) DSL connection to the Internet using a Westhall modem, a Dell True Moble Router and 8 Netgear WG302 access points. The access points are all running on channel 11 and have a fair amount of overlap. They are also poorly placed in general.
Since this is a Inn, the sole purpose of the wireless network is to get to the Internet. It is also currently unsecured, although we may look into changing that as we go. I'm looking into better Internet service offerings to deal with that part of the problem but would like some feedback on my proposed hardware selections. I'm trying to use all commercial grade equipment. I'm also trying to stick with one equipment vendor to reduce the learning curve for others that might have to work with it.
Currently I'm proposing to add an additional 8 WG302 access points and to do a better job of spacing them, in addition to using channels 1, 6 and 11 to provide some seperation. I would be using a number of 10/100 switches to provide wired connections to the access points. I should have no problem running Ethernet cables in hallway ceilings but hope to be able to get power to those locations, if not then I might need to use PoE, but that would raise the cost of the required switches.
I would also like to replace the Dell router with a Netgear FVS336G, possibly using dual WAN ports to provide Internet connection. This is overkill as we have no use for the VPN and tunneling capabilities, but I did not see another commercial grade router offering (well at least from Netgear).
Probably a collection of FS116 and FS105 switches to connect it all together.
My rational behind these selections is as follows:
- G versus N, our Internet connection will be the limiting factor, N really does not buy us anything, not to mention we already have 8 G access points. Same for 100MB versus 1GB.
- Access Points versus Repeaters, better performance and I can deal with the wiring
- WG302's, already have 8 of them - making them all the same makes things easier and if we want to lock things down in the future these have sufficient capabilities.
- FVS336G - Just because I did not see a better choice and should provide plenty of performance.
Fairly big project for someone that does not have a network design background, however I am a software engineer who has spent the last 25 years designing an building networking equipment from two port orange cable bridges (remember those) to routers, to class 5 phone switches.
Any comments on this approach or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks