Equipment to light up 1920's brick church?

[miltonq]

Looking to light up a church with wifi. It's a brick church, very large rooms, thick walls between them. I am familiar with home wifi equipment, but what type of devices should I be looking at to light up a job like this?
Any advise/equipment suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

 

[thiggins]

How big are the rooms? How many? What speeds are you looking for? What will the network be used for?

 

[miltonq]

3 primary rooms. I will get you the room size information. They are rather large, think the size of basketball court, maybe slightly smaller. I will get specifics though. One concern I have is the thickness of the walls though.
As for usage, it would be for filesharing among computers throughout the church, as well as for some streaming video from CC satelite.
As for speed, would like to be able to stream video (reasonably, not talking action packed streaming), and reasonably be able to share small files (<10mb files).
Thank you for your help! Will get back to you with room sizes as soon as I get confirmation.

 

[miltonq]

Sorry for the delay. Here are the dimensions.
Note: There is a hallway separating the office/youth from the sanctuary, so it needs to go through 2 rows for that.
There are some small rooms off of these locations, but these are by far the most of the church...
Thanks again!

Approximations:
Gym: 63'W x 105'L
Sanctuary: 60'W x 90'L
Office/Youth: 40'W x 90'L

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the info. How many simultaneous users will there be?

 

[miltonq]

Not many. Maybe 5 at any given time? (total users more, but simultanious, no more than 5 max).

 

[thiggins]

Thanks. You could start with off-the-shelf wireless routers, convert them to APs and connect them via Ethernet. You might want two APs for the larger rooms, but one, centrally placed might do.

If you can't connect the APs via Ethernet, you might look at a mesh solution like Open-Mesh. The hardware is relatively inexpensive. And if you want / need other hardware options, the free firmware can be flashed on something like the EnGenius EAP-3660, a smoke-detector style ceiling mount AP.

If you have only one hop, (one AP to AP wireless connection before you get to Ethernet) you could probably expect throughput in the single Mbps range.

 

[miltonq]

Thanks!
So yes, I only have one place, in the corner of the building, where I can get hard-wired. So I would need a single router there it sounds like, any suggestion on a router that would give me the greatest distance while maintaining speed from that point?
Once that runs out of distance, it sounds like those Engenius smoke detector style would be fantastic! How well does that Open-Mesh work, what sort of distance do you think I could get out of them, and do you think they could carry basic video stream?
Great info, thank you!

 

[miltonq]

Wait... sorry for the multiple question posts back to back, but...
I have been reading on these Engenius devices. Sounds like I don't even need a router then? They act as a router also? So I would just plug one into an ethernet connection, then plug in a bunch more around the church and it would light up the rest of them (after configuration/security being added of course)? It sounds too easy...

 

[thiggins]

You need a router for Internet connection, yes. The EnGenius EAP-3660's are not routers, just APs. They also support WDS bridging/repeating without flashing with Open-Mesh. WDS would be a bit more complicated to set up, but would provide similar throughput to a mesh setup.

Using 802.11g gear, you should expect throughput in the low single digit Mbps (1-5 Mbps). Might be ok for a low bandwidth video stream like YouTube or other Internet video, but hard to tell.

If you can't run Ethernet to any of the APs, then the router you choose will also need to support WDS. But then it can't be used with the mesh APs.

It's bad that your Ethernet location is in one corner of the building. That means that the far-end room will have the worst throughput because wirelessly connecting it will require multiple "hops". (Each wireless AP that a signal has to go through before it hits a wire is a "hop". Each hop costs you > 50% of bandwidth because the radio has to receive, then retransmit.

Best case throughput with strongest signal for 11g will give you ~ 20 Mbps throughput. But more typical signal strengths will start you off with more like
10 Mbps. You can do the math from there to figure out the throughput you'll get at the far end.

Best to try to get your wired connection to the central room if at all possible.
I know it's a stone church, but how about crawl space, heating ducts?

 

[miltonq]

I could probably get the line more centrally located by running a really long Ethernet cable in the basement. I'm not great at that, but I could probably pull it off.
Sounds like that throughput might not be good though for CCTV/Setelite sessions and the like. :-(
How do companies with big facilities get such good throughput? Do they have wired access points everywhere? No good wireless options to keep throughput up for long hauls?
Darn... this doesn't sound like it will work out.
So I know, what would you recommend for the longest range router? I am likely going to need to at least start there...

 

[thiggins]

Running the Ethernet cable will definitely pay off in higher throughput and more reliable operation.

Yes, large facilities connect APs via Ethernet if they want decent bandwidth. Some may use mesh to extend coverage for basic email and browsing. But generally it's Ethernet.

For good range look at the Buffalo HP models and the high power EnGeniuses.

 

[miltonq]

Thank you for all of your help!

 

[miltonq]

One final question.
Do you think the Buffalo HPG300 or the EnGenius ESR9850 would do better than the Netgear WNDR3700 in my situation?

 

[thiggins]

One final question.
Do you think the Buffalo HPG300 or the EnGenius ESR9850 would do better than the Netgear WNDR3700 in my situation?

The Buffalo and NETGEAR are closer in performance. Use the Wireless Charts Performance Table and decide for yourself.