First I want to say that as I have been reading for hours in these forums how much I appreciate the quality of the responses. I have very little networking experience, I've helped with installation (run miles of wire) but not on the design or maintenance of a network.
So now down to business. I am in the process of getting rid of our horrid telephone company provided internet. Normal speeds of less than 1 mbps. In doing this we are going with a wireless line of sight provider which will max out at 20 mbps. (Very rural community but fiber is coming!) Currently we have been using the provided horrid little box provided by the telephone folks and one repeater. This has been enough to get wifi to about 3/4 of our building. We also are having to massively limit our users as the current equipment becomes overwhelmed very easily.
So I've already told you my experience is limited but I'm also at a point money is even more limited. I would love to hire, watch and learn... that simply is not an option this time. So I've been researching and Open Mesh has caught my attention specifically their A40 and A60 APs. I am not apposed to looking at other companies, however the videos I have watched seem fairly easy to set up and maintain and that is probably the number one reason they have my attention. There are times we have easily 25 or more people over who would like to access our wifi (3g and 4g are not always reliable here) and we believe we are likely to push toward the 50 to 75 mark in the future. Most of their use is homework research, google docs, social media or other light usage. The layout of our building is actually two buildings connected by short hallway. We also have an area outside where we occasionally use to entertain. Buildings are each approximately 100'x40' one stone the other metal and are joined by a very short hall way. Stone building minimal interior walls (very open concept), metal building two story with basketball court taking up the majority of the square footage. The outdoor area was once a parking area of approximately 200'x300' no trees or large obstacles...
Here is what I had come up with but would rather a group of folks like yourselves blast it away than for me to mess this up.
One A40 or A60 in each of the primary buildings and one OM2P-HS (chosen over the none high speed due to the PoE being compliant power) for the outside area. I was looking at tying these three via cat5 to a TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit PoE Easy Smart Managed Switch with 55W 4-PoE Ports (TL-SG108PE). Cat5 runs would each be no more than 150'
I don't really understand the 2x2 or 3x3 difference between the A40 and A60 models, is it worth the extra $ to go A60? If the A40 was a reasonable choice, I would probably just go with 3 of those and skip the om2p hs. At the same time I am not sold on this company, the videos I have watched make me believe I will be able to manage the network and have a seamless network, but what am I missing, is there a better option? I don't want to just make our wifi free for everyone, but setting up both a Private and Guest with password options. From what I understand this is done fairly easily with the cloud interface and even allocating the amount of bandwidth each side would be allowed to use? However I have read many who have posted against cloud interfaces but I have not found one who explains why. We really do have fiber coming maybe being completed as soon as this spring and though we will only have 20mbps now, I'm confident we will have far greater speeds soon, so am I limiting my future in anyway with this equipment. And one more question... what am I missing?
Thank you...
So now down to business. I am in the process of getting rid of our horrid telephone company provided internet. Normal speeds of less than 1 mbps. In doing this we are going with a wireless line of sight provider which will max out at 20 mbps. (Very rural community but fiber is coming!) Currently we have been using the provided horrid little box provided by the telephone folks and one repeater. This has been enough to get wifi to about 3/4 of our building. We also are having to massively limit our users as the current equipment becomes overwhelmed very easily.
So I've already told you my experience is limited but I'm also at a point money is even more limited. I would love to hire, watch and learn... that simply is not an option this time. So I've been researching and Open Mesh has caught my attention specifically their A40 and A60 APs. I am not apposed to looking at other companies, however the videos I have watched seem fairly easy to set up and maintain and that is probably the number one reason they have my attention. There are times we have easily 25 or more people over who would like to access our wifi (3g and 4g are not always reliable here) and we believe we are likely to push toward the 50 to 75 mark in the future. Most of their use is homework research, google docs, social media or other light usage. The layout of our building is actually two buildings connected by short hallway. We also have an area outside where we occasionally use to entertain. Buildings are each approximately 100'x40' one stone the other metal and are joined by a very short hall way. Stone building minimal interior walls (very open concept), metal building two story with basketball court taking up the majority of the square footage. The outdoor area was once a parking area of approximately 200'x300' no trees or large obstacles...
Here is what I had come up with but would rather a group of folks like yourselves blast it away than for me to mess this up.
One A40 or A60 in each of the primary buildings and one OM2P-HS (chosen over the none high speed due to the PoE being compliant power) for the outside area. I was looking at tying these three via cat5 to a TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit PoE Easy Smart Managed Switch with 55W 4-PoE Ports (TL-SG108PE). Cat5 runs would each be no more than 150'
I don't really understand the 2x2 or 3x3 difference between the A40 and A60 models, is it worth the extra $ to go A60? If the A40 was a reasonable choice, I would probably just go with 3 of those and skip the om2p hs. At the same time I am not sold on this company, the videos I have watched make me believe I will be able to manage the network and have a seamless network, but what am I missing, is there a better option? I don't want to just make our wifi free for everyone, but setting up both a Private and Guest with password options. From what I understand this is done fairly easily with the cloud interface and even allocating the amount of bandwidth each side would be allowed to use? However I have read many who have posted against cloud interfaces but I have not found one who explains why. We really do have fiber coming maybe being completed as soon as this spring and though we will only have 20mbps now, I'm confident we will have far greater speeds soon, so am I limiting my future in anyway with this equipment. And one more question... what am I missing?
Thank you...
