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Need Advice for Wireless AP Setup

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vatsa13

New Around Here
So, I want to deploy new gigabit connection in my College. This network will completely isolated from existing primary network at our Institution. The main use of this network will be for live virtual classroom access, accessing out proprietary platform for assignment submission and other research purposes.

So we are having 150 classes and labs where nearly 3000 people will be using it simultaneously.
We are 3 floor having 50 classes each having total of 20,000 sq. feet per floor.

The limitation is that as this will be secondary connection, it needs to be extremely economical.

I am thinking of 1 AP per 2 classrooms and all connected to a per floor backbone which connects to my pf-sense or simplewall server (still confused in select from these two).

I initially thought I could order bcm4366 ( For future proofing) or bcm4360 and some other chips for processing and amplification and run openwrt or ddwrt as the network will be managed by server not routers. But this seems to be too far fetched and lot of work involved, ultimately even costing a lot.
Would like to know if solution is feasible. I can take help of our Electronic faculties.

Next I thought was mi router 3 on aliexpress for 25$ but it dosent even have gigabit wan port. Or any bulk buying option getting me same price.

So, all suggestions are welcomed.
 
Guessing you better define your expectation of "economical" to make sure any ideas fall in that range. Serving up 3000 people in a 20,000sqft area with high-speed (100Mbps+) WiFi is not going to be an easy task on a DIY basis. That kind of radio and client density with those speeds present all kinds of challenges....I'm sure they can be worked through, just not sure if any regular DIY "economical" solution is going to do it well.

Is the Firewall going to handle all traffic? Or just Internet? Trying to understand the traffic flows of the data flowing over the WiFi. If you are pushing for gigabit WiFi, and all data must flow through the FW, how big is your FW? Very curious to understand your plans for scaling if you have 3000 simultaneous users hitting the systems.
 

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