What are some good rules of thumb when designing a WiFi hotspot network for large outdoor areas?

Assuming you have poles that are placed throughout the park where the APs can be placed, how many APs, assuming something like the Mikrotik wAPs, would you need for a given area?

For example, assuming a park that is 20 acres (80,000 square meters) and can accommodate about 200 RVs at max capacity. What's the farthest an RV should be from an AP to have a good experience? We'll assume the RVs are fiberglass and not made out of metal. How many APs would it take to furnish the entire park?

Honestly there's a lot of variable here get a consultant that they do this thing for a living, there's no single right answer for your question. If you decided to do this on your own please consider this https://www.ekahau.com/ this will greatly help you in designing your wifi network not cheap but it's worth it

If you follow MikriTik (MT) forum topics carefully you will discover experienced professional members saying MT WiFi

• can be buggy between RouterOS releases with occasional regressions,
• can be unstable and under performs in high client density environments.

Some go so far as saying they don't use MT WiFi for big or high traffic deployments. Suggested starting points:

• viewtopic.php?t=193050
• viewtopic.php?t=193135
• viewtopic.php?t=193450

I would start by looking at the map of the RV-park and where the RV's are going to be stationed/clustered and work from there.
Remember Wifi is 2-way, so the client also needs to communicate back. Some endpoint have better antenna's than others etc.
But outdoor there is a lot of things to consider that can attenuate signal levels even more. Difficult to put some distances on it.

Our Wifi guys also use Ekahau Pro to pre-design/model stuff. Then they implement and perform wireless site-survey and after that start tuning more.

So depending on the requirements, its not just hanging up some AP's
Don't think you have to fear a "high-density" environment on a RV-park in the outdoor, that is more typical for eg. football stadium or large venues where effectively 2-3 people per m² with a device.
Unless you have some place where all guest might gather for leisure etc.

Yes, take into account that most client devices ( phones etc ) have "crap" internal antennas( pretty deaf on the RX ) and low TX power.
Understanding that, will help you choose a better setup, eg. more smaller units mixed around the area( same ssid/passwords , but different channels ) to help with noise from other units( so you get the best signal to noise ratio, as opposed to just signal level( which is nice but if you only have 6dB of headroom its going to be buggy and slow )).

Mikrotik is great in high density, I run a campus area, but I also run a lot of units ( cAP XL's, and just got some cAP AX's in I need to set up a seperate capsman for ax too ). I do use capsman, vlans(using datapath), multiple virtual ssids..

Wired as much as possible.
MT makes great wired units for the back end,,,,,
The only MT wifi I would recommend is the pt to pt using 60HZ products to carry signal to spots where
you cannot connect directly via wire, and then separate radios for local 2 and 5ghz.

So basically base station office, may have local APs 2/5ghz -- 60hz connections to strategic locations where 2/5ghz can be distributed by local APs.
Need line of sight for all connections and a bubble around that line of sight.......

No expert here just trying to be practical........

Mikrotik is great in high density,

You lost me right there.

Gotsprings, I think he meant as insulation piled on top of each other.......... Not recommended for wall insulation though

Some go so far as saying they don't use MT WiFi for big or high traffic deployments. Suggested starting points:

I can relate to this... MT Wi-Fi seems it's weakest point.

I running capsman, with about 106 radio's at the moment( mix of 2.4 + 5.8 GHz, multi-channel ), in my campus environment and about to add AX gear too( yes it sux I have to add a new controller just for those too ).
No problem with high density either( I'm comfortably doing ~7+ users per 10m2 of floor space in my heavy use areas on average notablty using cAP ac + cAP XL's, but I do run a lot on units in high use areas( diff channel per ap) ). I started the install back in 2012 with about 12 radios, so I have had years to tweak configs etc, and I use vlan capsman-datapathing + virtual ssid's too, to each AP, no bandwidth load on capsman itself.

But as for a caravan park, wire users up if you can, else choose gear suited for deployment such as narrow beam gear to capture known strip's of users/caravan parking.

7 users in 32x32 feet. For reference that about 1 side of a volleyball court.

First off ACv1 with 30 or so clients ain't pretty.
Next up... I assume you have pretty good "control" over a campus airspace.

In my world... the company is on the 3rd Floor in Washington DC.
Its only about 4K sq feet. And when I am standing in the middle of the office when it is down to metal studs... I can pick up 60 other Wireless Access Points.

If I put Mikrotik here... the 2.4 is gonna lock up pretty regularly and stop accepting clinets. And the 5GHZ radio is going to act like a ACv1 radio without MU-MIMO.

The bitching is gonna start they day they move in...

how do I know... tried dozens of times. Never worked out. Spent months trying to fix it. Worked with support on it when they were willing. They finally said that they reproduced the problem and will get back to me when they have a fix. That was years ago. And... there are posts in this forum SINCE that state... "Wrong Tool For The Job." that were posted my "The MAN himself."

Swallowed my pride and went back to our other WiFi vendor. Problems ALL vanished.

Also... Mikrotik doesn't have an outdoor AX radio at this point.

If I put Mikrotik here... the 2.4 is gonna lock up pretty regularly and stop accepting clinets. And the 5GHZ radio is going to act like a ACv1 radio without MU-MIMO.

I can relate to this. As I said above, the Wi-Fi seems the weakest point which is a shame. I've not had a definitive answer to whether RouterOS v7 is significantly better. Is the core problem hardware, software or the kernel drivers?

If I put Mikrotik here... the 2.4 is gonna lock up pretty regularly and stop accepting clinets. And the 5GHZ radio is going to act like a ACv1 radio without MU-MIMO.

I can relate to this. As I said above, the Wi-Fi seems the weakest point which is a shame. I've not had a definitive answer to whether RouterOS v7 is significantly better. Is the core problem hardware, software or the kernel drivers?

6 or 7 doesn't make a difference. The New WAVE2 Driver on New HARDWARE... requires starting all over on the vetting.

No outdoor WAPs... no 2.5 GHZ ports... No 4x4 antennas... No 6Ghz radios.
No interest in relearning caps-map all over again.