Good morning, I'm working on a project to provide a wireless network at 2.4 GHz indoor to give Internet access to mobile devices (phones, PDA, Iphone, laptops, etc ...).

The area to cover is a two story building approximately 30,000 meters. per plant, with local, open areas for recreation, etc ... In principle areas in which it wants to offer wireless internet are so open and building materials do not create too much attenuation of the signal. With a software simulation of radiation 32mW (2.4GHz) has presented us with satisfactory coverage results in all areas to cover and more .........

The more complex the issue is this: The majority of the locations of the AP do not have cable and the client wants is wireless connectivity and avoid, if possible, install wire to these points. The number of concurrently connected clients can be up to 400 at peak times and this is something to bear in mind not to create bottlenecks in the teams "core" giving access to the wired network.

The number of AP is a total of 16 to cover the two plants. Assuming about 40 users per AP max. (802.11n) the number of concurrent users can be up to 640.

Therefore, a solution can be:

1) Fit a mesh network-MESH with MikroTik equipment and 2 cards from Ubiquiti SR71-A. The idea is to create the mesh connectivity in 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz distribution, ie each AP uplink and distributes it to customers. In this solution, what I fear is that the roaming will not be transparent because customers need time to move from one AP to another (you can force these changes with limits on the signal intensity in the acl clients)
The MikroTik proprietary protocol HWMP seems interesting but I have not seen solutions not working and I've ridden so no I'm not 100% sure that would be stable.

2) Unifi, with Unifi my experience is positive but would require wiring the AP mostly. Besides the distribution of the uplink equipment unwired AP might not be strong RSSI values ​​and drop the modulation and hence the speed with which these two AP function. Appears again roaming the case may be, depending on client cards, 1s. This streaming www or VoIP is negligible but for something more serious. The controller is intuitive and simple (I like this solution).
3) Aruba, could also opt for these teams that I could see it working and make it great. Controller have a very friendly and highly configurable.

The client will provide gatuita internet for on-site with a bandwidth of 100Mbps, if you read that right, 100Mbps fiber optics. That is why in order to take advantage of this bandwidth, and users feel the speed on their devices should go to a solution in which access points do not create bottlenecks.

If I had to wire the AP, what solutions can be better: mikrotik + SR71-A, Unifi Outdoor UAP, Aruba? Mikrotik has gigabit ports and this is very important, Unifi Pro is not yet available ......

I hope it has not been very heavy reading, thanks for the interest. If you have mounted similar networks can send me an email to ubunet@ubunet.es

Greetings.

Hi,

I was wondering what you chose for your project. Actually, I'm curious if you had gone with Mikrotik because I have I big area that I need to cover with unwired APs so I need to go for a mesh network, but like you, I haven't seen any implementation of HWMP+. I'll run some tests of course if I go with that, but I'm still in the early stages of planning.

Thanks

Interesting , could you advance in your proyect ? wich tecnology did you chose finaly ?

Regards

For implementation at that level. With that many users being online at one time, please consider setting proper cost expectations and go with ruckus wireless equipment. Unifi is not a bad idea but you will need mikrotik routers to keep from bridging and switching too much. Use a Powerful server for the Unifi software. Again I strongly suggest a ruckus deployment to handle that much traffic in such a relatively small area.

Remember that you have to have at least one Unifi downlink for every four Unifi uplinks so you will need to run injection to fully 20-25% of your devices. It's not a real mesh.