MikroTik

We have been asked to deploy a network for a new 4-star hotel with 170 guest rooms. All rooms must have good wifi coverage, wired ethernet for Internet, as well as wired ethernet for a separate IPTV VLAN.
The suggestion is to place a RB951-2n in each room, use one port for uplink, one port for Internet vlan, one port for IPTV vlan and wlan for Internet vlan. All wlan interfaces would be owned by a central CAPsMAN, using a single SSID for all rooms. That waisall guests can roam freely within the facility. There would also be a few CAPs in public areas where there is no guest room with RB951-2n within reach.

Does anyone have any advise built on previous experience, that can be useful before a final architecture decision is made..?

I don't have such experience at all, but I don't like the RB951-2n, I would go for RB951Ui-2HnD. You might have a look at cAP2n as well.

cAP or mAP would look better in the hotel environment, in my opinion

Thanks for your suggestions!

Cacti99 - The reason for initially not choosing RB951Ui-2HnD was that it is bigger, costs more and also has an unnecessary powerful 1000mA radio. The small 50mA in RB951-2n seemed more suitable for a small hotel room, at least on paper.. Is there any particular reason to avoid RB951-2n anyway?

Normis - cAP only has one ethernet port, and mAP only has two. We need 4 ports in each room (uplink, internet, iptv, ip phone).
To use cAP or mAP we would as well need a separate switch in the rooms, which would be expensive and another 170 devices to maintain.

For a single hotel room with just 4-6 devices, yeah, even RB951-2n is sufficient.

If you wanted to manage an entire floor though with a single router, it wouldn't be - You'd need at least RB951Ui-2HnD.

As for mAP or cAP... They could work without switches, if the different client devices have a WiFi bridge attached. If you get a small enough bridge for each device (the size of mAP or worst - slightly larger), the whole thing will look even more prestige than RB951-2n with cables running around. You could get another mAP for each device, or perhaps use something like this if you want the bridges to be a little cheaper.

I would not deploy separate device to each room. Each additional device multiplies the probability that something fails. I would place a central switch on each floor, run cables to the wall sockets from it and place some 2hnd devices as ap around. Depending on your environment maybe 3 devices will be necessary on each floor.

wall sockets for IP Tv, IP phone, and Lan!
Wifi acess points cAP 2n in corridors after 50 - 30m (depends of wifi coverage)
One or two comunication racks in each floor with CRS125-24G-1S-RM switches + patch panels.
first floor, master router, depends of trafic.

You could deploy 4 or 5 port switches or RBs in each room but for wifi access you should place the AP in a corridor and not in any room. Assuming mikrotik doesnt have the 32 cllient limit you basically would want to have a ratio of 20 rooms to an AP as an example. Cluttering wifi is a really bad idea.

for the switches or RBs 100Mb/s should be sufficient but if you want you can go for gigabit ones, depending on budget and futureproofing. You dont necessarily need a switch on each floor, you can dedicate a room with the switches and gateway. It depends on how much cabling you want to do and how centralised you want everything to be. you can also use ethernet over power lines too.

Im not so sure if mikrotik has switches that can provide power over ethernet but if they had it would make your setup a lot easier.

Wireless is more likely to fail so having less wifi APs is better than having a wifi AP for every room and seperating them from serving as VLAN switches so it is easier to manage when it fails. Cluttering too many APs in a small area can also cause wifi for some to not work.

mikrotik devices have no limitations for number of clients

@flatbat I have worked with RB9512n and is just ... not that powerful to manage certain configurations. It could be could for pretty small offices, but that's it.
I like the idea proposed by @jarda, a central switch on each floor and Access Point like the cAP on the hallway for every 4 to 6 rooms

@flatbat I have worked with RB9512n and is just ... not that powerful to manage certain configurations. It could be could for pretty small offices, but that's it.
I like the idea proposed by @jarda, a central switch on each floor and Access Point like the cAP on the hallway for every 4 to 6 rooms

the original poster says he wants to use CAPsMAN to control them, and implies that there would be no difficult config on each separate device. In this case the RB951-2n would work great

@flatbat I have worked with RB9512n and is just ... not that powerful to manage certain configurations. It could be could for pretty small offices, but that's it.
I like the idea proposed by @jarda, a central switch on each floor and Access Point like the cAP on the hallway for every 4 to 6 rooms

Thanks for reference but I would not recommend 2n device due to low power amplifier and only one channel radio. Rather to use 2hnd instead 2n.

Sounds like the choice would be primarily between central switches and 3 cables to each room, or a single cable to a switch/router in each room.
I understand the issue in maintaining lots of devices and maybe it is a good advice to not install devices in guest rooms. But there will be lots of cables..

It will always cost something. But cables are maintainless contrary to active devices.

It will always cost something. But cables are maintainless contrary to active devices.

furthermore .. hotel guests stealing a lot .. you must secure devices; cables, instead, are not so interesting

How are you going to fight with interference, using 2-3 APs per floor?
I mean floors are "stacked" over each other and so will be APs.
3-5 meters even with iron concrete between them is too close...