Student Residence

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Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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Guys can you please just advise me.

The IT students at my University where given a task to implement a
wireless network for our (30 floors tall) student residence.

Firstly there are about 800 students who are going to use the network,
we want to provide VOIP, HTTP (social intranet site), and also to give the
students internet connection 10k\10k.

We can't decide as to wheter use Mikrotik or Ubiquiti, and we are also
not sure if we place our sectors all 6meters from the ground, will the people
on the 30th floor be able to connect using their built laptop wi-fi cards?

If not how many sectors for the whole building would you suggest?
and also how many APs, and which router will be able to handle VOIP, and
Internet, File Sharing?

Any advise will be appriciated.

PS: We are students we don't have cash for consultants.
 
portcullis

portcullis

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As we told you on the MikroTik forums, sectors are not the answer for what you are trying to do.

I suggest you go back there and let the people who have started to help you continue helping you.

It's pointless running elsewhere when the good information you've been given is not to your liking.
 
A

ambo

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portcullis said:
As we told you on the MikroTik forums, sectors are not the answer for what you are trying to do.
Click to expand...
Without having seen any of the discussion on the mikrotik forums... ;) sectors are not the solution you want.

There is not much point in trying to blast through walls and floors with wifi - you'll be wasting your time. Just get lots of low powered APs with omni antennas. Put a little thought into their placement - at least one per floor - and take it from there :cool:
 
C

Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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Ohkay.

Can you guys elaborate more! Why wont the sectors work if i placed them outside? for every 10 floors im gonna be having 5 sector facing upwards and all students who connect are going to be using USB wifi dongles placed next to their windows.

Isn't this a good way of doing it?

Please don't insult me, im just looking for advise.
 
C

Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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Just got an e-mail from our Dean of Computer Science.

We have a budget of R50 000.

any advise will be greatly apreciated
 
A

ambo

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Coded Wizzard said:
Why wont the sectors work if i placed them outside? for every 10 floors im gonna be having 5 sector facing upwards and all students who connect are going to be using USB wifi dongles placed next to their windows.
Click to expand...
You can't point the sectors upwards. They have to be pointing directly at the building otherwise your wifi signals are going through the concrete floors and they will get attenuated very quickly. Are you going to build a tower that is 30 floors high to mount your antennas? ;)

The other big issue is that 800 client nodes is a huge number. Many APs start struggling when you put more than about 30 clients onto them. You'll need more than just 5 APs.

Many of the kits you see for Ubiquity and Mikrotik are designed for open air use and won't work in a building. Just use APs with omni antenna on each floor and do a little RF planning to figure out the best locations :D
 
C

Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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So you suggest i use only omni, and my omnis i place them indoors?

How many APs would you recommend their 35 students who are going to be connecting per floor.
 
J

j@w

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Apr 17, 2009
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I've done this loads of times. If it is a narrow building with a lift it is quite easy.
Get a room on the bottom floor or underground near the lift.

Then just run a network cable in the lift shaft to every floor on which you want to put an AP. But the penetration you have to test first. So if you're going to put it every 2nd floor, floor 1 you will put the AP, 1 or 2 rooms left in the corridor and on the 3de floor 1 or 2 rooms right in the corridor. And not exactly ontop of each other. For the AP's the best solution will be the Ubiquity PicoStations.

Then in the basement you get a Routerboard RB493AH or RB450 (enough so that each Ubiquity AP gets its own port. Bridge the ubiquity with the LAN port. If you don't worry to much about managing the network (and save money) you can always just get a 24 port switch, where all the APs run in to. Then the Switch connects to 1x RB450.

For Radius, buy Radius Billing Manager 3, dmasoftlab.com, the $99 license. Install this on any Fedora Linux PC with more than 512MB RAM & 1.4ghz CPU (dmasoftlab does everything for you if you choose to do so - free). In DMASoftlab you can give everyone a usage cap & limit their speed. It is way better than the RouterOS Userman. Just set the Rouerboard to use Radius authentication & then give every person his own PPPoE/PPTP login and limit it to 1 connection per login. (it will work way better than MAC authentication)

If you guys are going to fileshare (DC hub) budget 4-7 people on an AP. If its used for browsing only, ~30 people per AP (per 1 radio + antenna).

You can always buy 2 homeplugs to test. I bet every couple of rooms are on the same breaker. (but that can get expensive but still its awesome)
 
A

ambo

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Coded Wizzard said:
How many APs would you recommend their 35 students who are going to be connecting per floor.
Click to expand...
I would take a wild guess and say 2 - but that really depends on the shape of the building and the layout of the floors.
 
C

Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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Heres are the dimensions of the bulding:

Length: 80 meters
Height: 120 meters
Breath: 25 meters

Its something like this:
___________________________________________
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |

30 floors
lifts are located in the middle
 
J

j@w

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242
Coded Wizzard said:
Ohkay.

Can you guys elaborate more! Why wont the sectors work if i placed them outside? for every 10 floors im gonna be having 5 sector facing upwards and all students who connect are going to be using USB wifi dongles placed next to their windows.

Isn't this a good way of doing it?

Please don't insult me, im just looking for advise.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but i LOLED at the idea of showing a sector upwards.
 
C

Coded Wizzard

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Oct 9, 2009
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How much of a budget would you say i need?

Remember we want the students to (intranet VOIP), and basic IM and Internet, with limited file sharing.
 
J

j@w

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Just read my post, I specialise in gated communities, residences, complexes & flats
 
A

ambo

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Coded Wizzard said:
How much of a budget would you say i need?
Click to expand...
You might be able to get something very basic working for R200k but it would probably be patchy with lots of bad signal areas and the network would be rather unstable.

R500 000 - R1 000 000 would probably be a price worth discussing :erm:
 
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