Wireless Access Points for Corporate Office

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Jkenya88

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Sep 21, 2011
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I have been tasked to upgrade our office to use wireless. I have heard of cisco aironet, ruckus, openmesh, etc. Just unsure which one is the best for me. I also have a very limited budget so I cant do anything to sophisicated. My budget is around $2k-$3k US.

Heres some information on the office I will be deploying the wirless to:
- Office is ina 40 floor building. Thick concrete core. Elevators also run inside the core.
- Office is on 2 floors on 19 & 20.
- Each floor is roughly 25,000sqft. It's shaped in a rectangle. Approxiametly 90x300.
- Tons of 2.4ghz access points in the building. Around 10-15 access points. Only 1 on 5ghz.
- I will need to have the whole office covered on both floors with an internal and guest network.
- Internal network is secured with a Network Policy Server.
- I would like to have a captive portal for the guest network where a guest user could login and accept a terms and agreement.
- I would like same SSID
- There are a total amount 250 people in the office but wireless will be commonly used in our conference rooms which can hold 30 people. So it would need to support 30+ users on one access point.

Any recommendations on what products should I use? Should I get a controller to work with the access points? How would you set it up?


Sorry about grammer/spelling submitted this via phone.
 
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That is not uncommon to kill a AP with 15-20 users but of course it depends on the users. A single user running his bit torrent down load (assuming a legal one) can wipe out a AP by himself. This is what makes wireless planning so difficult.

I was just recommending dd-wrt because to get a AP that can do multiple vlans/ssid tends to get expensive where dd-wrt can run on a $50 router. Of course it won't be PoE for that price.

Your largest issue I think is that you are going to need a lot of AP...assuming everyone only uses wireless. We tend to put in wired to every desk and then if the users complain about slow response we ask why they aren't using the cable when they need performance. This has allowed us to put in many fewer...
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bill001g

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Not a chance to use a controller based system with you budget the controller alone will cost many times you budget.

So first I will assume you have managed switches with PoE ports to power your AP. The basic design is all the AP run on trunked ports with 2 vlans 1 for guest and one for office...or more if you want multiple office nets. This will tie back to a firewall or router to give external access and provide separation. If you do not have this already you budget is likely shot.

The number of AP you need is based on how many "active" users you have. You also to a point need to limit the total number of connected users.

Numbers range all over the place cisco say only 3 active if you are going to run voice over IP. Most though recommend 10 at the max. Now if you run dual band each radio counts as separate AP for counting users BUT you must combine users on the SSID if you have guest and business network on the same radio. It is the radio bandwidth you run out of not the processor power in most cases.

So you need to look where the users sit and figure out the density. You will in many cases turn the power way down on the AP to reduce interference and allow you to place more AP in the same area. In high density areas like a conference room it is very hard. You don't have a controller to balance the users and all the AP will have the same power level if you put more than one in the room. No good solution for this. You will need multiple AP if the users are actually using the system but you will need to have the users select the AP they use using SSID or something.
A small switch in the room along with the AP maybe a good option if some of the users would be willing to run cabled rather than fighting over limited wireless bandwidth.
Budget wise I suspect you are in trouble.

Try to find a PoE router that can run DD-WRT is your best option. Not running PoE limits your AP placement a lot. It is easy to get ethernet where every you want in most ceilings power tends to be very expensive due to the cost to have electricians install it.




 
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Jkenya88

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Sep 21, 2011
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We do use VLANs and our switches are managed and are POE capable. I have configured our VLANs for a guest network as well as creating a vlan for just WiFi access. If a controller is out on my budget then I would have to tag the ports with the specfic VLAN. So since that option is out, what type of DD-WRT would you recommend?

I currently have a couple cisco wap4410n set up on our network but I noticed after 15-20 users connect, the access points freeze up. Very dissapointing performance as well. From researching these access points there seems to be alot of issues with these access points. Any other suggestions beside this garbage?
 
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bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
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125,640
That is not uncommon to kill a AP with 15-20 users but of course it depends on the users. A single user running his bit torrent down load (assuming a legal one) can wipe out a AP by himself. This is what makes wireless planning so difficult.

I was just recommending dd-wrt because to get a AP that can do multiple vlans/ssid tends to get expensive where dd-wrt can run on a $50 router. Of course it won't be PoE for that price.

Your largest issue I think is that you are going to need a lot of AP...assuming everyone only uses wireless. We tend to put in wired to every desk and then if the users complain about slow response we ask why they aren't using the cable when they need performance. This has allowed us to put in many fewer AP. Most ours are used for "guest" wireless which is severely abused by some employees even though we have a gatekeeper type of machine. It is very hard to allow a true external user who may need to use VPN back to his company to work but prevent users from using bit torrent. The people part of the security of the guest wireless is tough to control.

If you take the 10 users per AP you would need 25 AP which will likely put you at your budget without even the costs to have new ethernet drops placed in the ceiling. You may find commercial dual band AP and not need to use DD-WRT hacked routers I don't know. Most project I am involved in already assume one of the huge controller based solutions where they don't care if a AP costs $300 or even more.

 
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lmaccaro

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Nov 12, 2013
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You have a very demanding wireless requirement, and your budget is off by an order of magnitude to make it work like you need. [You want to buy a car that can go 250mph while towing a boat, and also, it can fly. And your budget is $400.]

A ballpark in a corporate environment is 1 AP per 2000-6000 sq ft of coverage. Cisco is the most used vendor, but they recently acquired Meraki which is super simple to setup and can do all the things you are wanting to do and includes a "cloud' controller (whereas other solutions may require external servers, licensing, etc.). But even a low-cost Meraki AP is going to run you around $600 each. You have 250 users and 50k sq ft to cover, so minimum you will need 10 APs, and up to 30 to really do what you want. A ddwrt router might do what you need "on paper" but it is crap, in the corporate world. Would you run your corporate Active Directory server on a netbook?


Source: Senior Wireless Network Engineer, 7 years of corporate wireless design and deployment in Fortune 500 environments.
 
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