Wifi range extensions with many tall water tanks and walls

[tanked wifi]

I work in an above ground waste water treatment facility. Our office is on the front of our 1 acre lot which houses our Frontier Netgear 7550. We are trying to get wifi throughout our facility for networking purposes.

2x100000 gallon tanks, one which is always full, 2x10000 gallon tanks, one which is quadruple lined and always full, various small tanks ranging from 1000 gallons to 5000 gallons. I should also note that our plant is at least 6 different buildings connected by breezeways or open areas.

I'm not sure if any of that info is important, I have read that water sucks the wifi signals up.

We need a very cost effective way to extend our wifi range to the plant. Speed isnt an issue, reliability is. Our goal is to remote our office excel docs from our office pc(which is in the office with the router) onto a tablet(which will be moving all around the plant on our persons), hence eliminating tons and tons of paperwork and also giving us real time useful information on our biological systems.

There are 2 main buildings in our plant that really need a reliable signal. One is a metal building about 60'x80', 20'tall. This building also houses our labratory which is a closed off room inside of the metal building that is important to have wifi. Currently our lab has a really weak signal from our office modem.

The second building is a metal wrapped "barn" if you will, with a dimension of roughly 100'x50'x20'tall. This building houses a 6000 gallon rectangular water tank that is roughly 10 feet tall and 28 feet long. The building also uses our 2, 100000 gallon tanks as partial structure. Roughly a third of each tank is protruding into the "barn".

I can also add that our wifi range as is works all the way to the far reaches of our plant foot print outdoors with nothing in the way between said tablet and the router. As soon a I step into a building I either lose signal completely or it becomes so weak its worthless to use.

 

[bill001g]

The best solution will be to run ethernet cable to each building and then put in wireless AP to provide wireless to the clients. You put in multiple AP in a building if coverage is blocked. This is the recommended standard enterprise install. It tends to be very stable because the radios only purpose is to serve the end users and with proper placement and channel selection they do not interfere even when multiple are in the same building.

It is not real expensive since you can use cheap routers if you really want as AP. I would still recommend PoE AP because then you do not have to worry about getting a power socket near the device.

Now if running ethernet cable is not a option you can use wireless but it gets kinda expensive. You would put in a main location with a outdoor AP. This will help you general outdoor reception but it will likely not solve the problem indoors. You then at each location put in a outdoor client-bridge device. So now you have good signal to the outside of the buildings. You then run a ethenet cable from these outdoor bridge units to indoor AP to provide network to the machines in the building. This is sorta the same design as the ethernet one you just have radio links between the buildings rather than ethernet cable. You could look at ubiquiti or engenius for equipment but there are many vendors on the market. These 2 tend to be a little less expensive.