Hi

I have a customer whose hotel was installed five years ago using three DSLAMs (50 connections each) and wireless DSL (modem) gateways in each room (125). This installation makes use of the existing telecom wiring.

Their clients are complaining about the quality of the wifi signal (802.11g) and lack of bandwidth.

My approach has always been to install an access point every 6 to 8 room, depending on the results of the my onsite survey. I then either link these up to a POE switch located on the same floor or all the way to the ground floor, if there aren't too many APs, to a central POE switch. I then setup a hotspot, Zyxel or Mikrotik, to handle user authentications.

The customer would like me to provide him with a quote, which is a simple enough, though time consuming, exercise. His current provider has also drawn up a quote to update the current equipment in order to improve the overall user experience.

The part I'm not too confident about is how to argue that my solution would be technically better suited than the 'telco' approach.

I don't know much about a telco infrastructure except that it relies on one pair unshielded wiring and that DSL links can theoretically deliver thoughputs of up to 20 Mbps. Sites in France that achieve 13 Mbps with their DSL connections are pretty common. This site however only receives 8Mbps at best.

Q1) Are these types of telco installations (onsite DSLAM + ADSL access points) common as compared to Ethernet network + APs setups ?
Q2) I can't argue that bandwidth will be better over Ethernet cat6 shielded wiring since this medium can only deliver what the site actually receives via its DSL uplink - which will probably be on par with what the DSLAM/DSL modem can achieve.
Q3) I can emphasize that my APs will be 30MHz 802.11n and thus ensure a better signal transmission - but again the opposite party could also update their current DSL gateways to the same technology in each room.

I can't begin to fathom how they went about configuring the channels for the DSL wireless gateways that are in each room; this to me would be the definition of a noisy environment. They probably had to turn the power down to reduce interference.

Any ideas or suggestions that may help me convince my customer that my way is better would be real helpful

thanks
yann

In some cases the DSL modems also provide a wired connection. DO they have that? Do they need that? What is the actual bandwidth that the location has from the ISP? Perhaps the bottleneck isn't the WiFi signals so something like PCQ is advantageous.

Potential advantages to point to:

1) You remove 125 DSL modems, 125 telephone cables and 125 PSUs from their guest bedrooms which is 375 fewer things to go wrong...
2) Better upgrade path in future - less equipment to be upgraded.
3) Less equipment means easier monitoring / problem resolution.
4) Easier to offer dual band on smaller AP number - dual bandwidth = more client bandwidth.
5) More sophistication - e.g. traffic shaping.

Thanks CelticComms
Bandwidth is 8Mbps ADSL uplink
your suggestion is 'high numbers' = 'high maintenance' = 'higher costs'

I not sure about putting 5GHz indoors, since my objective is to
enclose the APs in the ceiling plenum in the hallways - I thought
that 5GHz isn't particularly good at crossing obstacles like walls

This is correct, the higher the frequency how hard is it to go through obstacles