Capacity Planning for 25,000 user venue

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi,

New user to MikroTik hardware, and would really appreciate some feedback based on real world usage.

We provide HotSpot services, originally via Robin Mesh for large scale, external deployment, but have also developed our own captive portal based on MikroTik hardware - and its our aim to move 100% to MikroTik.

We’ve just been asked to quote on an installation at a 25,000 user venue and don’t know how RouterOS scales, nor any hardware limitations.

We do know that we will need around 25 Hotspots, each capable of supporting max 100 users , although we are building to operate at 60%, so roughly 60 users per unit. Can a MikroTik unit support that many users and if so, any ideas on hardware platform / radio ?

Im thinking either 25 or so 411s , all going back to a central switch, and then using a load balancer to split traffic to 8 x ADSL 25mbs - athough I really need central DHCP to allow basic roaming across the venue (possible in this setup?)

or using a server running RouterOS x86, central switch to a range of Access Points, but am struggling to pick a suitable Access Point.

The venue is similar to a football stadium, 1 floor , large area - we may need to run seperate 5ghz backhaul on some units where wiring is not possible.

Any comments,pointers or advice?

Many thanks

2

I wouldn’t run the Hotspots on each AP - install one or more large Hotspot server (an RB1100, if configured right, can do 1,700+ users) and use the APs for media access only. Use several VLANs on each AP, one to backhaul user traffic on layer 2 back to the Hotspot server, and one to manage the APs on. That will allow users to roam between APs on the same Hotspot network, if you’re running layer 3 hops on each AP the roaming experience will be absolutely horrible. If you need more than 1,700 users or so concurrently logged into the same Hotspot network you will need an RB1000 if you just need to scale a bit higher, or an x86 solution if you need a lot more users - or split the networks appropriately by section of the building and bridge the same SSID into different VLANs based on AP location. That way people can mostly roam as they won’t walk through the entire building, the few people that do will have a slightly worse experience when they move over to a different Hotspot and have to re-authenticate.

Depending on how much money you have to sink into the project using other APs that allow for a controller based solution (Cisco, Aruba, etc.) that bridges your layer 2 traffic back to the Hotspot RouterOS servers would probably be nicer. In that large a building you’re going to have a lot of interference and don’t want to autonomously manage APs and their radio configuration.
You definitely want all APs users associate with to be wired, even if that means you run a wireless bridge (an AP dedicated to that) to an area where you can’t wire and wire the other APs to it. That’s still going to be a problem with interference when the ‘backbone’ link gets affected and you lose bandwidth on all APs linking up to it.

3

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Its good to know that even the RB1000’s can handle such a capacity, without the necessity of running a serve based RouterOS. Its given me some good information, which I can now go and research hardware for.