multi accesspoint wireless LAN Architechtural considerations

RouterOS General
1

Greetings,
My company is moving into a new space. We’ve got ~65 employees now, and could scale to 100+ over the next few years. The space will need to be completely redone to our specs - e.g. a complete cat5 buildout - or not?

My thought is to create a wireless mesh in the space with enough wireless access points to to provide acceptable bandwidth, avoiding the expense of the cat5 buildout.

First, is this possible with these devices? Has anyone attempted this? Would you use MT stuff to cerate such an animal? And if so, can you lend some advice?

Thanks everyone,
Chris

2

Hi!

Before deciding on this, I would recommend you to go through this list:

Bandwidth
Make calculations on average and peak need for bandwidth with atleast 100 users. What kind of applications are your users running? Would this change in a year or two? Large files for sharing? Printing?

IP telephony(VOIP)
Are you planning on using your WLAN for IP Telephony? Calculate the average and peak simultaneous calls.

Quality of Service
If your users are using VOIP, Citrix or other remote applications, you would need some kind of QoS. It’s by no means fun to get your call scrambled because the dumbass in the cubicle next to you shares his MP3 and Porn collection to the rest of his coworkers. :wink:

Scalability
What happens if your company hire another 25 users? Or your boss figures out the need for investing in a bandwidth-hogging application?

Technology
802.11b? 11a? 11g? I would personally use a 802.11a solution. 802.11b has low bandwith and 802.11g has scalability problems and interference issues in sorroundings with several access points.

Cost
Are all workplaces equipped with WLAN clients? How many computers need to install a PCI-card, USB dongle or any other device? How is this cost related to installing Cat5? Do you need to tutor your employees?

Security
This is really not an issue - if you know what you are doing. But security adds, to some extent, more work. Either for you, as an admin, or your users.

Vendors
I would personally go for an off-shelf solution, compared to building my own. I have seen the solution from Aruba, and it seemed real nice. But the price? I don’t know. http://www.arubanetworks.com

Mikrotik
Yes, I believe Mikrotik’s RouterOS handles your needs. It has a low price tag, and can be deployed on standard hardware. I reccomend using a DOM module instead of the troublesome harddrives. :wink:

My personal opinion
I would go for cable. A switched cat5 network is rugged and easily administrated. Over time I believe TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) would prove that cable is the best. But, I would have installed some Access points for the sake of mobility.


My thoughts a sunday morning. [/list]

3

Excellent reply! Thanks very much.

I do have bandwidth fears, and being the inventor type, I do generally create a whole bunch of work for myself.

I’ve looked at aruba, and nortel solution - very slick but pricey. A CAT5 primary, with a couple of access points is probably the best solution right now.

Thanks again,
-C

4

If you want to see some impressive stuff, look at Xirrus - that’s the highest density of radios in one box I’ve ever seen - and it’s dual band a/g too.
Only spotted today on the www. Anyone actually used it?
Regards