Planning of a inhouse wireless roaming network for a castle

[zorpat]

Hello community,
we have to make a very interesting offer to one of our clients who lives in a castle..

In his castle he is showing some audio streams and videos and other interesting informations about his castle to visitors (maybe 20 people per visit).

Now to the problem:

• the visitors will use their smartphone to connect to the WLAN as they enter the castle on the ground floor and will then go along a specified route/path to view all the interesting stuff what’s exposed in some different rooms (not all the castle! just some parts of it).
• the visitors will get a voucher and use it like an internet hotspot solution (they enter their credentials into the browser, a special landing page is opened an there are the hyperlinks for the different language streams)
• since they are listening to audio streams (or maybe video if the bandwith should be enough..I don’t think so!) during the visit they have to roam between the accesspoints called AP1 to AP8. It really has to be a “true roaming” solution as the buffering is very short and otherwise they would just see timeouts and errors on their smartphones and our client would get angry.
• the problem in this castle is the available infrastructure.. there are no network cables, just energy cables.. and clearly there is no possibility to lay a copper or fiber optic cable in this building.
• using wireless hardware with 2 different radio modules would be nice but to expensive for this project.
• the internet router will be connected by ethernet to the first AP (AP1)

1. How could we make this project as a good working solution with roaming capabilities?
2. Should we use the WDS capabilities of the accesspoints and mesh them all together? Have tried this in a Motel without success!
3. What are you thinking about MPLS (so a routed and bridged network)?

I hope there is someone out there with some good ideas for us..

Thank you very much in advance!

[rextended]

First of all remember: 802.11b/g/n not are GSM, the true roaming really do not exist,

BUT

You can use RB951G-2HnD as access point AND automatically are bridged together if you apply WDS on right way.
USing same SSID is like roaming. [I need to test CAPsMAN, can be the solution…]

BUT

You must configure the device for maximum compatibility: NO “n”, b/g only! Channel from 1 to 11 only, best if 2437 (channel 6)

AND

Remember, for each AP you add on WDS, the total bandwidth is half.

If ideally 54Mbps/radio are available at the start, adding 2 AP ( for ex AP2 and AP3 to AP1) you have ((50/2)/2) / 20 users = 12,5Mbps/radio /20 = 625k for each user if the users are 20.
(AP5 and AP6 are linked respectively with 3-7-6 and 8-5-4)

[sashavl]

And u should use multicast over wireless to stream.

[zorpat]

@rextended

First of all remember: 802.11b/g/n not are GSM, the true roaming really do not exist,

Yes I know.. and the handover is no “so smooth” on certain devices with older chipsets..

@rextended

If ideally 54Mbps/radio are available at the start, adding 2 AP ( for ex AP2 and AP3 to AP1) you have ((50/2)/2) / 20 users = 12,5Mbps/radio /20 = 625k for each user if the users are 20.
(AP5 and AP6 are linked respectively with 3-7-6 and 8-5-4)

Yeah, probably there will not be more then half the bandwith, since more than 32Mbps of usable bandwith on a 54Mbps radio will not be available..
And I think over the distance with latency issues on top of you calculation there will be something like 15-20Mbps usable.

@rextended

BUT
You can use RB951G-2HnD as access point AND automatically are bridged together if you apply WDS on right way.
USing same SSID is like roaming. [I need to test CAPsMAN, can be the solution…]

I’ve tried it tonight with just 4 AP I have laying arround at home..and it seems to work more or less as expected..

I have configured the 4 AP’s in the following way:

HARDWARE USED: 4x RB951-2n

wireless configuration:

mode=ap-bridge
band=2GHz-B/G
channel width=20 MHz
freq=2452 (lower and upper channels are used by other AP's)
SSID=TEST-MESH
wireless protocoll=802.11
frequency mode=manual-txpower
country=italy
bridge mode=disabled
max station count=30
distance=indoors
WDS mode=static mesh (no default bridge!)

Then I have created new WDS interfaces from every device to every device. (see DUDE screenshot, ALL interfaces where UP - just an old screenshot!!)
So every AP is connected to every other AP via wireless WDS (no ethernet connection, just wireless!).

bridge configuration:

bridge name=AP Bridge
protocol mode=rstp

Then I have added all the WDS interfaces + the wlan1 interface to the bridge and set the path cost to have shortest (best performant) ways to every AP. (see screenshot)
On AP_GW, it is the main AP (called “accesspoint gateway”), I have set the STP priority to “1” as the RSTP tree should be build from there.
So AP_GW is the “Root Bridge”!

The system was running all the night with DUDE running on a testmachine.

BUT

i could see, the network was a lot of times offline and came back online after some seconds/minutes..

AND

Some of the accesspoints have restarted over night!? Why? (see screenshot)

Greetings back from Italy!

[zorpat]

DUDE connection problems screenshot

[MrYan]

If you have power (energy cables I assume is mains power) can you use power line for the backhaul for the access point?


Matt.

[zorpat]

@MrYan

If you have power (energy cables I assume is mains power) can you use power line for the backhaul for the access point?

Matt.

Nice idea..

BUT

we already have tested a setup with power line accesspoints.. it doesn’t worked..
The mains in the castle area has a very poor waveform.. they are far away from next transformer position and there are a lot of harmonic distorsions..