Temporary outdoor Wi-Fi: PoE, weatherproof APs and LTE backup

Hardware
1

I'm looking at the practical side of deploying a temporary Wi-Fi network at an outdoor event and would appreciate some hardware advice.

The environment could be a garden, field or tented venue where there isn't necessarily existing network infrastructure.

The requirements would be relatively simple:

  • Internet access
  • Several outdoor APs
  • Guest Wi-Fi
  • Staff connectivity
  • Payment/registration devices
  • Reliable power
  • Possible LTE backup

The areas I'm particularly unsure about are the physical deployment.

For example:

Would you use PoE from a central switch for the APs?

How would you protect temporary Ethernet runs from weather and people walking through the event area?

Would you favour several lower-powered outdoor APs rather than trying to cover the entire area with one device?

Would LTE failover be worthwhile where the venue's fixed Internet connection isn't reliable?

And for a deployment lasting only one day, how much redundancy would you normally build into the system?

The reason I'm looking at this is that I work around outdoor catering and event setup, where the physical environment varies from a normal office.

2

What is the area size you want to cover? How many users, devices will be at the event? You wrote there is no existing network infrastructure, so what is your plan for internet connection?

3

There is no way (cost effective AND safe) that you can pass ethernet cables across a field/grass, unless there are poles and you can do something at a higher level than people.

Cables on the ground to be safe must be inside a protective conduit and either under the ground level (digged) or fixed with pegs (and 99% of the people will step on them, safe for the cables but not for the people).

There are objective limits to the number of devices that can connect to an AP, so the more AP's the better.

And - even if you use something wifi, you need anyway to power these devices (in theory you can couple a CPE to an AP back to back using - say 6 (or 60) GHz for the link to the "central spot" and 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz for the AP).

Or use devices similar to the Audience with three radios.

Since the duration of such temporary events is limited a possible solution would be using AP's mounted on (decently tall, let's say 3 m) poles on a basement that contain a big enough battery.