wAP AC for medium densidty outdoor Wireless (Hotspot) project

[jabalisp]

Hello everyone,

I’m planning to cover a 4000 m² outdoor area (street market) with WIFI…

The idea is to deploy reliable and powerful outdoor access points to cover the street market.
These outdoor APs will be connected to the core network via fiber cables (of course there will be no SFP ports available on the APs so they’ll be connected to a local switch with SFP port which will be connected to the core network).

I would really prefer to go with Mikrotik outdoor access points since I’ve been using 100% Tik devices in my current wireless infrastructure.

After going through Mikrotik’s list of outdoor access point, I think that the best device to use in my case would be the wAP AC → https://mikrotik.com/product/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD

• First Question:
  What kind of outdoor AP should I use ?
  Is there a better Tik outdoor AP for my case ? and why ?
  Should I consider another manufacturer ?

• Second Question:
  Did anyone deploy wAP AC in similar projects ?
  If yes, please share your feedback regarding performance (bandwidth, max simultaneous users etc…)

• Third Question
  I know that roaming is handled on the client’s device side (95% mobile phones in my case) but some workarounds can be done to mimnimize the romaing time (kicking the client’s device off when the signal is weak, reduce the transmit power of the AP etc…)
  Did anyone test these configurations in real world ? If yes, please share your feedback …

Thank you in advance.

[R1CH]

As much as I like Mikrotik, I would avoid their wifi products for this, the features are years behind the competition due to outdated drivers and kernel. Depending on how soon you need to deploy, it might be worth waiting for 802.11ax outdoor products to hit the market. Ruckus might be worth looking into or Ubiquiti on a budget.

[pcunite]

I will only agree to help you under the following arrangement:

1. You will do exactly as suggested.
2. When it doesn’t work, you will report. When it does, you will share.
3. Return to point #1.

[jabalisp]

I will only agree to help you under the following arrangement:

1. You will do exactly as suggested.
2. When it doesn’t work, you will report. When it does, you will share.
3. Return to point #1.

sure no problem I can share/report everything…

[jabalisp]

As much as I like Mikrotik, I would avoid their wifi products for this, the features are years behind the competition due to outdated drivers and kernel. Depending on how soon you need to deploy, it might be worth waiting for 802.11ax outdoor products to hit the market. Ruckus might be worth looking into or Ubiquiti on a budget.

Thank you for your response…

I already got one UAP-AC-M-PRO te test it, but it’s way more expensive than Tik APs (like wAP AC) and a lot of people on forums don’t recommend using Ubiquiti APs for such scenarios.
I personally don’t have any experience with Ubiquiti devices and was looking for help before buying more APs.

Actually I’ve tested the UAP-AC-M-PRo with 2/3 mobiles and 1 laptop and it worked well…
However I’m afraid of long term real world performance / maintenance / configuration / bugs etc… Are you sure that Ubiquiti outdoor APs are reliable devices ?

[pcunite]

Sure no problem, I can share/report everything.

Okay, for starters, there is probably no one on the forums who has ever done an install this big and has ever come back to report about it (that I know of). However, the really cool thing about a proper wireless setup is: if you can manage three units, you can do three hundred. You only need to know a few basic things:

1. Adjust AP power to match density level
2. Stagger your Frequency (avoid DFS for your area)
3. Use 20Mhz channel width
4. Place adjacent APs in an overlapping pattern
5. Kick off weak clients if overloaded

Welcome to the club who avoid Cisco and Ruckus!


Example 5Ghz Frequency layout

So, let’s deep dive some points.

#1
Adjust your power level to match client density and actual use. The wAP AC can probably only handle 50 clients simultaneously. So, you need to know how many people you will have for every 50 feet. Are there 50 people in that circle, or 100? Adjust the power level to match your density. Too much power, and suddenly 200 cell phones see your AP! When you know those numbers, you buy that many AP units to cover your square area, and follow the other points.

I know what you’re thinking, that’s a lot of APs! Well, the truth is that your clients are not all going to be streaming YouTube videos at the same time. So, the real question is, can we idle 100 clients with MikroTik? I don’t have any experience with MikroTik AP and 100 idle clients. Please let us know if you can pull that off. You’ll probably have to be running N/AC to do it.

Work out your density, distance, and number of people to determine your power out levels. Ruckus (with 500 client support) might be cheaper over MikroTik at 100. Only you will know based on your numbers.

#4
AP placement is important because you probably won’t be able to mount them in a perfect grid. So, some units may have more power, other APs advertising less. So, you want to adjust things so that as a cell phone moves into a transition space (the distance from an AP for the current frequency, the point they drop off or you optionally kick them off with rule #5), that they have an AP they can see and go to. Design around a diamond. Two far away AP units, two closer ones (at least one) to handle the kicked off clients. So, transition places have at least two frequencies covering that plot of ground.

What kind of outdoor AP hardware should I use?
We need an outdoor case for the cAP AC. Otherwise, the wAP AC seems like the only viable option for you.

Disclaimer:
My understanding. Not a wifi expert, yet.

[jabalisp]

Sure no problem, I can share/report everything.

Okay, for starters, there is probably no one on the forums who has ever done an install this big and has ever come back to report about it (that I know of). However, the really cool thing about a proper wireless setup is: if you can manage three units, you can do three hundred. You only need to know a few basic things:

1. Adjust AP power to match density level
2. Stagger your Frequency (avoid DFS for your area)
3. Use 20Mhz channel width
4. Place adjacent APs in an overlapping pattern
5. Kick off weak clients if overloaded

Welcome to the club who avoid Cisco and Ruckus!


Example 5Ghz Frequency layout

So, let’s deep dive some points.

#1
Adjust your power level to match client density and actual use. The wAP AC can probably only handle 50 clients simultaneously. So, you need to know how many people you will have for every 50 feet. Are there 50 people in that circle, or 100? Adjust the power level to match your density. Too much power, and suddenly 200 cell phones see your AP! When you know those numbers, you buy that many AP units to cover your square area, and follow the other points.

I know what you’re thinking, that’s a lot of APs! Well, the truth is that your clients are not all going to be streaming YouTube videos at the same time. So, the real question is, can we idle 100 clients with MikroTik? I don’t have any experience with MikroTik AP and 100 idle clients. Please let us know if you can pull that off. You’ll probably have to be running N/AC to do it.

Work out your density, distance, and number of people to determine your power out levels. Ruckus (with 500 client support) might be cheaper over MikroTik at 100. Only you will know based on your numbers.

#4
AP placement is important because you probably won’t be able to mount them in a perfect grid. So, some units may have more power, other APs advertising less. So, you want to adjust things so that as a cell phone moves into a transition space (the distance from an AP for the current frequency, the point they drop off or you optionally kick them off with rule #5), that they have an AP they can see and go to. Design around a diamond. Two far away AP units, two closer ones (at least one) to handle the kicked off clients. So, transition places have at least two frequencies covering that plot of ground.

What kind of outdoor AP hardware should I use?
We need an outdoor case for the cAP AC. Otherwise, the wAP AC seems like the only viable option for you.

Disclaimer:
My understanding. Not a wifi expert, yet.

Thank you for sharing all these details…

The area that I’m willing to cover can be represented as a rectangle (length ~= 350m, width ~= 10m).

The total number of simultaneous users will never be greater than 1000 for the whole covered area → 100 users / 350 m² → ~ 350 users / 1200 m²

Consider the 2 options below (first upper option using wAP AC and second one using UAP-AC-M PRO)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oW9WoqtK7LsV6ZOyW4nPI7xqmwUjwCPJ

I think that the second option is better except the fact that I won’t be using Tik devices…

What do you think ?

[pcunite]

The total number of simultaneous users will never be greater than 1000 for the whole covered area. I think that the second option is better except the fact that I won’t be using Tik devices.

You are correct. I would not feel comfortable recommending the current line up of MikroTik AP units for this project. They are just not powerful enough. We can hope they will release new units. If would be great, however, if you don’t mind. Please buy one MikroTik cAP AC, and place it out there (on a sunny day) to see how it does. That would give us some real world numbers.

So, you would mount the cAP AC and the other brand side-by-side. Disable the MikroTik’s wlan interface. Then, when you feel like experimenting, turn it on and the other brand off. Let see if it melts!