Hi,
I need your help and experience to do the following. I need to prepare a event with 1200 concurrent wireless users (smarthphones, tablets).
I was thinking to use the mikrotik dual band 2.4 and 5Ghz. Maybe a mix Metal and Groove.
The local is as open space building.
My question is how many AP´s may i have to use?
And what is the best Mikrotik to controller (CAPSMAN)
Best Regards
Here is my big-guns answer to your question:
#1 - You will need to limit the maximum throughput bandwidth on a per-connection. I am not referring to limiting total bandwidth for everybody or total bandwidth per AP - I am stating each client wireless connection should have some type of a limit configured so that no single person can saturate the network or saturate any AP. Saturated connections only slow down the network for everybody else.
--- again there are many ways to do this ---
The way I would do this would be to install PfSense on a fast XEON computer with 10-Gig interfaces. I would make my PfSense a DHCP server and the default gateway for all wireless connections -and- make the PfSense server also perform NAT for the entire wireless network. I would set up the LAN (inside natted interface to use the following:
A- LAN IP address: 192.168.0.1 255.255.248.0 (that gives you 32 * 255 IP address to work with). Keep in mind your DHCP server also needs a huge pool because it can remember past IP addresses assigned to people who came and left. Thus you should plan a system where no IP address is re-used a second time.
B- Each new wireless connection (MAC address) is rate-limited for up and down bandwidth. Also, set you client up-stream max bandwidth in PfSense CaptivePortal to be about 10 to 20 percent of their downstream bandwidth. This should help everybody receiving by limiting the sending client bandwidth.
#2 - Number of APs. I would suggest a to have about 1 AP for every 30 to 80 connected clients. The fewer the connected clients per AP , the better the experience and bandwidth.
#3 - All APs use the same SSID and no key.
#4 - None of the APs NAT - None of the APs perform any firewall functions. All APs simply bridge the wireless WAN connection to a LAN on your PfSense server. This keeps the CPU load on your APs pretty low.
#5 - All APs (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) should only be configured for 20-MHz wide channels. Do NOT use Ce or eC channels widths. You need to keep as much frequency space open and available for your other APs.
#6 - AP zones. You need to have multiple APs per client connection zone (keep in mind, you are trying to achieve 30 to 80 clients per AP). You have 3 ways to do zones as described:
A- local the center of each zone, locate an AP or multiple APs.
B- wall & roof located APs which use highly directional antennas to create a wireless spot-beam. Direct and Dish do this for their TV shows so that you get reception from local TV channels without that same channel being picked up on the other side of the country.
C- A hybrid mix of (A) and (B) at the same time. This is what I would do (it works well).
#7 - Be on-site when the system is loaded. This way you can tune things as they happen.
#8 - Use as many different AP channels as possible. Any APs using the same channel need to be as far apart as possible.
#9 - If an AP is getting more connections than you want and near-by APs have low connection counts, then in-real-time, you can reduce the transmit power on your most busy APs. Every time you change a setting on a Mikrotik AP, it will cause all clients to disconnect. The good thing is that because all APs have the same SSID and all APs bridge the wlan wireless network back to a common network lan to your PfSense , clients can roam from AP to AP without problems.
#10 - You need a fast upstream Internet connection.
I currently operate a pretty large wireless network here in North Idaho. All of my clients have outdoor mounted antennas pointing to microwave towers. I use the exact same configuration as I described above for my 1,000+ connected wireless client networks.
I hope this information helps ...
North Idaho Tom Jones
EDIT: Note: You might want to set CTS-to-Self on each AP. This would enable a CTS/RTS protocol on the wireless network which can help wireless network congestion on saturated networks:
EDIT: Note: On each Mikrotik AP you definitely need to set the following:
Hw Retries: 15
Hw Protection Mode: cts to self
Preamble: long
Disconnect Timeout: 00:00:15
On Fail Retry Time: 1.00
Channel Width: 20Mhz
EDIT: Note: On the PfSense Captive-Portal, I would set each MAC (wireless client) to :
Per user (per MAC address) max download speed: 10 meg
Per user (per MAC address) max upload speed: 1 or 2 meg
EDIT: Note: My suggestions are for a large wireless network with thousands of clients. If you were asking how to build a smaller network, then I would of offered a smaller scaled design but still use the same design concepts.
EDIT: Note: The reason I suggest a XEON PfSense server over a Mikrotik physical router is the heavy CPU load this is going to create with 1,000 active network connections. With a XEON server running PfSense (or a Mikrotik CHR 64-bit server), you will have the horse-power. With any standard type normal SoHo core router, the network might crash or come to a slow crawl because of core CPU load.
EDIT: Note: FYI - At this moment as I type, I currently have a wireless network sustained wireless load of 754 meg to customers and 132 meg from customers. And , this is not even my peak-usage time. My wireless network uses everything I described above. We are 100 percent Mikrotik - and however we also use NV2 on hundreds of Mikrotik APs - and all of my clients are remote -- as in 1/2 mile to 16+ miles from the APs.
North Idaho Tom Jones