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landysaccount
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Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:08 pm

I have a project to create a free hotspot for approximately 1500 simultaneous users and would like to create it using Mikrotik but, can't find 2.4Gghz external AP to deploy using CapsMan. I don't want to use another vendor. The idea is to use about 10-20 ap (meshed) and use radius server with maybe an RB3100. Don't know if those equipment would really do the job but, at least need to start it.

The MT APs I've seen come with License 4 which won't support more the 25 concurrent users.

What equipment you guys recommend in order to fulfill this task?

Thanks in advanced for your time.
 
haik01
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Tue Mar 13, 2018 10:15 pm

How big is the area? Is it a convention hall? Exhibition place? Stadium?

If you have open area's, I would really consider other vendors like Xirrus, Aruba, Ruckus. Yes, I know you do not want it, and yes we all love Mikrotik, but this setup will not work with Mikrotik. But these brands specialize in big amounts of users.

You can use Mikrotik for routing purpose (and I think the RB3011 is a little too weak). A CCR series router would be better.
 
nkourtzis
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:43 am

The area to be covered is important to know. If the people are to be densely packed (say, a concert or a stadium) then as the fellow forumer above said, you'd better deploy high-density APs such as from the brands mentioned and then use a CCR1016 to do the routing. What you are saying about L4 License supporting up to 20 users is not correct, these are logins to User Manager, which is the Mikrotik's radius implementation. You don't necessarily need it, depends on your setup.

If you tell us a bit more about the setup, we may be able to help more.
 
landysaccount
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Wed Mar 14, 2018 3:00 am

The area to be covered is a small (14000 squared meters) college campus.
Was thinking, if not MT then Unifi AC Mesh Pro. Deploy 6-10 and use a CCR1009 as core.
 
jarda
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:17 pm

Make structured network instead of mesh. Use sector antennas placed according to local situation ( buildings, obstacles) and expected clients. Use sxt2, groove or basebox2 for endpoint accesspoints and wires or wapg60 as backbone to your central router.
 
landysaccount
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Wed Mar 14, 2018 5:04 pm

jarda thanks for replying.

You think a sxt2 will support at least 100 concurrent clients?
I tried using a basebox2 once and it just froze with less than 100 users trying to connect at once.

Make structured network instead of mesh. Use sector antennas placed according to local situation ( buildings, obstacles) and expected clients. Use sxt2, groove or basebox2 for endpoint accesspoints and wires or wapg60 as backbone to your central router.
 
jarda
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:28 pm

You might have problems with such amount of clients per one radio. Just check how WiFi protocol works by its design and imagine that many clients will be out of ideal signal level borders...

Also see other related threads on this forum.

viewtopic.php?t=79157

And others.

Many clients are 5ghz capable these days so you should have some 5ghz accesspoints (maybe ac today) to offload the clients from 2ghz narrow spectrum.
 
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DanielJB
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:26 pm

I have a project to create a free hotspot for approximately 1500 simultaneous users and would like to create it using Mikrotik but, can't find 2.4Gghz external AP to deploy using CapsMan. I don't want to use another vendor. The idea is to use about 10-20 ap (meshed) and use radius server with maybe an RB3100. Don't know if those equipment would really do the job but, at least need to start it.
You can achieve that with channel and careful parameter selection to give 'cells' of coverage which overlap ~15%. Employ client isolation and enable only 11n/ac, but don't use wireless for the 'mesh'.
The MT APs I've seen come with License 4 which won't support more the 25 concurrent users.
I disagree with this; I have had 80 users happily on an older 5GHz RB953G with second miniPCIe radio for 2GHz.
 
solar77
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:29 pm

The MT APs I've seen come with License 4 which won't support more the 25 concurrent users.
this is when you use usermanager for hotspot and you don't have to. MT built in hotspot server handles as much as the hardware can support, which is more to do with throughput and limitation on number of WiFi connections to clients.
 
haik01
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:12 pm

Also important, are these users all at the same time active? Or are they idle? That is VERY important! Or do they sit, and all watch YouTube movies all the time? Or just do mail check, Facebook updates etc....

You should know your users, what they do, how they spend the time online etc.... From that you can calculate the "load" of the users, and then select the correct hardware.
 
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Fri Dec 27, 2019 9:50 pm

I disagree with this; I have had 80 users happily on an older 5GHz RB953G with second miniPCIe radio for 2GHz.
Its per AP RB953G?
If I want to use BaseBox2 with 2x5db antenna? Can BaseBox2 provide 30-40 concurrent user?
 
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gnro
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Re: Type of equipments (AP) needed for hotspot over 1000 users?

Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:09 am

As @haik01 said the bandwidth used in average must be known in advance.
- Best is to start with the map of the area (to see obstacles/buildings) and use cable connection to as many wireless points as you can.
- Also overlapping "cells" at 15% as @DanielJB proposed
- For more control and faster speeds use capsman access-lists like https://blog.linitx.com/howto-improved- ... t-roaming/:
/caps-man access-list
add action=accept allow-signal-out-of-range=10s disabled=no interface=any signal-range=\
    -80..120 ssid-regexp=""
add action=reject allow-signal-out-of-range=10s disabled=no interface=any signal-range=-120..-81 ssid-regexp=""
P.S.: I think you can solve this with MT equipment's just fine.

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