Old building, need to get wifi around it

[stiltner]

So I got a client I'm working with that has this old mansion like building.

Its 2 floors, and probably I'd guess 1500-2500 sq on each floor.

The wireless signal coverage is horrible. The customer does not want to drill for cabling or anything like that. Its a doctors office, they are trying to keep it clean looking.

I'm not too keen on WDS. Its always seemed to be a steaming pile of crud to me.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to get around this issue. I swapped the router , and its improved it considerably in the areas it was weak, but its still full of dead area's. Some only about 30 ft away, but because the walls are so thick and lined with metal inside of the cement wall...its brutal basically.

I was thinking of doing powerline adapters into the dead spots and AP's off of those to give wireless more of a chance. Doctors have phones and PC's and I'm sure the new ones will have likewise requirements and possibly tablets.

Anyone have thoughts and insight on this one? This building is not wired for CAT5 at all, so I have to think outside the norm on this

 

[bds1904]

Open-mesh.com

Wall Plug Enclosures in the hallways.

Cieling mounts where there is a false cieling that you can get ethernet to.

A bunch of access points to work with everything.

The 2 enclosures will only handle the LC or HS access points, put the LR's anywhere there isn't an enclosure that you can get ethernet.

CloudTrax is pretty nice too. Free and easy to set up. The doc could also have a "private" hidden SSID as well as a throttled "public" SSID very easily. Great monitoring and automated outage alerts.

 

[stiltner]

Holy shit, I love you.

Those look like just what I'd need. They got all these nook and cranny places in this building. One system has a Cisco USB wifi on it and its like 1 hallway away from the router and its dead.

I'll sit down with them and go over the details, appreciate it

 

[green91]

open-mesh looks neat, i like the modular design. but i'm forced to shy away from any WAP that doesn't even tell you what frequency radios it has.

 

[bds1904]

open-mesh looks neat, i like the modular design. but i'm forced to shy away from any WAP that doesn't even tell you what frequency radios it has.

They actually used to have more models that did 5GHz mesh and 2.4GHz access but they didn't sell well. Open-Mesh is really geared toward ease of setup and maintenance and the descriptions of their products reflect that. Their current product lineup is meant more for public wifi access with good coverage & reliability, not necessarily top of the line bandwidth capabilities. I mean how many people would be impressed by 5GHz access on something designed for public use? Pretty much 1 in 100 or less.

 

[Eickst]

Sorry but for an internal deployment you really should wire the AP's. Mesh is going to give you grief in a dense environment unless you do dual radio AP's and use one frequency just for backhaul, even then its no where near the quality of wiring them up, and you still need power anyway.

Secondly, its a doctors office, do they have compliance requirements? Most compliance agencies want wpa2 and authentication for wireless, along with rogue detection, ips, etc. Does the openmesh stuff support that?

 

[lightp2]

do not know the tech, detail or possibility, but idea from someone.

1. If it is possible, maybe homeplug power-line-networking as the backend-links, then spread wifi access points from there where relevant.

2. Backend Power line infrastructure could be slightly un-optimized for old buildings, so the suggested focus is on strictly home-plug for certain reliable/compatible backend power-lines, then strong-range-extender type for a few WiFi AP.

3. However, if it is doctor office, in this age of year 2013, it would probably already having some kind of existing networking, (kinda difficult to say this big doctor office building has no computer networking at all date 2013), so you can actually hop on existing network infrastructure to re-target and re-build from there. (For example, you must have existing office tables, cabling path/pipes, whatever, pre-existing, you can probably hop on some. It takes careful and skillful approach with design taste, but is otherwise doable.)

4. It is a matter of willingness and attempt, plus reception.

5. Obviously it depends on your customer. If they insist on extremely strict condition, then it is entirely different scenario. Some set condition but can otherwise accept modified relative plans. Some will not change their mind about office layout. It depends on your customer.
5.1 If you want to present an alternative suggestion, obviously it must be logical, sensible, reasonable, doable, relative to the doctor office and the staff.
5.2 To explain, for example, say the home-plug power-line-networking is used, but it is otherwise loosely installed and any unsuspecting staff/guests can accidently/easily take out the device (because it plainly looks like any piece of consumer equipment on the wall-socket), thus taking out the network, then it might be a consideration. It depends on the environment and customer's expectation, and the degree of installation coverage.