More small access points or few big routers? Student dorm. Need help.

LaMpiR · March 5, 2016

Hello good people

Bin a big fan of LTT videos and I am in a need for a networking tip. I live in a student dorm. We have 6 floors, around 80 people in total. We have pretty good Wifi coverage but 6 routers are WRT54GL, 4 are AC68U and one 66U from Asus. We have a 100Mbps network to every room, so a student is able to choose to use a wifi or lan.

In order to improve over deadspots, and to rearrange the wifi all together, I have decided to get more routers or access points.

Something like this:

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RP-AC56/

http://www.tp-link.de/products/details/cat-10_RE450.html#overview (one repeater?)

http://www.tp-link.de/products/details/cat-10_RE210.html#overview (only repeater?)

http://us.dlink.com/products/access-points-range-extenders-and-bridges/ac1200-wi-fi-range-extender/ (only repeater?)

http://www.linksys.com/at/p/P-RE6700/ (something like this would be perfect if its working in AP mode?)

It would be perfect to have a additional power line like with this one from Linksys so that the user can still you the power from it. It would be perfect as well to have a 2 Lan ports(one for AP and the second one for the user if needed).

Internet is max 42Mbps pro user but for internal purposes(100Mbit because of the cables).

So, please recommend me what to do.

All the best people

RedWulf · March 5, 2016

The linksys says it would work in ap mode, I would get maybe at least 1 per floor, 2 or 3 if the halls turn or it's over 60 meters. Then just have them run to the router on the same floor or just to the ethernet in the nearest room. or you could have them all run to a switch on the main floor for easy managment if you plan to wire the walls.

brwainer · March 6, 2016

When deploying wireless for stident housing, although normally for apartment style buildings not dorm room style, we standardize on 3.2 people per AP and distribute the APs evenly throughout the building. This is with enterprise grade APs, normally Ruckus. Since you are talking dorms instead of apartments, your person per square foot measure is going to be much denser, and that many APs might cause the APs to be too close together. You don't want an AP to be in range of more than two other APs, since on 2.4GHz you have only 3 "usable" channels. By spacing them out properly, an AP on channel 1 won't interfere with the closest other AP also on channel 1. Every AP or router that shares a channel should be at least 20dBm (the "RSSI" as reported by tools like inSSIDer) seperated from other APs that share the same channel.

InVis · March 6, 2016

7 hours ago, brwainer said:

When deploying wireless for stident housing, although normally for apartment style buildings not dorm room style, we standardize on 3.2 people per AP and distribute the APs evenly throughout the building. This is with enterprise grade APs, normally Ruckus. Since you are talking dorms instead of apartments, your person per square foot measure is going to be much denser, and that many APs might cause the APs to be too close together. You don't want an AP to be in range of more than two other APs, since on 2.4GHz you have only 3 "usable" channels. By spacing them out properly, an AP on channel 1 won't interfere with the closest other AP also on channel 1. Every AP or router that shares a channel should be at least 20dBm (the "RSSI" as reported by tools like inSSIDer) seperated from other APs that share the same channel.

I 100% agree - altho 3.2 people pr enterprise AP seems a bit low?

But the closer to the user the AP is, the less risk of packet loss there is and the fewer times the AP has to retrainsmit the packets = lower air time = higher throughput (there is a lot more to it, but this is highly simplified)

You would place APs a bit like this in the example brwainer gives (which is how it should be done in the real world as well)

brwainer · March 7, 2016

13 hours ago, InVis said:

I 100% agree - altho 3.2 people pr enterprise AP seems a bit low?

But the closer to the user the AP is, the less risk of packet loss there is and the fewer times the AP has to retrainsmit the packets = lower air time = higher throughput (there is a lot more to it, but this is highly simplified)

You would place APs a bit like this in the example brwainer gives (which is how it should be done in the real world as well)

With the apartments we bid on, 800-1000 square feet for 2 residents is not uncommon, normally 3 story buildings. So 3.2 people per AP isn't limited by what the AP can support, but rather the very low power antennas in phones and handheld gaming devices. It's more about receiving the devices' signals.