Anyone know a lot about WiFi networks/signal propogation?

[Yoda]

I'm trying to help my technophobe family (who are 2,000 miles away from me) set up a public wireless network for a motel (family business).

Thanks to the miracle that is google maps, I have this handy diagram of the situation:

My black scribble is a pretty epic firewall (as in real life keeps an entire building from burning down firewall, not computer firewall), and it does a pretty good job of batting down wifi signal with the current cheap consumer level router (private use, everything southeast of the firewall is where my family lives, plus the motel lobby). Also physically running cables past the firewall isn't really feasible.

The actual motel rooms are divided by some kind of cement blocks I believe, which might do a decent number on the signal as well. I'll probably have my brother check the current signal strength at various points around the motel on his laptop when he gets a chance somewhat scientifically. But from previous experience we know it doesn't get very far.

The current modem and router are located approximately at A. Running an ethernet cable to B or so (which is at a nicely sized window) seems to me like it would be the best location.

The motel is single story, by the way. In the neighborhood of 25 units.

I figure lot of consumer routers with say a 'guest mode' network and QoS could probably handle the actual traffic. I can't imagine more than say 10 people ever actually using this at the same time. I figure dealing with security and passwords probably isn't worth it for my family, and that it would be best if it was just an open network (preferably with the wireless clients isolated, not sure if that's a standard feature, I can do it on my DD-WRT flashed Linksys no problem). The area is sparsely populated, and the buildings in the immediate vicinity are a gas station, a health clinic, and a county sheriff's office.

What I'm wondering is, are there any relatively cheap routers out there that will have the range to get all the way to the other side (I'd estimate the very 'north' corner is something like 70 meters from point B)? Is it going to be necessary to put an Access Point/Wireless Bridge/Repeater type device somewhere across the parking lot in one of the motel units where there is good line of sight on point B? It would be preferable to not have any equipment in the units, but I don't know if that's going to be realistic.. or cheap.

I'd love to have some opinions before I start blindly recommending equipment for them to buy

 

[Amaris]

Buy an N+ wireless router and a handful of signal repeaters, you should do fine.


J.

 

[Mr. B]

I don't see why a small job like this couldn't be handled by a wired router hooked to a handful of Linksys WRT54G (cheap) routers. If the hallways have drop ceilings, installation would be pretty easy and out of sight.

 

[Marc]

Ideally you'd run a ethernet backbone to connect the access points - depending on the number of access points you could take a major performance hit.

But you need to look at things
* firewall/security
* authentication/access control
* bandwidth limitation

You also need some good quality gear.

Bascially I'd tell the family to fly you out there to do the job or find some-one locally to it for them. It's not going to work if you try and advise them remotely.

Or you can look at a businesses such as Datavalet (never dealt with them but just stayed at hotels which have used their setuo) who specialise in doing just what your want to do.

But in a nut shell -
a) a series of quality access points
b) have them all connected via cat5
c) setup one or more linux servers (windows will do the job but will cost. theservers will do 1) firewall, 2) DHCP to provide IP addreses to the hotels (and if you've you may need to subnet if you've likely to have more than 250 connections), RADIUS for user authentication.

I'd also recommend going Power Of Ethernet - it's not cheap but you then you then you only need to connect the access points (if you get PoE units) to the UTP cable for both power and data (thus they can sit in ceilings/crawl spaces without having to add power points).

 

[Marc]

I don't see why a small job like this couldn't be handled by a wired router hooked to a handful of Linksys WRT54G (cheap) routers. If the hallways have drop ceilings, installation would be pretty easy and out of sight.

because cheap is asking for trouble and major major reliablity isseus.

 

[apostle83]

Keep in mind that you'll have some folks who only can handle b signals.

 

[Yoda]

Keep in mind that you'll have some folks who only can handle b signals.

Ideally I'd like for it to support b/g/n. b has pretty poor range from what i understand, but from what I've experienced I will never be surprised at what outdated crap some people will use.

WRT54g doesn't have any native AP mode, right? I'd need to flash custom firmware to disable the routing functionality?

I think setting up a full linux system and RADIUS is a bit overkill. A couple hundred clients on a 255.255.255.0 subnet is probably fine. I can't imagine there being more than 50 wireless clients at any given time. It's not really the kind of place where people would stay in their room and mess around on the internet. They'll go snowmobiling, or four wheeling, or go hiking, or fishing, or whatever the hell else they went to the north shore of Lake Superior for. Also, as I mentioned I don't think any sort of authentication is really necessary. The idea is to make it easy on the customer... if you add passwords to the mix then it's just one more thing for the end user to screw up and come complain about.

As for reliability, my DD-WRT equipped WRT100N seems to do everything I would need to do here. I have two separate SSIDs, one with WPA2, and then a separate one for my roommate's nintendo DS (only supports WEP) which is isolated from the rest of the network. If I set the second SSID to be open, then I would think that would do the trick. Configuring that with the handwritten IPTABLES scripts was pretty torturous though! I'm pretty sure the router could handle 20-30 clients... the only problem is the actual coverage area.

As for doing it myself, I definitely don't want to fly out there. With remote desktop software and the like I can handle whatever configuration is required aside from the physical setup, which my brother should be able to handle. Hiring professionals for something like this seems like it wouldn't be very cost effective, and I think any company that has a clue as to what they're doing is probably a good 60 miles away anyway.

J. Allen mentioned repeaters... I've searched Newegg and not a whole lot comes up. If they could pick up a wireless N router with a few relatively cheap 'repeaters', that would be pretty much plug and play and could provide coverage over the whole area, that would be great, but I don't know if that's realistic.

Can anyone recommend any specific products? Is there anything between the $100-$200 routers that best buy will sell you and the $1000+ stuff that say Cisco makes?

 

[Marc]

Keep in mind that you'll have some folks who only can handle b signals.

Ideally I'd like for it to support b/g/n. b has pretty poor range from what i understand, but from what I've experienced I will never be surprised at what outdated crap some people will use.

But hell how long as G been pretty much the standard for? I'd be very suprised if anyone's still lugging around 11b equipment - that would 8 or 9 years old and frankly I'd if 802.11b you don't support it.

I think setting up a full linux system and RADIUS is a bit overkill. A couple hundred clients on a 255.255.255.0 subnet is probably fine. I can't imagine there being more than 50 wireless clients at any given time. It's not really the kind of place where people would stay in their room and mess around on the internet. They'll go snowmobiling, or four wheeling, or go hiking, or fishing, or whatever the hell else they went to the north shore of Lake Superior for. Also, as I mentioned I don't think any sort of authentication is really necessary. The idea is to make it easy on the customer... if you add passwords to the mix then it's just one more thing for the end user to screw up and come complain about.

It would come down to whether you're going to charge for the service but generally you want some sort of access control and bandwidth monitoring. Last thing you want is some-one bringing a laptop running their peer to peer client that sits there while they're out in the snow.

You also want to make sure that only people staying in the hotel are able to access the system.

As for doing it myself, I definitely don't want to fly out there. With remote desktop software and the like I can handle whatever configuration is required aside from the physical setup, which my brother should be able to handle. Hiring professionals for something like this seems like it wouldn't be very cost effective, and I think any company that has a clue as to what they're doing is probably a good 60 miles away anyway.

Just as long as your brother is up to the task - I know from personal experinnce that as soon as you start having to guide some-one through things it the time it takes can blow out big time

 

[Yoda]

Keep in mind that you'll have some folks who only can handle b signals.

Ideally I'd like for it to support b/g/n. b has pretty poor range from what i understand, but from what I've experienced I will never be surprised at what outdated crap some people will use.

But hell how long as G been pretty much the standard for? I'd be very suprised if anyone's still lugging around 11b equipment - that would 8 or 9 years old and frankly I'd if 802.11b you don't support it.

It can run alongside everything though, right? It does run on my router. It doesn't have to be perfect. I guess supporting it all will lead to complaints if it doesn't have the range. But it doesn't seem like that big of a downside. Maybe we should grab a couple of wireless G USB dongles and rent em to those in need.

I think setting up a full linux system and RADIUS is a bit overkill. A couple hundred clients on a 255.255.255.0 subnet is probably fine. I can't imagine there being more than 50 wireless clients at any given time. It's not really the kind of place where people would stay in their room and mess around on the internet. They'll go snowmobiling, or four wheeling, or go hiking, or fishing, or whatever the hell else they went to the north shore of Lake Superior for. Also, as I mentioned I don't think any sort of authentication is really necessary. The idea is to make it easy on the customer... if you add passwords to the mix then it's just one more thing for the end user to screw up and come complain about.

It would come down to whether you're going to charge for the service but generally you want some sort of access control and bandwidth monitoring. Last thing you want is some-one bringing a laptop running their peer to peer client that sits there while they're out in the snow.

The plan is not to charge. Complementary wifi. We're a small motel, one medium sized hotel as competition. We undercut them heavily on price, I don't know if they charge for wifi or not, but we're looking to fill our rooms, not try to grab every last fiver our customers have. As for camping out in the snow... have you ever been in Northern Minnesota snow? Nature is on our side.

You also want to make sure that only people staying in the hotel are able to access the system.

As I said, pretty rural area. It's largely pointless for someone to sit not so inconspicuously stealing bandwidth. The only concern I really have there is maybe torrenters and the like. Not so much for the bandwidth, which we'll be limiting quite a bit anyway, but for the stupid letters the RIAA and the like will send to your ISP. I'd rather proclaim it's none of our business what people use it for, net neutrality style, but maybe it's necessary to block some types of traffic.

As for doing it myself, I definitely don't want to fly out there. With remote desktop software and the like I can handle whatever configuration is required aside from the physical setup, which my brother should be able to handle. Hiring professionals for something like this seems like it wouldn't be very cost effective, and I think any company that has a clue as to what they're doing is probably a good 60 miles away anyway.

Just as long as your brother is up to the task - I know from personal experinnce that as soon as you start having to guide some-one through things it the time it takes can blow out big time

Ehh, my brother is what he is. Kind of a dumb lunkhead, but he can drill holes in walls, and plug wires together, and that's pretty much all he needs.

I appreciate all the suggestions