Need networking advice (Boston, MA)

[JTelloAVGuy]

Let me start by saying that I'm not a networking expert, so in posting here I'm looking for some direction.

Here is the situation, I work for an Audio Visual (A/V) company the works within a hotel providing A/V services for guests and functions. As part of a new contract my company has agreed to take over providing internet access in the hotel function rooms. There is currently a switching set-up in a back room where the hotel can manually patch connections to allow access in the various rooms.

Basically, the current system of patching is labor and time intensive. My company has asked to find out if there is a simple software based switching solution we could implement, and what would it take to get a new control set up in place.

Can someone tell me what we would need to do to get the ball rolling on such a project? Where should I turn for a solution, and what can we expect from this project?

Thank you for any help you can provide.

[thisisshanky]

JTello,

Wireless internet access is becoming hot in the hotel market. To have a wireless infrastructure you need a wired infrastructure. Most old hotels have Cat3 wiring, which is good only upto 10 Mbps speeds. It would be nice to have a 100 Mbps bandwidth on the wired side, for which needs Cat5 cabling or better.

You will need switches to terminate cables coming in from Wireless access points (Cisco 1200s) and basically each guest can use their laptop with a wireless card to access the internet. To provide a walled garden web page where you can force the user to pay for the internet access, Cisco has aproduct called BBSM (Broadband services manager).

LRE (Long reach ethernet) is another hot technology used in Hotels. They use the existing Cat3 cabling to give bandwidths upto 15 Mbps. Every guest room gets a CPE (LRE device) to which an analog phone and a PC can be connected.

Check on CCO for keywords, 1200 series access points, Cisco Lightweight access points, WCS, LRE, BBSM to read more on all this.