Wi-Fi coverage for a specific room (Concrete Pillars)

[handshake78]

Hello,

I have the following room to cover with wifi coverage. There are 10 concrete pillars in the room. Can you please advice which Cisco APs and antennas will provide an optimal solution for covering this room.

Thanks!

[Leo Laohoo]

You forgot the height of this place.

I would also like to know if there are any restrictions regarding placing the APs on the roof?

What kind of traffic do you expect to see?

How many people and what kind?  Students?  Adults? Executives?

[handshake78]

Thank you for the reply, leolaohoo!

Sorry for not mentioning the height. It is 4.5 meters, first floor of 3floors building. APs can be placed on ceiling, walls, anywhere without any restrictions. This will serve as a showroom with guest visitors and some equpment (all-in-one computers) showing content from servers (54mbps connection is very good).

Thank you!

[Leo Laohoo]

Sorry for not mentioning the height. It is 4.5 meters,

Oh nuts.  That's tall.

I'd be putting an AP 15 to 20 metres from each other.

AP choice would be a AP3600i.  I'd recommend you get a WLC 5508 with 100 licenses.  No need for antennas.

I'd love to recommend putting on walls but I don't think it'll be pleasing to the eye.

George, Scott, Steve?  Any opionions? 

[handshake78]

Thanks! Two questions:

1. Why use 100 AP licenses?

2. The main issue here are concrete pillars which will obstruct radio waves to propagate. How this is going to be solved with placing APs on the walls or ceilings? Thanks!

[Leo Laohoo]

1. Why use 100 AP licenses?

Ummmm ... It's because of the "funny" way the 5508 licensing works.  Let me explain.

Let's presume that you got a 5508 with a 25 AP license (for 24 APs).  Ok, so you've decided to put 10 more APs.  Well, guess what?  You CANNOT buy a 25 AP adder license.  You have to buy 50 adder license.  If you want to add, say 30 more APs, you cannot buy another 25- or 50 adder license.  You can ONLY buy 100 adder license.

Hence, my recommendation is to get the 100 adder license, just in case, you'll find the need to go to 60-90 APs in the future.

The main issue here are concrete pillars which will obstruct radio waves to propagate. How this is going to be solved with placing APs on the walls or ceilings? Thanks!

You're not just going to put a single row of APs, aren't you?  I mean if this is going to be a permanent show room, you want your clients to have full roaming capabilities.  If this is the case, then I'd recommend that you place your APs about 5 to 10 metres from the wall and each AP to be 15 to 20 from each other.

To be more precise, get a wireless site survey done.

[handshake78]

Ok, thank you! Sorry for teh late reply, but here is another question. The room size is 20 x 12 meters, so area is 240 sq m. Yes, indeed, I need full roaming for clients, but do you really think that it will be neccessary to put more than 25 APs? In average we will have 1 AP serving 10sq m area in that case.

Thank you!

[Leo Laohoo]

Hello,

I have no idea from what country you are from, however, in Australia our "installation" cost is very expensive.

In both wireless jobs I've been, the consensus has been to have-more-than-less.  This is just one reason.   You can, for budget reason, verify my recommended numbers by getting a wireless site survey done.   Or you put the desired number of AP you think this area needs and verify.  If it's not enough, then you can add some more.  Where I work, I'd like to get things done once.  I hate going back and re-visiting every site and re-adjusting each AP location because of lack of signal.

Another reason is redundancy:  If one of your AP has failed, then the wireless LAN controller (WLC) could potentially increase the transmission power of the nearby AP to make up for the loss.  This feature is called coverage hole detection and is enabled, by default, in the WLC.

This is just my opinion, but one thing I am wary about showrooms, is the amount of potential clients.  Recent studies have shown that each wireless visitor can potentially carry 2.5 to 3.5 wireless devices at any given time.  Ouch!   That's alot!  This brings the complexity that not every wireless devices (or wireless client) behaves.  Some client likes to associate to an AP far-far-way even though there's an right above you.

By the way, out of curiousity, will your guest wireless go straight to the internet?  If so, what's your switch infrastructure like and what's your internet bandwidth like?