WiFi network for MDU

[jimmygrewal]

Hi. I'm helping someone design a set of technology upgrades for a new apartment building. This building is still under construction, and when completed will have 71 luxury apartments spread over 46 floors. Each apartment has 10/100 ethernet jacks in every room.

The property developer would like to include a WiFi network in each apartment. Basically, they are looking for an efficient and secure way to provide WiFi service in this building, while ensuring that security is maintained. What combination of Cisco products and back-end solutions could be used to successfully deploy 71 WiFi networks in one apartment building? The other problem is that the apartments are very large, ranging from 7,000 to 12,000 sq. ft. with lots of concrete walls, steel work, and marble floors. The strategy used to create a large WiFi network in a hotel or office building won't work here because each apartment needs to be its own private/secure network.

For the wired network, VLANs are being used to segregate each apartment. Is there a WiFi equivalent? Would there be any way for someone who is at the pool (on the ground floor) to securely access their home network (maybe up on the 38th floor)?

Thanks in advance. -Jimmy.

[dixho]

VLAN is supported on Cisco Aironet products. On top of it, we support Public Secure Packet Forwarding (PSPF). Please go to the following URL for information:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wireless/airo1100/accsspts/i1232ja/i1232sc/s32rf.htm#wp1038494

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wireless/airo1100/accsspts/i1232ja/i1232cr/cr32main.htm#wp2448793

[alinn]

Hello Jimmy,

I would suggest using the 1200 series Aironet APs for this. It gives you options for your antenna choices and with little rubber ducky you could easily cover 12K sq feet. For Security I can think of three option:

1-Use the mac authentication on the APs so only the mac address of that apartments devices is entered in the AP and the AP will only allow those mac to associate.

2-They each have a built in Radius Server that you could use as the own personal security server. You could enter the users into the Radius Server and only those users account are allowed to associate to the AP and use LEAP authenication.

Above options 1 and 2 entail adding all that's apartment's devices' mac addresses or users accounts into the AP.

3- Use a ACS server for all user to authenticate against and then manger all of the user accounts from there.

As far as someone accessing their own AP from the ground and its hundreds of feet above this is not going to happen, too far of vertical coverage, with some many APs you will also need to account for channel interface as well. You could set up a poolside AP if you use option three and have user authenticate to it before they are allowed access.

Or options 1 or 2 depending on the amount of user more than one ap would be needed.

For additional help you could consult your local Cisco SE (sales engineer) for design help for your particular site.

Hope this was of some help.

Regards,

Aaron

[jimmygrewal]

Thanks for the information. Our biggest concern is how to create 71 wireless LANs in one building without having major problems of interference. I was hoping there would be a way to create one physical wireless LAN but then use something like VLANs to separate each apartment. The reason is that within the apartments there will be devices on the wireless lan that need to talk to each other (UPnP digital media adapters, a UPnP based home automation system, laptops, etc.).

I've just started working with the local Cisco subsidiary who is also proposing a complete VOIP infrastructure for the building integrated with the building management system and access control. Perhaps I'll just let them figure out how best to make this work. :)

Thanks again,

-jimmy