Multi-floor Building WLAN

[saeed]

Hi all,

I'm trying to design and install a WLAN in a multi-floor building that has:
- 5 floors.
- 13 appartments.
- 2 users per appartment.
- no wired LAN available.
- one Internet gateway.

can anyone help me by answering the following quetions:

- can i use only one AP to cover the whole building?
- if yes, where should i place the AP (in which floor)?
- if i'm going to need more than one AP to cover the whole building, how many APs shall i need?
- where should i place the APs (in which floors)?
- how can i connect between the APs (do i need a router or a switsh)?
- can all the APs be in the same segment or in the same IP network?
- how can a user connect to the Internet through the gateway?

[umdivx]

without looking at teh floor plan, I'd say your best bet would be to get 5 AP's one for each floor.

Set them all to the same SSID, WPA-PSK(TKIP) security, but have them all running on seperate channels (IE first floor on chan 1, second on chan 6, thrid on chan 11, forth on chan 1, fifth on chan 6)

Get a 8 port switch, and a hard wired router.

connect the wired router to the DSL/Cable modem, and connect the switch to the router, then run Cat5/6 to each AP to each floor.

That would be your best option for connecting everyone to the internet.

- Josh

[saeed]

Thank you umdivx for your helpful suggestions, but i'm wondering if there is a way to reduce the number of APs and avoiding routers. Can you also explain why should i use a router? I mean: if all the APs are in the same IP network (if its possible) there will be no need for a router. What i'm trying to do is to keep the cost of the network as low as possible. So please help me with more
cost effective solutions.
Thank you again for your help...

[umdivx]

well for one, a router is a firewall and you should never setup a network without a firewall.

Second a router will give all teh computers that connect to the network their IP addresses.

so a router is needed in my honest opinion.

you can try an AP every other floor but depending on building size and construction (what materials it is made of) might not penetrate through the floors to get a good enough signal.

- Josh

[sheko_2000]

dear friend

regarding your 1st question its very hard to be answered coz number of access points needed to cover a building depends on the building’s wall type it maybe made of heavy concrete so the signal will be very week inside the apartments, so u have to make a site survey in each floor to check the signal strings inside 2each apartment, so u will be able to detect the location and number of access points will be installed.

2nd question, there are two solutions
1st one is to collect each floor's AP on one switch then collect then to a core switch then your internet source.

2nd u may use one of the access point to be a multi point bridge but this solution not stable

- AP can be on one segment but kindly noted that access point is acting as a layer 2 device so assigning an ip on it is only for administration over the network, and assigning one SSID if u r looking for roaming feature only, so u don't need to change the SSID while u r moving from apartment to another, the final result that they all connected to the same backbone

i hope this tips could help

[keenanj]

If you have less than say 50 total users on the network you should be able to put them on one subnet and not route. If you have many users routing will reduce broadcast traffic and improve performance.

Also you should do a complete site survey to determin how many access points you will need. If you use something like AirMagnet Surveyor http://keenansystems.com/airmagnet_surveyor.htm
it will display coverage on a real map of the building. You will then be able to determin how many access points and the best placement.