Infrastructure for Hotel

[newmotion]

I have a project for a hotel with 4 floors. The customer does not want to charge the guests for the access.

Our idea is to bring about 4-5 ethernet cables to each floor and wire to an access point for every 8 rooms down the hallway.

I am curious if there are any ways of doing this without running the ethernet, or better coverage to either side of the hallway.

Appreciate any input

Gary

[M/Q]

There is not a really a good way to do it besides using cable runs as you suggested. I would also recommend that you complete a site survey before even thinking about how to accomplish this.

You need to test and see where there are signal problems, intereferences and if there are any areas especially prone to signal loss. How are you going to handle cross channel interference with that many access points on the same floor? By regulating output power? That has to be determined as well and is best handled in the site survey.

[NickCoons]

I would recommend taking a look at the wired phone-line option that I mentioned in this thread.

New Apartment: Help w/ design / AP placement (http://forums.wi-fiplanet.com/showthread.php?t=6294)

My belief is that a wired solution is best unless you are in a situation where it's not feasible or you need mobile capabilities. For hotels and apartment complexes, sending a network signal through an existing pair of wires (i.e. phone lines, which probably already run to each room) is a very cost-effective way to go, and doesn't have the inherent signal issues of trying to setup wireless access in a building like a hotel. If you'd like, setup wireless access as a supplemental service in common areas.

[M/Q]

As I see it most businesses includiing hotels are typically running digital phone systems, and using an Ethernet over phone line if I understand it correctly only works if the phone system is analog.

[NickCoons]

You could be right, I don't know for sure. It depends on the frequency being used for the digital phone system, and the frequency of the data signal, and to make sure that the two don't interfere with each other.

Though as I understand phone installations (and I could be wrong about this), they generally run more pairs than what are needed, so there's a chance there could be extra unused pairs running to each room. Each phone line will use a single pair, but I think it's unlikely they've run a cable to each room that only contains a single pair.

More investigation would be needed, but I think it would be worthwhile research for the person involved in the instllation.

[M/Q]

I have been looking for some actual vendors and have not found much of anything do you have a specific vendor in mind. I have been reading about the PNA council, but thay are just setting up standards if I understand correctly.

I am more familiar with the home plug (Ethernet over power) type of equipment and that is another option that is available. I think that will become more and more important is situations like this.

[NickCoons]

I've worked with something like this (not this particular one) in other setups before:

HPNA 14-Port Switch (http://www.xterasys.com/hsm1402.htm)

The thing that always attracted me to the HPNA stuff was that it wasn't vendor-specific, it followed open standards and was easily replaceable if the vendor went away.

The first one I worked with was a company that was based in San Diego about six years ago called RC Networks, that I believe is since long-gone. Their device came in 8-, 16-, and 32-port versions. They had built-in T1 interfaces, ethernet interfaces, and of course single-pair phone interfaces. They worked with digital and analog phone systems, and ran at 3.2Mbps. They were very expensive, and completely proprietary. So of course anyone using those systems today is probably out of luck when it comes to replacing bad hardware or expanding their network.

Anything HPNA should be interoperable, including those inexpensive PCI, PCMCIA, and USB adapters for client-side connections. Or in the case of a multi-tenant situation, an HPNA-to-Ethernet adapters.

The one above was found by doing a Google search for "hpna switch". There should be plenty of others as well.