Creating a wi if access spot ?

[MehulLakhani]

Hi All

We have a leased line for all our main work/business, which we don't want to touch , I.e. Mess around with

We have a BT business broadband connection, which we use to supply broadband to our conference room. The BT modem is in a hub room, so we have to extend the wireless to the conference room.

We have the BT modem, and the share to a router in the conference room? We have tried various combinations of BT modems, routers, one or two, and then using a net gear modem etc, but it is always problematic.

It works for a few days if it is quiet, or just a few hours if it is busy. It almost seems like when a lot of new people use the facilities , it stops working - I.e. Won't assign an IP address. We have changed the settings so that it release the IP address after 30minutes, and have tried every combination of settings, and routers, but it still fails after a period of time .

When it fails, the wifi does show up when you search for it etc, however you can't make a connection with it. If I go in the hub room, and reset the modem etc then everything is okay, but I can't keep doing this.

Are there any sort of special routers that are designed for public places that can have lots of people use them ? Are we running out of IP addresses ? I am pulling my hair out - any experts in harrow are ? We can pay

R

Mehul

 

[Danny091]

http://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/ Them wifi spots generally get good reviews. Come with an web based setup tool too that lets you rate limit each client so that one person doesn't use it all. They will work together too if you have more than one with the software to hand off to each other if one is getting too much traffic. They are ment to be quite easy to install and set up

What the software looks like



They take power over ethernet as well and come with the adapter to do it so that makes installing them even easier

also i would look at what ip address subnet your running on. If your running on a 255.255.255.0 you might be better off trying a 255.255.0.0 or 255.0.0.0 it depends on how many people It might be a point that your Router is just getting overwhelmed and not able to keep up with the ammount of people its running NAT for assigning addresses and stuff like that.

 

[GefGz]

Meraki are pretty much the industry standard for public Wifi, we've got a Cisco MR12 for public Wifi use and it's bombproof, you'll sooner have a problem with the line than a piece of Cisco kit(generally speaking)

I have to ask, if you've got a leased line why do you also have the business broadband connection, if it's a true 1:1 leased line then you're better off using that for everything, plus leased lines come with a substantially better SLA than standard BT business.

As mentioned above Ubiquiti also do some nice kit, I'd still personally go for the Meraki line but it's probably more expensive in the long run

 

[MehulLakhani]

Ok, let me get this straight . . . .

I can plug the unifi AP into the back of our BT modem, and it will just work.

I understand that the Unifi will get an IP address from the BT modem, using DHCP.

However, for each user who logs onto the AP, where are the IP addresses generated ? By the unifi AP or by the BT modem ? I have the feeling that in our current setup, the number of IP addresses being pulled off, due to the number of users of the wifi , is causing the DHCP server part of the modem to fall over ? Are they not being released ?

Any help gratefully appreciated

R

Mehul

 

[Danny091]

You have to connect a PC to the bt router too for the inital setup of the hotspot, however you can dissconnect it after. I think it has to be connected if you want to use the advanced features though however an old laptop left plugged in running the software would be more then enough.

As for the DHCP it will have to supply it to the clients i think. If you have a look at what your lan is running on.

If your running 192.168.1.* and the subnet says 255.255.255.0 then you can can have 254 connected devices however the router uses one and the AP uses one so that goes to 252. If you need more than that you could change the subnet mask in the LAN DHCP part of your router to 255.255.0.0 this means it would run with 192.168.*.* meaning the last two octets can be used for devices meaning their is now room for 65,534 devices. 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.255.254 . I would like to point out though that i would NOT recommend connecting that many devices and honestly if your using over 50 or so then the standard router most likely cant keep up running routing for that many people at the same time. What router is it?

 

[Caged]

Meraki are pretty much the industry standard for public Wifi, we've got a Cisco MR12 for public Wifi use and it's bombproof, you'll sooner have a problem with the line than a piece of Cisco kit(generally speaking)

I have to ask, if you've got a leased line why do you also have the business broadband connection, if it's a true 1:1 leased line then you're better off using that for everything, plus leased lines come with a substantially better SLA than standard BT business.

As mentioned above Ubiquiti also do some nice kit, I'd still personally go for the Meraki line but it's probably more expensive in the long run

It's more expensive in the short run too. The MR12 is a very average access point with a good management system backing it up, and I personally wouldn't be spending money on 2x2 802.11n on a single band in 2014.

Meraki and Aerohive both do public hotspots out of the box with all the NAT, content filtering etc. taken care of inside the AP. Both will give you a free one for sitting through a webinar.

 

[MehulLakhani]

Hiya

Been reading up lots , but still confused. Can anyone recommend a product, that is easy to setup, and will provide its own IP addresses/DHCP etc, so that I dont have to rely on the BT modem, as I think it fails under the strain. A link would be very helpful to something that would be recommended ?

R

mehul

 

[pdw8]

I use Ruckus on a daily basis, use them in many main stream locations like coffee shops, pubs, hotels and retail stores. Can't fault them one bit, just connect to the gui, put an IP address (on the BT routers range) and then it can handle dchp itself.