Extending wireless range in a hotel, via repeaters or what?

[r44flyer]

Hi all,

Hopefully someone can offer some advice on the best course of action with this. I'm a novice but will do my best to keep up...

I'm trying to extend the wireless network for someone who owns a small hotel. The hotel is joined to their private residence, ie. it's two houses next door to each other that have been joined by extension, one becoming the hotel. The broadband enters the private house where there is a netgear rangemax wireless router. The idea is to extend the range so that residents of the hotel can use the wireless internet.

Due to the nature of the building(s), there are lots of walls to get in the way, which is nice. I have considered using power line repeaters but I'm not sure if I wouldn't need lots of them all over the place to give decent coverage. Does each of these give good signal strength or are they a little weak and really designed for one remote room in a small house?

The other option I see is to hard wire something like the WG602 to the rangemax, trailing a cable next door to the hotel, and using another 602 to extend the range further through the hotel. Will I get decent signal propagation from the 602? Can I link multiple 602s together as repeaters and bounce the signal around them several times?

What about 'n' wireless? I hear this has much better wall penetration?

Hardwiring several access points would probably be the best option, I believe, but the building is large and complex and routing cables won't be easy or cheap. I also have to consider access to power points for repeaters, which could be ugly if they are just plonked down in the hallways neat a convenient plug.


Thanks very much for any advice.

 

[Azuse05]

Sounds like you've already answered your own question. Despite that, you're saying you're trying to help your friend to allow random people access to his home network which is probably the only thing more effective than an unencrypted wireless access point. Really, not smart.

If you're stuck this way and the netgear can handle multiple subnets then that's one option but really, anyone who values security (or privacy) even remotely would run a second line into the hotel.

Security aside, a home with miles of cable, home lines typically have low priority when faults happen whereas business lines typically have a 24hr desk and repair times listed in hours rather than days.

Two examples:

Firstly you get a line installed from whoever, buy an older linksys e.g. wrt54gl and flash it with this firmware http://www.hotspotsystem.com/en/main/index.html and make your own paid for hotspot, which if you have enough custom/don't overcharge will more than cover the cost of the second line you got installed. Unfortunately the firmwares free because the makes take 20-30% of the revenue but cc/paypal means almost anyone can use it.

The other option is bt (hear me out). Their business lines, unlike home ones, actually are good, have higher maintenance priority and ship with the business hub rather than the slightly poorer home hub. Oh, and they cost the same (so why are people using the residential...). Anyway, free draft n router is a saving plus it doesn't need flashed since it also an open zone hotspot meaning anyone with bt wifi minutes (~26% of the population) can use it while you make money off it by selling openzone vouchers for cash which is more user friendly than the cc/paypal method above although i've never explored just how much one would make doing this.

I suppose it's really area dependant since bt lines are still 8 meg on business, i mean if you could get a faster connection with Be Pro then that plus the linksys solution would be a far better earner for you. In either case, if you have a line into the hotel with a router there all you should really need is a wireless repeater or two to cover the building. If it's big then 3 or 4, or at worst running a lan cable to a corner you cant reach.

Something to consider at any rate, but letting people on your home network is a no-no imo.

 

[tolien]

letting people on your home network is a no-no imo.

Quite, not least because you're liable for anything they do on your connection (not to mention your ISP's likely to get annoyed if you're sub-renting your connection out, extra traffic etc)...

 

[Duke]

I've wireless'd up a small hotel before. I used Netgear WG102 access points, which support PoE, meaning they get the power from the switch (Netgear FS108P which support PoE), so no power points to mess about with. Just trunking of CAT5e to where you need the points.

'N' isn't really worth bothering with as most people's laptops and whatnot will still be 54G.

 

[Flukester]

ideally all the hotel guests should be isolated on their own VLAN, at least when using wired network. on the wireless side of things we use colubris WAPs with Netgear layer 3 POE switches.

most hotels even new builds still provide wired network access from rooms also.

we use Nomadix boxes for large hotels to control everything like portal pages / billing etc, the VLAN setup on switch stack allows the nomadix to easily control everything...with custom software interfacing to that to allow reception to control everything easily