Wireless access across multiple floors?

[RedTen]

Hi,

We have a wireless router in the basement of our building. We are 4 floors high and need access to the wireless network on all of the floors with good signal strength and acceptable speed.

Is the easiest way to use a VLAN and use 3-4 wireless access points? Or just simply boost the signal a couple of times.

I assume boosting it is going to affect the signal quality somewhat?

Thanks

 

[Sp00n]

Are there wired points on each floor?

If so, then I would just put AP's on the necessary floors.

 

[Curiosityx]

Personally if your going to distribute wireless access across multiple floors it would be easiest to use a wireless lan controller and lightweight access points, this will not only allow for centralised administration but also increased security and radio resource management.

 

[K.C. Leblanc]

Multiple APs is definatly the way to go, I can't see why you would need to use Vlans (unless you've got a lot of clients).

Can you give us an idea of scale?

 

[Chief Wiggum]

Personally if your going to distribute wireless access across multiple floors it would be easiest to use a wireless lan controller and lightweight access points, this will not only allow for centralised administration but also increased security and radio resource management.

I'd do this - worth the investment it you want to go wireless properly and it also allows you to deploy a 'visitors' wireless lan with the same foot-print too. It wil also help with Wireless Domain Services, which takes care of roaming between AP's etc...

 

[RedTen]

There are wired points on the floor however these go to a fibre connection into the city.

The wireless router is on our seperate line, just an ordinary business broadband. My boss mentioned VLAN, i assume he means connecting the router to our network then creating the VLAN to keep the AP's seperate?

Im really not familiar with VLAN's.

And idea of scale, around 200 users. Obviously not connected all at once.. (to the wireless router)

Thanks

 

[K.C. Leblanc]

The wireless router is on our seperate line, just an ordinary business broadband. My boss mentioned VLAN, i assume he means connecting the router to our network then creating the VLAN to keep the AP's seperate?

Im really not familiar with VLAN's.

Ahhhh, I think the average domestic router would struggle long before you got 200 users on there. Standard access points don't tell to play ball with more then ten users on each AP. If your using APs in range of each other you need to read up on 'non clashing channels'.

As for VLANs, this is well worth a read.

 

[Curiosityx]

There are wired points on the floor however these go to a fibre connection into the city.

The wireless router is on our seperate line, just an ordinary business broadband. My boss mentioned VLAN, i assume he means connecting the router to our network then creating the VLAN to keep the AP's seperate?

Im really not familiar with VLAN's.

And idea of scale, around 200 users. Obviously not connected all at once.. (to the wireless router)

Thanks

Then yes i would recommend a more robist wireless solution, if you wish to implement vlans and wireless i would consider also laying the foundations for the addition of layer 3 switches to handle routing rather than routers themselves.

 

[RedTen]

Ah i see, i believed access points would just overlap in terms of signal.

Theres never going to be more than 5 people using the wireless at one time, its purely if a client comes in we need to give them access to the internet and we dont want them having direct connection to our network.

I will pass the info on guys, cheers for the input.

Also, very good link on VLANS thanks K.C.

 

[Curiosityx]

You can manually overlap channels as long as you assign channels to access points that are non-overlapping otherwise you wont gain any advantages in terms of throughput within a cell.

For example 802.11a has 8 non-overlapping channels where as 802.11b/g has 3 non-overlapping channels.

So in your case should you configure the access points manually and placed one on each floor you would assign say the access point on floor 1 channel "1" the access point on floor 2 channel "6", the access point on floor 3 channel "11" and the access point on the four floor channel "1" again. This is a crude method and generally only works well when access points are grouped into smaller areas say several on a single floor.

Have fun