[SOLVED] Designing a network

[PoliceDog]

Good afternoon.

I am moving house to a bit of a tricky property which is going to need some thought put into creating a good Wi-Fi network.

The plot is 50m x 22m or 1,100 sq meters containing 3 conjoined single story buildings in a U shape with a central courtyard and one large 17m x 6m basement area and the entire property needs to be covered. As I want only a single SSID I'm thinking access points meet to be used as the entire inside space is cat5 wired giving easy access to a wired connection back to a single broadband router.

What equipment is going to get the job done? I'm thinking building 1, which is 25m x 7m and built with 5 bedrooms and an office will need at least 2 access pointsdue to the number of walls to be passed through, the arch, or bottom of the U shape is open plan, thus 1 WAP, the other side of the U is 17m x 6m open plan above and has the 17m x 6m basement below. Thus 1 WAP upstairs and 1 WAP below?

Do we feel this is sufficient? Which kit is going to be easiest to set up and provide a good enough signal to get the job done, including reaching the courtyard through the exterior wall? I'm not up for mega expensive Cisco gear but don't want to buy cheap and find myself needing a WAP every 5m and another outside as well.

Any help on kit or brand appreciated.

Additional info. Connected kit will be
3 laptops
1 Wi-Fi enabled printer
1 PS4
5 phones
1 smart TV
1 Sky-Q box
1 smart blu ray
2 amazon echos
1 smart sound bar
2 Bose smart speakers
2 children who chew through about 200GB of data each a month.

 

[nigelivey]

Anything stationary, hardwire it!!
Look at Ubiquiti, prosumer grade equipment.

 

[PoliceDog]

Anything stationary, hardwire it!!
Look at Ubiquiti, prosumer grade equipment.

Thanks for the input Nigel but there will be a lot that isn't stationary so back to the original question about kit and access points to great a large WLAN over the entire premises.

 

[faalin]

I use Ubiquity at home and Cisco Meraki at work. What's the saying, had i known then what i know now i would have gone with Ubiquity at work.

I run a 16 port POE switch and 2 AP's to cover my house. Anything that can be hardwired (tv's, computer, gaming consoles) is ran back to the switch, anything else is ran off wireless. Everything is ran off the same SSID so going from one end of the house to the other i dont loose a signal.


In your case you could probably use 3 AP's, one in the center of each building and it should cover everything plus the courtyard.

 

[failboat]

First you need to know where you can get wires to. My guess is three APs would cover it pretty well if interior walls are drywall. You can download the unifi controller and play with their AP placement tool. I wouldn't say it's highly accurate but you could do that and post the picture. I did it for my house and it looked like RF signal was worse than it really was. I was able to get 200-280Mbs using 2x2 mimo AC 5Ghz default channel size on a unifi AP lite in 185sqm house. on the largest channel I got 400Mbs.

How ever you design it. I would recommend running everything back to a single spot. You can have the ISP run the modem there. With POE devices you can get it all on a battery backup and put everything on a single switch if needed.

The bandwidth you are going to buy would be helpful to know. LAN based stuff like NAS too.

If you have a lot of issues sharing the bandwidth you could look into a router with QoS. the edge router X is really nice if your internet speeds are < 100Mbs.

 

[nigelivey]

Thanks for the input Nigel but there will be a lot that isn't stationary so back to the original question about kit and access points to great a large WLAN over the entire premises.

Budget is always a factor............. Personally I always use Ruckus in all my installs, not Ubiquiti. Depending on placement 2 or 3 R500s will spank anything offered by Ubiquiti , will run off a PoE switch and if you want to go crazy get yourself a second hand Ruckus Zone Director ZD1100 off ebay. Will have a 6 AP license by default.

 

[PoliceDog]

Budget is always a factor............. Personally I always use Ruckus in all my installs, not Ubiquiti. Depending on placement 2 or 3 R500s will spank anything offered by Ubiquiti , will run off a PoE switch and if you want to go crazy get yourself a second hand Ruckus Zone Director ZD1100 off ebay. Will have a 6 AP license by default.

Thanks. I've looked up the Ubiquiti stuff after I noticed the answer within answer. Will investigate the Ruckus kit as well.

First world problems of having to cover an 1100sq/m area eh?

 

[kanewolf]

3 laptops
1 Wi-Fi enabled printer
1 PS4
5 phones
1 smart TV
1 Sky-Q box
1 smart blu ray
2 amazon echos
1 smart sound bar
2 Bose smart speakers

Printer stationary
PS4 generally stationary with the display
TV stationary
Sky-Q box stationary
BluRay player stationary
Amazon Echos stationary but don't have ethernet ports

You need wired connectivity and a switch to your home entertainment area. Since many of the wireless devices are probably nearby, add an access point in that room.