Church Wireless network implementation.

On 15 Feb 2007 17:32:08 -0800, " snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" wrote in :

God help you! ;)

Preferably by cable, Ethernet, powerline network, phone line network, or coax.

You are correct. Each repeater cuts network speed in half, and you probably have a big enough area that speed will be much less than the maximum even without repeaters. But much depends on how many simultaneous clients you will be serving and what they will be doing.

Security. Quality of Service. Stability. Reliability. Ease of management.

Agreed. So use enterprise grade gear (e.g., Cisco).

And use a WPA key, not a church key.

You didn't really answer the question. What's the most optimal solution?

I'm curious. Why? Do you expect parishioners to bring laptops during services?

(Drivel: The local temple once asked me about cell phone jammers for preventing cell phones from interrupting the services. About 6 months later, someone else from the temple asked me about cell phone repeaters to improve cellular coverage inside the building.)

What's that in square feet? Inside topography is very important. If there are large obstruction inside the "large area", there may be coverage problems.

OK, Does 3+ equal 4 access points? Access points are fairly cheap. You can put 3 in each "airspace" on channels 1, 6, and 11 before you get into overlapping channels. Might as well go for the maximum.

At what speed? DSL comes from everything from 384/384 kbits/sec to about 6000/512 kbits/sec. I'm curious as to how many simultaneous users you expect to have using the system.

Lots of ways to do that. I suggest you forget about repeaters and WDS bridges between buildings. I can explain why if you really want. Plan on running some CAT5 cable from each access point to some central ethernet router.

Find pipe. Push a wire snake through the pipe. Pull a nylon pull line through the pipe. Attach CAT5 to one end of the pull line. Pull the CAT5 through. Terminate the ends with RJ45 connectors and plug into either ethernet switch, router, or access points. You can also use Coax Cable, phone line, fiber optics, or power line networking to provide the backbone. However, there's some question as to how many seperate bridges you can run on these systems. Perhaps a hybrid approach where you run CAT5 inside the two buildings, and then run coax, phone, fiber, or power line networking between the buildings.

Slight? If you use wireless as a backhaul between access points (as in a repeater or WDS bridge), you cut your maximum speed in half. I can't tell if this will be important because I have no clue as to how this will be used. If you're setting up some kind of multimedia experience or game network, forget repeaters and WDS. You might get away with it for light browsing and email. If you have more than one repeater or WDS bridge between the furthest client and the router, you will have miserable performance and complaints.

Think access points, not routers. There's only one router in the system. However, realize that you can convert a wireless router into an access point quite easily. Details on request. Commodity wireless routers are somewhat cheaper than access points (because of larger sales volume).

Cisco, 3com, Nortel, Sonicwall, and Siemens. You will NOT get the level of reliability you are apparently expecting from commodity routers (Linksys, Belkin, Dllink, and Netgear).

This should be a clue. Are you expecting this wireless network to be zero administration and 100% uptime once deployed? If so, even the best of the breed can't do that. The problem is abuse. I can rattle off horror stories if you're interested. Just think of what happens if you have a meeting, and everyone turns on their Windoze laptops simultaneously, which instantly try to update Windoze, the anti-virus program, Quicktime, Mozilla, etc. Nothing happens while everyone waits for the updates to finish. Say goodby to about 15-20 minutes.

What about price? Ok, you wanted a specific recommendation. I suggest you look into various "Wireless Switch" systems. They are centrally managed, are easily monitoried, quite reliable, and priced accordingly. Wireless Switch vendor list: Symbol Airespace (Cisco) Aruba (HP) Entrasys Xirrus Meru Networks Foundry Networks Trapeze (3Com) Chantry (Siemens)

Also, I suggest you read the Intel Wireless Hotspot Guide, which is apparently missing from the Intel Web pile. See my copy at:

There's quite a bit on the basics of setting up such a system in this document.

for when the sermon gets boring

Exploding battery fires could be quenched with holy water.