Wireless Coverage in a Hotel

Sigh. How big a hotel? How many units? What type of construction? How many sq ft? What type of layout? What level of service? What areas are to be covered? Indoor, outdoor, or both. Conference room? Convention center? Any local interference? Any planned municipal networks? Site survey? What's the budget?

Most hotels do NOT cover every single room with wireless. They mostly have wireless in the public areas and wired in the rooms. Those that do offer wireless in the rooms tend to do so from the OUTSIDE of the hotel, through the glass doors and windows. Hotels tend to be built with the guest rooms on the outside, and services on the inside. It's difficult to get reliable coverage from the central core or hallways to the rooms on the outside. So, they install sector or directional antennas on nearby buildings and "illuminate" the rooms from outside.

However, that wasn't your question. It was what type of access point to use. I think you're looking at the wrong problem. Let's pretend that you've selected a suitable access point and figured out how you're going to handle the backhaul. Now, all you need to worry about is how are you going to manage the bandwidth, deal with intruders, handle security, provide authentication, deal with the billing, detect problems, provide redundancy, do remote troubleshooting, handle obsolescence, etc. As you may deduce, the selection of access points is a relatively minor problem compared to the system management issues. I suggest you look for an effective management system that can handle enough access point to deal with your undefined topology (with enough room to grow). You'll find that the access points select themselves.

You may wanna read this:

's Intel's rant on how to build a hot spot, but it applies to hotel systems as well.

You may also want to check into the offerings by various vendors listed at the bottom of:

You might get a bid from

Even some larger chains only offer access in the "lobby" area. That proposition would be real easy.