Media for help with large temporary network

help with large temporary network

Hi,

looking for some advice (long and complicated advice)

i need to set up a temporary network in a hotel. 802.11b is required to accomodate all the users.

There will 200-250 users, the hotel backbone is a mixture of 10baseT and

100baseT...I will try my hardest to get to 100baseT connections to the Access Points.

The users will be +generally spread over two floors, but the biggest challenge will be opening and closing when everyone will be in the same room.

I've been reading mixed messages about capacity and access points. From what I can gather, 20-25 users per access point can provide decent service. So I've been looking at putting in 12-15 APs spread around the hotel. (and moving some into the big room for opening/closing)

For the big days, it's a typical open hotel ballroom 67' deep and 72' wide with 250 high-bandwidth using laptops to connect to a files server onsite and doing various things on the internet.

My question boils down to how to provide the capacity (much more than coverage, as the space is not too big, and it's open). If 20-25 per AP is a rule, I would need 10 APs in the room, but would interference then start to cause a problem between the APs and remove the benefit of the extra capacity?

My thinking right now is to place 9 APs in the room. (they will be connected either right to a lan jack or through a switch in the room, depending on the set up) One in each corner, one in the middle of each wall, and one in the centre of the room (using a 1/6/11 channel plan). That way (my thinking goes) there will be roughly equal overlap between the APs and users will be roughly evenly distributed in proximity to the APs. I want to make sure the users are spread out over all the APs, I understand that windows clients will "lock on" to the strongest signal, but will they also shift to an AP with more available capacity even if the signal might be a little weaker? I think the APs I'm looking at have varialbe output power. Would it help or hurt if I turned down the power of the APs?

I had a second thought entirely....overlay a second SSID to try to get users balanced. Using the same layout above, but with every second AP using a different SSID.

Can someone tell me if I'm anywhere near the ballpark, and offer any advice with respect to capacity requirements/layouts/tips tricks etc and offer answers to my questions?

I also have a few generic questions.

Is there a generic way to filter out specific types of traffic (ie VoIP) at the AP level, or does it depend on the Access Point itself?

If I manually limit the bandwidth of the APs (to 2 or 5.5 Mbps), would that help capacity, or are the automatic adjustments of the devices sufficient?

I'm hoping to be given a block of IP addresses to give to my APs so I can manage them quickly, but if I don't and they are assigned IPs through DHCP, how can I (using WinXP) find them and log on quickly? (i intend to use a web interface to administer them, I don't have time to really learn the command line interface)

thanks for any advice in advance, even if it's simply pointing to another forum or a good book. The books I've read have been helpful, but not really on point for what I need.