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Fairly large event WiFi setup

Hey guys,

My facility will be hosting a conference with about 300 people, and we're expecting about 300 people to show up. We're estimating 250-300 concurrent connections. From an RF standpoint, it's easy coverage. We have a large amphitheater-style hall with an outdoor patio, so coverage is easy.

It's the sheer amount of connections I'm worried about. We're planning on deploying 12 Cisco 1132AGs. We'll have a 10 Megabit connection available, which, unfortunately, is a lot slower than I like. That's something I'm working on with the guys upstairs. A few of the APs need to cover the outside, where we'll be using Powerline Ethernet to hook them into our network.

Are a dozen APs enough for this? Should we get more? Less?

Any other thoughts or advice is much appreciated.

Thanks!

- Mike

Reply to
BigMike82
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On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:57:50 -0800 (PST), BigMike82 wrote in :

I don't think the number of access point is unreasonable. What I'd worry about is physically placing them so clients get spread more or less evenly. If you try to make it one big wireless network, my experience is that too many participants will get connected to too few access points. You might want to have two or even four wireless networks, and allocate participants evenly between networks. I also suggest using WPA Enterprise to secure all connections from each other, and to keep the outside out.

Reply to
John Navas

"I'd worry about is physically placing them so clients get spread more or less evenly." You're right. The way we'll situation the APs should take care of most things like that. We'll have good coverage, and the APs will be spaced out very nicely. That, and even if I've got 50 users on one AP, they will still be more limited by the bandwidth, than by the number of clients on that AP.

"I also suggest using WPA Enterprise to secure all connections from each other, and to keep the outside out." Ordinarily I'd agree. However, this is a one time event where we'll have 300 people in one area, and so we'll keep it open. Our wireless network is segmented away from our main network, so we're not worried about unauthorized users at the moment.

Reply to
BigMike82

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:19:23 -0800 (PST), BigMike82 wrote in :

That still leaves the issue of any user being able to sniff all traffic to/from all users. Suggest you at least advise all participants to use VPN.

Reply to
John Navas

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