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How to wifi-enable an entire condominium block?

dineshpandian2
Level 1
Level 1

Good day all.

I'd be grateful if someone points me in the right direction here. I need to wire up, or rather, wifi'ize an entire condominium block, 12 floors, with a total of 72 units across all 12 floors.

What would be the best way to do this? What routers or access points do I need?

Internet would be provided by means of an ADSL modem via ethernet.

TIA.

12 Replies 12

Scott Fella
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Well for one, the ADSL is going to be your outbound connection, so you will need a switch that can supply PoE to the AP's you choose. 12 floors, so 6 units per floor.... You can get away with 2 ap's per floor to be on the safe side. Now you have to decide how will you mount the ap's.... on the ceiling, wall or mount above the ceiling. the 1242's can give you both 802.11b/g and 802.11a. You can also get those with just 802.11b/g. These do require external antennas. The 1131 looks kind of like a smoke detector and has built-in antenaas. These also have both 802.11b/g and 802.11a radios. Depending on the distance for each run. you might need to have 2 24-port PoE switches. One to cover floors 1-6 and the other to cover floors 7-12. The adsl can be connected to the one that covers floors 1-6 since most likeley this will be next to the adsl modem. the two switches will be connected via copper or fiber.

Now if you go with LWAPP or autonomous ap's is up to you. Here is a link you can browse different products.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/index.html#~acc~enterprise_wireless

-Scott
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Thank you fella5 for your reply.

I was thinking of a way to connect the

APs wirelessly, as in a mesh of some sort.

ADSL Modem --> Router ..>AP1 ..>AP2

Would that be possible?

TIA.

You could do indoor mesh, but you will still need to run cable to some of the mesh ap's. Also you want to try to keep the link in a MESH no more than 3 ap's.... One RAP (needs ethernet) and two MAP's. RAP > MAP > MAP.

But since you have 12 floors, it would be RAP > MAP. It might be cheaper if you just use Access Points instead of trying to implement indoor MESH. This way you can really provide the users with good quality service.... I think.

-Scott
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Thank you very much.

Not a problem.

-Scott
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Gentlemen,

I have a slightly smaller scale of a project, but maybe higher requirements in terms of security.

Was asked to do a 2-site wireless with centralized authentication (RADIUS?) so that users going from Bay Area to San Diego dont have to authenticate separately.

Having that said, plus I'm not experienced with this... What I've come up so far is using the Aironet 1250 as the AP... but beyond that... I'm not sure what software application to use as the RADIUS server... with our size, probably we're not going to use a Wireless LAN controller...

Can you guys recommend anything? Thanks!

You can use Cisco ACS, Microsoft IAS or any other radius server. There are more docs out there for ACS and IAS. The others, you will have to hunt for.

-Scott
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Hi Fella5... Thanks for the quick response...

IAS and ACS are both for Windows.... I'm still doing search... do you recommend any other product for Redhat Enterprise?

In our environment... except for laptops, everything else is Redhat... including development stations. Thanks!

ACS you can run on Linux, but IAS runs on a windows server. There is a free radius server: http://www.freeradius.org/ but you will have to figure out how to set that up.

Here is another link that might help.

http://vuksan.com/linux/dot1x/802-1x-LDAP.html#PEAP_with_OpenLDAP

-Scott
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Hi Scott,

Alot of very helpful links and tips here. +5 points for sure!

Take care,

Rob

Hi Fella5...

After answering the question... I did compile and installed the freeradius software...

Although I haven't been able to test this due to not having a WAP yet to engage... thanks for the link! I'll definitely look at every possible options before starting doing it.

Keep us informed with how it works for you.

Thanks.

-Scott
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