Can I rely on wireless - auditorium?

[news2010a]

Folks, imagine I am designing network connectivity for a 2,000 sq. ft. auditorium room.

I am planning to provide few Ethernet network drops on the front section and back of the room.

Then for all other seats, I am planning to rely heavily on Cisco access-points and let me people connect only via wireless in order to minimize costs.

Do you agree with me that wireless is reliable enough these days and therefore I will be alright if no network wired connections are available?

[Richard Atkin]

Right, so lets put this in to context and make some assumptions :o)

2000 sq ft is about 44 x 44ft, which is about 12m x 12m, which I guess is about the size of a single class room.

If a class holds 30people, all using wireless, and you install an A/G Access Point, then you've got a realistic maximum bandwidth of ~2x 20Mbps. So, providing all people are doing is looking at lecture notes, surfing the web and sending e-mails, you will PROBABLY be ok. If however, you've got 30 students all learning about Hi Def video editing, you're going to be in a world of pain!

If you can please provide more information about what the network will be used for, expectations in terms of 'user experience', etc... then I'm sure I / somebody else can help you out.

All the best,

Richard

[news2010a]

My apologies. Total of size of auditorium is 6000 sq. ft. Total number of seats=100.

No video requirements. People would be mainly using computers to check e-mail, browse web or webex session for example.

[SHANNON WYATT]

If this is your only location you may want to give the 1250 a shot. It is Pre-N, so for the N clients you would get the performance boost. You would need a Gigabit port for that.

I've done a bunch of schools and I find that we only have problems when they are doing things they shouldn't. Like 30 users on a single access point trying to take an SOL exam.