Wireless Mesh

[mstock]

has anyone found a planning tool for outside - City deployment planning, we need to do budget and location planning for upto 130 AP's... any thoughts / deign guidelines etc would be very approciated

[Richard Atkin]

Don't think in terms of area as you would for an indoor survey, think distance. Work out how many APs you need to cover a mile of road, then work out how many miles of road you'll need to cover, and multiply the two together.

The number of APs / Mile will vary depending upon road width, AP height, amount of street furniture, interference from other outdoor RF networks / leakage from other buildings, and so forth. So, if your coverage area covers two very different geographies, work out APs / Mile for both scenarios, and do the maths accordingly.

Regards,

Richard.

[ericgarnel]

Many good tips. Other gotchas to look for:

power & data availability. When we did the mesh in Austin,TX, we had a challenge with many of the street lights (not traffic lights) that do not have power during the daytime. It makes placing PAPs a challenge. Data access is important too, as you can only have so many hops. One other issue that becomes a challenge: real estate on the poles for Pap or rap placement.

Vegetation is an issue as well. If you do your survey during winter, performance, connectivity will be different than spring or summer.

It would be best if you get your utility dept & public works depts on board as well too.

[Richard Atkin]

Good point, when I did Westminster we had to make a lot of changes to the lamp posts, adding circuit breakers, upgrading very old posts to take the added weight, etc...

By far the biggest problem though was getting people to actually work on the lamp posts. In the UK there's no end of certifications & regulations to get through before you can even touch a lamp post. Just wait until you have to close a road so you can get your cherry picker in to put the kit up!!