Need a better WIFI solution for RV park

I would like to find a better WIFI solution to recommend for the RV park I am in. Below is the site map for the park. There is a DCMI tower located near the club house but no chance of any other cables running to any location in the park. Right now they use a Linksys Mesh Repeater arrangement that down right sucks. The repeaters/AP's need to be stronger so there are fewer of them to minimize speed loss getting to the other side of the park. Also remember that most people are using laptops inside metal trailers. Any ideas would be appreciated.

I know there are guys that know networks better than myself here. Hoping to find an economical solution that will improve reliability and performance.



Thanks

Well you didn't say what model of repeater is currently in use so the following may be pointless.

To max throughput you might want to consider using mesh node devices that have 3 radios in them. One radio is use for traffic to/from clients (laptops, etc). One radio is used for uplink traffic to other nodes. One radio is used for downlink traffic from other nodes.

John,

The Nanostations are reasonably priced and will do what you want them to do. Metal trailers though can be a major issue. Individual trailers could put outside AP antennas and have those wired to an indoor switch maybe (?). The radios would be dual band - "A" for the WDS and "G" for client access.

I'm currently looking at the products over at www.open-mesh.com for an install - they have outdoor enclosures available and are dual-band (at least the enterprise ones are), but should be way easier to set up and manage than most WDS arrangements. I picked one up today to test - will let you know how it goes.

There are many much nicer options out there but they're all exponentially more expensive.

I also know the Picostation can be reflashed with NG firmware and turned into a mesh AP - but the problem with that one is that it's single band, so every hop cuts your bandwidth in half because it has to share the radio for client communications and backhaul communications (probably what you're experiencing now)... however that's a very strong AP.

Keep in mind if you're not using self-configuring/self-healing mesh sort of network or with some controller, you'd have to manually tune multiple access points - to avoid interference with one another while providing maximum range - this is a real PITA and most people don't have the skills or the tools to do it - and of course, the environment is always changing with different big metal structures moving around the campsite all the time - so something managed will make your life much easier.

Somewhere on some forum I read mentioned two radios in one box for a similiar endeavor...

I'm guessing the only "utilitiy" wiring campsite to campsite is electric and not old copper for telephone nor cable for TV?

Are there street lights in the camp ground?

Curious if anyone out there in networklandia has every tried a powerline network combo wireless meshing thing in a campground. All I have read so far is just doing wireless. I know today though there are no real standards for powerline networking; but what's there is not really that expensive.

Many years ago I had a "project" relating to wireless access inside of planes being serviced inside of large hangars. We "tested" various methodologies available at the time and I had a kind of unlimited budget and various manufacturers of various technologies of "stuff" to play with.

Personally I don't recall anything tested worked to my liking. This was about 2005-6 or so.

There is electric running to all campsites but that is about it. Not sure powerline networking would work going through the power transformers that feed the entire park. This place is like a small city. Right now there are poles with the Linksys repeaters mounted in weather proof boxes scattered all over the park. They are all powered so replacing them with a dual band setup should be easy. I am still trying to sit down with the guy that oversees the WIFI but he seems reluctant to discuss things even though the elected board members seem to want this fixed. Of coarse very few of these people know anything about networks and seem to think it should all just work like their cable modem does at home. I have told them we are in the middle of a corn field far from any cable internet. The DCMI ISP they contracted installed a tower near the clubhouse (we helped pay for the tower). They use these towers all over this area supporting a few local cities. I believe their highest speed is 4MG. Also wanted to see if the current router has some logging to see what the peak loads are to try and see how many people have laptops in here. I have explained to people that they will never have a system here that allows them to use Netflix to stream a movie (trust me some have bitched when they tried and failed). I think the speed cap per user would go a long way to help deal with people that try and download files and such. Also the self healing mesh network would also help keep it running at peak efficiency.

Sounds like an update to dual radios would work; except for maybe the politics of it all.

Like you said most folks are only familiar with the basics of using wireless access points in the subdivision.

The comfort level of the relationship between the board and the current vendor my be somewhat restrictive or may be something that the board doesn't want to deal with or it could be some contractual obligations which would distance you from the contractor.

We had issues in our small subdivision of a 100 homes years ago and at the time the HOA board simply chose to ignore them for whatever reason.

I dealt with them by getting on the board.

Ruckus Wireless


I go with Ruckus on anything of larger size. The signal propagation especially through metal (Have a few setup at KOA Campgrounds) works very well. Its ability to identify rogue networks and adjust signal around to reduce interference is a great help in these situations as we found a lot of RV's have their own internal network with other wireless routers (mostly for printing). The Zone minder can adjust the AP signal based on usage in heavy usage areas in certain directions as well and the meshing works without fail.

Hope that helps


Troy

I've spent a lot of time dealing with Ruckus lately - my only concern with them is the cost... I do think they're one of the most full-featured mesh systems available - at a premium. They want between $700-1000 per node plus a controller which will cost thousands.

Depends on the budget available.

I contacted Open Mesh and got this reply

"You have a very large park John

You would need a node for every 5-10 camp sites. You would also need a lot of wired internet points both to keep hops low and to provide enough bandwidth for this many users.

If you have trees, I would stay away from the MR500 and go with the OM1P (single band) devices. They penetrate better.

Mike"

Well right now I don't have an idea how many people are using the WIFI. I know many trailers are not used much and many only on the holidays. It is probably one of the reason this setup works at all. At the price for Ruckus I think people would be better at getting their own solutions if they needed something better than what we have.

There is still other options that might make this setup work better. Need to find what router they are using and if it can "cap" the bandwidth per users and other things.

So if there are other ways to improve this setup that you can think of please feel free to suggest. I am still working on getting the equipment list but with the storm that blew through here yesterday and losing power all night it has been a low priority.

Agreed... Ruckus taint cheap. Just another option to consider before pulling the trigger on something different. My vast experience fighting WiFi with RV camps and those metal buses, trees, and rogue AP's forced my hand into a product that works. I just wish it was cheaper but once we install one we never have to go back.

Another option (but expensive) and maybe you could do a little bit at a time would be to run fiber in the campground.

Historically (at a cost) for building of an area (industrial, living space etc) the design called for fiber / street utility boxes around the entire circumference of the designated space.

One thing I am going to look at also is maybe a bridge from the tower to the center of the park. That would at least cut off a couple hops for a lot of people. Not a chance the board will do optical or cable in here. These people are really cheap. There is a lot of older people in the park that might use their laptops but also think it should not cost anything to put in a working system.

Hey John,

I meant to post this the other day... What I'm thinking would be best for your situation is similar to what you said above... instead of expecting the mesh to hop all the way back through a bunch of extra nodes, I'm picturing creating two networks on ideally non-competing frequencies (put the backhaul on something like the 900mhz range - lower frequencies will have good penetration). The first one would be a large directional array shooting the backhaul connection across the park to basically give you a wired ethernet connection at a variety of places around the park. Then use the mesh networks on these backhaul connections as if they were normal wired connection points. I'd go with more than 2 points - i'd try to go for 5-10.

I will say that, for now, I've taken open-mesh off my list because they don't feel like they're as production-ready as I'd like... and with 3 access points in my house - a PicoStation M2-HP, a Linksys N Business AP, and an Open Mesh OMP1 (yeah, i know - conflicts) - I had excellent signal on the other two and the Open-Mesh product seemed horribly underpowered - I got a lousy signal just one floor down. Maybe their enterprise product is better - but for the install I'm working on right now, I took them off the list and I'm going with an all wired backhaul (non-mesh). That said, it wouldn't be horrible to spend $99 and test one out.

I am kinda wondering what DCMI uses for their customers as they use towers all over this rural area. I think that maybe they use directional antenna's aimed at the tower's AP. We don't use this AP but rather there is a cable that runs down the tower to a box of theirs then out of that is Ethernet that goes to a switch then part of it feeds the office computers. Two cables go from the switch back up the tower to two separate AP's that are about half way up the tower. These two are for two mesh WIFI's.

One mesh uses Linksys routers tucked into weather proof boxes with the two antennas sticking straight down. These sit on poles about 20 feet high. They are on channel 2.

The newer mesh put in when the DCMI tower was installed are on channel 11 and I am not sure of the models yet but understand they were recommended by DCMI and have an external antenna connector on them. I am trying to convince the board to ditch the Linksys and get some better repeaters. The newer mesh runs on g where as the Linksys uses b.

Where my trailer sits is pretty close to the center between the two meshes. I can log into either one and have to say the newer ones are better.

I will keep trying to get more detailed information.