Thanks for the reference guys... Glad that was helpful.
I really need to do a news article but I'm not sure I still can with the total site redesign... but something new just came out that may change everything. Ubiquiti just announced a new addition to their UniFi line that will change the landscape of Wifi.
The idea isn't necessarily new but before it only existed in really high-end [expensive] systems. As in my previous post, the problems come down to channel saturation and cross interference and crappy handoffs between AP's. Too many and they interfere with each other; there aren't enough channels to keep everyone separate; and if you try to increase density by adding more AP's and turning down the power, you have roaming issues. Well that just changed.
With 3.0 of UniFi, they've changed how it works - no longer do you need to scatter your AP's across the 3 non-overlapping channels (yes - out of 11 channels, only 3 are totally non-overlapping - the rest fall in the middle somewhere causing interference for the channels around them). What they're doing now is having all the AP's on the same channel and they decide which one is listening to that client device by who's got the best signal. This means in theory you can install 100 AP's all on the same channel and they'll never interfere with each other - and because the client device never has to reassociate, there's no roaming issues or lost packets while switching from one AP to another, along with the other issues I described in my original post.
If this works as advertised, it's a game changer. It'll fix the reasons VOIP over WIFI sucks in a large environment (wifi phones don't handle changing associated AP's gracefully during a call) and it'll fix many of the roaming/association issues that come from any environment with multiple AP's required to cover a single space.
So - I say go with all the wireless devices you want - then keep adding new UAP's near groups of devices - start with 3 if you have 70 devices; maybe go up to 4 - and you'll be able to handle well over a hundred wifi devices without a second thought at speeds like you never imagined - and you should be future proofed for the next 5-10 years of wifi evolution as 802.11ac starts to catch on to laptops and mobile devices.
Oh and that stadium article was interesting - I skimmed over some of it last week - but what I got from it was that they touted their credentials a bit and talked about what they should be able to do and how they architected the network layer and broadband aspect, but when it came to actually accomplishing the Wifi RF aspect, details seemed to get shady like they were still trying to figure out exactly how to accomplish what they're after... they have a mission and have part of it worked out, but it sure sounded like they were BSing their way through the details. I can't wait to see how it turns out though! It could set the landscape for city-wide deployments.
