Connecting 6,000 Homes, questions?

[jmbear]

Hello,

My company usually does Municipal Wi-Fi Networks on parks, libraries and museums. We use Meraki APs for this. We came across a new project in which we will be using 60 Meraki Outdoor APs with 7dBi Outdoor Antennas along with 6 MR58s for back-haul to cover around 6,000 homes within an area of 1.13 Square Km or 0.43 Square Miles. We got a 2MB/s symmetric connection and can scale it up to 34MB/s if needed. We will give 512Kbps speed to every user. We are aiming for 15% penetration or about 900 users. There are no significant sources of RF interference in this place. This is a trial deployment.

I came across Ubiquiti and have been asking some questions in the forums, what interests me the most is future implementations.

So here are my questions:

If I set up one tower (15m tall) with 3RocketM + 3 120 Degrees 2.4 Ghz antennas, what radius can I expect to cover?

Same question but 5 Ghz antennas?

I know "It depends" but with Meraki I can reasonably assume I get 150-300m in radius from each Meraki Outdoor AP.

What about speed per user? With the set-up I mentioned I should be able to serve 900 users according to Ubiquiti's specifications. What is the maximum speed I will be able to offer each user? Let's assume I have infinite bandwidth in my gateway.

I know "It depends" again, but basically I want to know what will be the limit on this technology. Back in college, I was able to download at 40Mbps from my dorm's WLAN. I would love to offer that.

Finally, would you say Ubiquiti's APs are better than Merakis APs overall? What I dislike about Meraki is their license fee >< They are also more expensive but their overall support is great!

I know some of the answers might be fuzzy, but fuzzy is good.

Thanks for your help!

[rconaway]

You have come to right place grasshopper. Although we have been courted to be set up up as a VAR for Meraki;, I have chosen the path of Ubiquiti. In fact, I just left a meeting for a complete city-wide deployment which will be done with Ubiquiti.

The primary difference in philosophy is that Meraki is a mesh vendor. Ubiquti is going to require that you use manual WDS links for your hops. That and you are going to have to provide your own authentication system. I recommend Patronsoft FirstSpot although there are others out there. Keep in mind there are 2 product lines within Ubiquiti right now, pre 802.11n (a/b/g) and post 802.11n.

Pre -

Same 2.4GHz area coverage with 6dBi antennas instead of 7dBi antennas around the units. Pico 2 HP's work well here. Waiting to hear if we can use larger antennas yet. I'm pushing hard. $80 retail. You will need a Nema enclosure for power supplies. Home Depot has them for about $30. 20-30 users each.

Can put 4-6 5GHz radios on a tower. I would suggest 4 Power Station 5's with 90 degree sectors. Each one can support up to about 30 client backhauls with a max of 25Mbps on a 20MHz channel. Total tower bandwidth, 100Mbps. Nanostation 5's and Powerstation 5's depending on distance.

Post (New Airmax products , Rockets, Nanostation M's, etc...). keep in mind firmware is still developing and has recently gone from Alpha to Beta. Not all kinks are worked out yet but potential is awesome.

Same 2.4GHz coverage area as Pico 2 HP's but needs antennas. FCC limited to 6dBi antennas also. REALLY needs bigger omni's. Same limitation as Pico's but has faster processors. Will handle more users from that fact alone. If all users 802.11N clients, then 100 users or possible more. Bandwidth maximum of about 50Mbps per AP with 100% 802.11N users.

Tower can be 3 Rockets 5M's with 90 degree sector antennas. Each rocket can handle 100 Nanostation 5M backhaul radios. Max capacity about 100-150Mbps+ with 20MHz channels. Total capacity 300-400Mbps although you can use 4 90 degree sectors with 4 rockets for even more capacity.

[jmbear]

You have come to right place grasshopper. Although we have been courted to be set up up as a VAR, I have chosen the path of Ubiquiti. In fact, I just left a meeting for a complete city-wide deployment which will be done with Ubiquiti.

The primary difference in philosophy is that Meraki is a mesh vendor. Ubiquti is going to require that you use manual WDS links for your hops. That and you are going to have to provide your own authentication system. I recommend Patronsoft FirstSpot although there are others out there. Keep in mind there are 2 product lines within Ubiquiti right now, pre 802.11n (a/b/g) and post 802.11n.

Pre -

Same 2.4GHz area coverage with 6dBi antennas instead of 7dBi antennas around the units. Pico 2 HP's work well here. Waiting to hear if we can use larger antennas yet. I'm pushing hard. $80 retail. You will need a Nema enclosure for power supplies. Home Depot has them for about $30. 20-30 users each.

Can put 4-6 5GHz radios on a tower. I would suggest 4 Power Station 5's with 90 degree sectors. Each one can support up to about 30 client backhauls with a max of 25Mbps on a 20MHz channel. Total tower bandwidth, 100Mbps. Nanostation 5's and Powerstation 5's depending on distance.

Post (New Airmax products , Rockets, Nanostation M's, etc...). keep in mind firmware is still developing and has recently gone from Alpha to Beta. Not all kinks are worked out yet but potential is awesome.

Same 2.4GHz coverage area as Pico 2 HP's but needs antennas. FCC limited to 6dBi antennas also. REALLY needs bigger omni's. Same limitation as Pico's but has faster processors. Will handle more users from that fact alone. If all users 802.11N clients, then 100 users or possible more. Bandwidth maximum of about 50Mbps per AP with 100% 802.11N users.

Tower can be 3 Rockets 5M's with 90 degree sector antennas. Each rocket can handle 100 Nanostation 5M backhaul radios. Max capacity about 100-150Mbps+ with 20MHz channels. Total capacity 300-400Mbps although you can use 4 90 degree sectors with 4 rockets for even more capacity.

Thanks for your input:

Prior to Meraki we were using Colubris and I heard Microtik can solve our Walled Garden, RADIUS, Splash and Landing page requirements. I am thinking about using the RB1000U what do you think?

Also, would you recommend 5Ghz over 2Ghz? I know it depends on the RF environment, but in my experience, 2.4Ghz is usually better to serve the final user.

What range do you think the main tower will have if I use 4 Rockets with 4 90 degree sectors using 2.4Ghz?

Also, outdoor enclosures for Power supplies is not an issue, we got that covered. We currently have around 250 Hot-Spots distributed in 4 cities.

[rconaway]

I'm not familiar with the MicroTik stuff. I'm sure there are many people here who can give you some feedback on that.

I would use 5GHz simply because that keeps you out of standard wifi interference. I use both but it depends on your environment. That's where the RF engineering comes in.

I haven't tested the 2.4GHz N products and I haven't seen the outdoor antennas but with sector antennas and keeping your modulation rates reasonably high, I would say up to 1.5 miles to a nanostation 2M would probably be the maximum if you want to maintain rates above MCS5 but I'm guessing.

[tellniyi]

JMBEAR,

Mikrotik RB1000u is perfect for your walled garden, web caching, usermanager ad landing page. It comes standard with level 6 license which can handle 1000's of concurrent users. Note that having another machine like the RB1000u acting as your radius server (authentication, administration and accounting) reduces the pressure on your AP's and as such you get more performance from the Ubiquiti Airmax radios.

Cheers.

[vincefer]

Hi,

What Ubiquiti says about the number of users is up to 300 users per site, not per AP.

Regards.

[rconaway]

Actually, according to Mike, it's about 100 users per AP. At minimum with the most optimal settings in 5.8GHz, you could run 4 AP's or 400 users per tower. With a little creativity, you could probably increase that further.

[rconaway]

I'm comfortable with it. If it's that mission critical, duplicate all the equipment on the tower. 4 radios and 4 antennas cost about $2K. If you are generating the revenue that 400 clients can create, then doubling that cost to $4000 and putting a $150 power switch in there isn't a big problem. That gives you 100% redundancy with a 1 minute cutover.

[jmbear]

I'm comfortable with it. If it's that mission critical, duplicate all the equipment on the tower. 4 radios and 4 antennas cost about $2K. If you are generating the revenue that 400 clients can create, then doubling that cost to $4000 and putting a $150 power switch in there isn't a big problem. That gives you 100% redundancy with a 1 minute cutover.

We already got customer service =D I am way more worried about technology than other costs.

[ezyfi-sc]

Have you looked at Open-Mesh? It is similar to Meraki in it's capabilities and functions and works on the Ubiquiti routers. We have one user who has gotten 2-3 radio setups working with Open-Mesh and the Ubiquiti Routerstation. This gives hope for the ability to develop it for the M products. Having the multiple radios is good because you don't lose bandwidth as you do with single-radio WDS. If you were looking at Meraki to begin with, check out OM.

http://robin.forumup.it

http://robin-mesh.wik.is

http://www.blogin.it

Happy hunting.

[supernut]

JMBEAR,

Mikrotik RB1000u is perfect for your walled garden, web caching, usermanager ad landing page. It comes standard with level 6 license which can handle 1000's of concurrent users. Note that having another machine like the RB1000u acting as your radius server (authentication, administration and accounting) reduces the pressure on your AP's and as such you get more performance from the Ubiquiti Airmax radios.

Cheers.

i am thinking of using the Mikrotik RB1100

what i cannot find and i have spent all day searching the forums for help in how i would set this all up so clients would connect to the nanostation m5 CPE and get directed to the walled garden to pay or validate before getting access ?

anyone got details on what i would need ot set in the CPs and also the 1100

[rconaway]

patronsoft Firstspot with a fairly fast server.

[BoC]

"Learn RouterOS" by Dennis Burgess. The guy wrote a great book on MT...it'd be of value to you in getting this working.

[WHT]

Set up Mikrotik beta and use the Hotspot feature. You'll need a Class B subnet scheme as you'll need an IP for each CPE and for each user that logs on. The cool thing is that the user doesn't have to change their network settings - they can have a unchangeable static IP, but the 'Tik will treat them as one if its DHCP'ed IP.

The Hotspot has its own log-in page and you can sett permissive walled gardens.

[supernut]

Set up Mikrotik beta and use the Hotspot feature. You'll need a Class B subnet scheme as you'll need an IP for each CPE and for each user that logs on. The cool thing is that the user doesn't have to change their network settings - they can have a unchangeable static IP, but the 'Tik will treat them as one if its DHCP'ed IP.

The Hotspot has its own log-in page and you can sett permissive walled gardens.

why do i need a class b subnet scheme, i am using dsl lines as uplink and our uplink will not supply and extra ip addresses except whats on the adsl modem right now, we are also using 4 differant ADSL COMPANIES so how can i get around this (unless i got this wrong )

[WHT]

I'm talking about the LAN side of your Mikrotik if you want to support 6,000 homes.