magicker2 Posted April 23, 2008 Posted April 23, 2008 Hi folks, The school I work for wants to setup a new class room based on 1 large central room with 5 small breakout room connected to the larger room The plan is to put 130ish pupils each armed with their own laptop into the room and of course connect them all via wireless. So ... what is the best way of doing this. we had a meeting with one company who did not believe that it would be possible to log the pupils on to the domain with this number of clients. They were keen to push thin-client approach but the school is not interested in this. There suggestion was use the laptops as stand-alone devices with internet access. They suggested using HP kit (lots of it!!) How would you approach this problem? Is it do-able? Do we need to be looking at something like Extricom or that just smoke and mirrors? Help!
strawberry Posted April 23, 2008 Posted April 23, 2008 8 ap's using 802.11a, 3 ap's using 802.11g. in theory anyway, not sure it would work in practise.
SimpleSi Posted April 23, 2008 Posted April 23, 2008 I think there's either a typo in your post or something anyway How can you teach 130 pupils in one room? regards Simon
SimpleSi Posted April 24, 2008 Posted April 24, 2008 I meant how can you TEACH 130 pupils in one room regards Simon
magicker2 Posted April 24, 2008 Author Posted April 24, 2008 it will mainly be a home base for the year group and teaching will be broken down in to smaller tutor groups in the smaller break out rooms. either way .. does anyone know how best to connect them all?
tmcd35 Posted April 24, 2008 Posted April 24, 2008 The answer, AFAIK (and I'd be extremely interested myself if someone else has a better answer), is with wires I'm afraid. We have a similar layout, 1 large from with 4 satellites. We have 4 HP access points. In theory, with the right channels (1,4,9,13) we could get 80 laptops going at once. 20 per access point. In practice any more than about 12-15 per access point and things really slow down. Also the amount of time it takes for a laptop to fall over from one access point to the next means it can take minutes to for some students to login. We struggle with 40 laptops in this room!
srochford Posted April 24, 2008 Posted April 24, 2008 Talk to one of the companies that deal with managed wireless networks. We use Aruba and while we're not working on anything like this scale it ought to be able to cope. There are two ways of trying to get wireless to lots of devices - one is to have a few very high powered APs and hope they don't conflict. The other, managed approach, is to have APs which will turn down their power so that they don't conflict. Given enough of these then you don't get into overlapping channel problems - they simply turn down the power to the point where they're talking to just a few laptops close to them. It won't be cheap but I think you would get change out of £10,000 but you'd be hard pushed to cable that many computers for that money so it's probably cost effective if you want that many machines! I think you could also look at using wireless laptops as thin clients - you then reduce the bandwidth needed while getting the flexibility of wireless laptops.
plexer Posted April 24, 2008 Posted April 24, 2008 For something like that you need a micro cell system that can have move than the normal 3 or so waps in one room. You need specialist advice and that advice may well cost some money. Unfortunate but true I wouldn't try and hand roll something like this. Ben
magicker2 Posted April 25, 2008 Author Posted April 25, 2008 lol i have no intention of getting my hands dirty and have cash for someone to come in and take care of this for me.. the main question is can it be done? I have contacted the above companies (thanks for the heads up) and will let you know how it goes - has anyone had experience of dealing with exticom? thanks
Abaddon Posted April 25, 2008 Posted April 25, 2008 I heartily recommend REACT Technologies who deal with this sort of thing all day long - we have many AP's here at Hampton covering the entire site, all running off two switches... All installed by React. No problems to report, and we regularly have large amounts of users online at the same time. React Technologies - wireless networking, wireless lan switching, firewall, voip, vpn.
SYNACK Posted April 25, 2008 Posted April 25, 2008 (edited) Depending on how well defined the break out rooms are you could use wifi blocking film on the windows and in the walls to partition the areas from each other, this may allow for better usage of the avalible spectrum with less interference. This would of course be in conjunction with a managed solution like the others have recommended. You would not need to seal the whole breakout room from wifi, just adding a shadow from the other APs scattered around would probably increase your possible density and throughput. Wi-Fi Blocking Paint : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech Newly Declassified Window Film Keeps Out Hackers, Phone Calls, EMPs: Scientific American Using directional antennas on your APs will also help to segment the area into more manageable sections. I think a smart provider who plans it properly should be able to use these techniques integrated with a managed AP solution to provide a reasonable amount of bandwidth to your client laptops and manageable interference levels. Edited April 25, 2008 by SYNACK
zag Posted April 28, 2008 Posted April 28, 2008 Wires all the way. Wireless struggles on 30 laptops in a room let alone 130!! 1
Oops_my_bad Posted April 28, 2008 Posted April 28, 2008 I don't see why a decent managed system with AP load balancing and auto tuning shouldn't make this do-able
mattx Posted April 28, 2008 Posted April 28, 2008 I don't see why a decent managed system with AP load balancing and auto tuning shouldn't make this do-able Indeed - I've just finished sorting out another Aruba 800 switch to go with our first as we went over the 16 APs. We now have 2 800 switches, 22 APs working in Master / Local mode - during the summer I'll get round to re-doing the whole thing again so there is some redunancy on the APs. It can be done - expensive yes, but not a problem with a good managed solution.
magicker2 Posted March 13, 2009 Author Posted March 13, 2009 just to complete the thread i started.. we went through a procurement exercise and selected an aruba installer. we installed a draft-n light wieght wap system using 16 waps. the end result is great. every one of the 130 users can hit the network at once with an acceptable level of performance. The real test will be next year when we add another year group to the floor above will let you know how it goes.
Dom_ Posted March 13, 2009 Posted March 13, 2009 Ruckus. Each access point can cope with 60-100 clients, and it's a lot cheaper than we thought it would be!
MarkPower Posted March 13, 2009 Posted March 13, 2009 Ruckus. Each access point can cope with 60-100 clients, and it's a lot cheaper than we thought it would be! As Dom said this is a great option and really easy to install and manage with very little cost. Ruckus can cope well with 30 - 100 clients on each access point, we are out of the box ready to deal with VOIP DATA VIDEO Check out the comments already on Ruckus within the forum PM me your details and location and I will happily send you infomation about the product. Also let me know your location as I am on the road for the 3 weeks so may be passing and can pop in to see you. Cheers Mark
mac_shinobi Posted March 13, 2009 Posted March 13, 2009 Ruckus. Each access point can cope with 60-100 clients, and it's a lot cheaper than we thought it would be! I was just thinking that or wires - will subscribe to see what other options people suggest
adam766 Posted March 13, 2009 Posted March 13, 2009 Have to say we too are very impressed with aruba kit, especially the range of the APs and the set up.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now