Magnetic Whiteboards are made of metal....

[chazzy2501]

I've been slowly replacing whiteboards throughout the school with Magnetic whiteboards (for UST interactive) as they project onto better. (as they are flat and don't warp when pushed)

 

Welp, poor Wi-Fi for half a term in an older classroom and it has dawned on me that these giant metal slabs can block Wi-Fi quite effectively.  We'd moved a desk (to a different wall), a UST projector and installed a NEW metal whiteboard. What I didn't consider was the Wi-Fi AP the other side of the wall... Doh.

 

it is 100% blocked and now connects rather far away, 1 floor down and two classrooms across! 

 

 

[dhicks]

50 minutes ago, chazzy2501 said:

Welp, poor Wi-Fi for half a term in an older classroom and it has dawned on me that these giant metal slabs can block Wi-Fi quite effectively.

 

We had a similar problem with some snazzy OPS-slot PCs inside touch screens. The screen itself acts as a shield for WiFi and signals for the wireless keyboard - the OPS slot PC tucks inside and behind the screen. In the end we had to put the wireless keyboard receiver on a USB extension cable dangling down underneath the board for it to pick up a signal.

[PotNoodleTech]

You should have 1 AP per classroom anyway to be honest.

[chazzy2501]

1 minute ago, PotNoodleTech said:

You should have 1 AP per classroom anyway to be honest.

Think that'd be overkill, most classrooms only have the teacher using Wi-Fi on a single laptop. Per classroom would take us from 32 APs to around 100! Then the additional cabling and POE switches. As long as they can get around 100Mbps (of actual throughput) I'm happy. 

 

This room was down to 19Mbps. The crappy Realtek RTL8852CE had a low signal but didn't work at all! I had to retro swap an intel 8265 to get it working (same low signal but worked)... This room has ethernet for the UBC hub but after moving the socket was too far. 

 

[DrBeaker]

1 hour ago, PotNoodleTech said:

You should have 1 AP per classroom anyway to be honest.

 

That's what the Dfe CtC project scoped out last couple of years as 'standard' anyway. 

 

1x AP per classroom.

[RedwayNetworks_Michael]

20 hours ago, chazzy2501 said:

Think that'd be overkill, most classrooms only have the teacher using Wi-Fi on a single laptop. Per classroom would take us from 32 APs to around 100! Then the additional cabling and POE switches. As long as they can get around 100Mbps (of actual throughput) I'm happy. 

 

This room was down to 19Mbps. The crappy Realtek RTL8852CE had a low signal but didn't work at all! I had to retro swap an intel 8265 to get it working (same low signal but worked)... This room has ethernet for the UBC hub but after moving the socket was too far. 

 

In regards to how many APs per classroom its all in the design. It depends on many factors such as wall types, how many users in the room, interference etc.

 

Design is so important,

 

I see on almost a daily basis people that flood with APs thinking it will make things better and often we have to tell them to take some down.  (warehouses seem to love overspending on APs then spending more money to get specialist to tell them to take down those APs)

Its a fine line with Wifi and to get 100% is very hard but you can get about 98% with a good design.