6th Form wireless requirement

[Paid_Peanuts]

Hi all,

I wondered if anyone would be able to help me out by suggesting the best possible solution for introducing wireless access into the 6th Form areas?

 

What I want to achieve is a WPA/WEP connection for 6th formers whereby they see the head of 6th form to get the key then they associate. I would like the wireless controller to then give out a 10. whatever address or an obscure address based on a dhcp scope on the controller. I would then VLAN that traffic off back to my BLOXX device which would then filter all internet traffic.

The benefit of keeping everything separate is so the little darlings can't start scanning the network for things or introducing virus ridden laptops etc.

 

Does anyone know which wireless system for about 10 or so AP's would be best suited? Does anyone have any experience with any?

 

Any thoughts or feedback greatly appreciated!

[Dos_Box]

I know that Ruckus access point have a 'guest' network whereby they keep the traffic seperate from your domain (a pre-set VLAN if you will). And it wouldn't surprise me if Meru and others have similar features.

[maark]

we do not have managed wireless but on our cisco 1130 access points you can setup a SSID to associate with a specific vlan - this will do what you require.

On windows 7 clients you can show the characters of a security key so your key would soon be well known. Maybe make it open but then restrict what they get into via your bloxx device.

[steve_nfi]

We created a seperate ssid for them to use but when DHCP allocated an IP address internal security blocked them for internet access because they weren't part of the network.

I allocated a range of IP addresses that they could use which would give them the same internet permissions as they get in school but without actually joining the network.

They then have to allocate one of these addresses to their PC/MAC manually instead of DHCP to get internet access.

If they try to allocate an address outside of the range they get the same effect as with DHCP.

[jamesfed]

Hate to say it but WEP is quite old now so please if you can don't use it - WPA-PSK is where you want to be at a minimum.

For our student WiFi (Aerohive based) we use RADIUS authentication so the students login with the same username and password for the school PCs - it keeps things simple and also reduces the chance they will just go out and handing out the key to their mates.

[paulfinlay]

If the students already have AD accounts you could just let them authenticate with those details. Either by using 802.1x PEAP or a web splash page.

 

Alternatively if you want to go down the WPA-PSK path both Aerohive and Ruckus offer a private PSK feature. This allows every user to have a unique WPA passphrase rather than everyone sharing the same passphrase.

[Paid_Peanuts]

What would you set aside for a simple setup as above with enough AP's to cover an area approx 50x50 meters? No walls, one open space with anywhere up to 200 sixth form students and their devices?

[paulfinlay]

There are a lot of variables. Modern 802.11n access points can provide somewhere is the region of 80Mbps on 2.4Ghz and 150Mbps on 5Ghz of actual throughput. In order to achieve this throughput ideally you want you end clients to be 2x2 dual band 11n clients. If they are likely to be smart phones / older devices then actual throughput is going to be more like 30Mbps per access point. Also what are the clients going to be doing? How active are they? Occasional web browsing / email access or full on multimedia streaming? Decide how much bandwidth you want end clients to have and divide into the throughput figures of the access points to get an idea of numbers.

 

As a rough estimate for web usage for 200 clients i'd guess around 6 APs.