Ask Slashdot: Best Wi-Fi Solution For a Hotel?

dynamo52 writes "I have been tasked with replacing a managed Wi-Fi system for a mid-sized hotel. They have already selected Comcast to provide a 100mbps connection, which unfortunately must come in at one corner of the ~5-acre property. The hotel plans to provide this service for free, so there is no need for any type of billing management system, though it should be secured enough that the parking lot does not become a free Wi-Fi hotspot. Additionally, there is no ethernet infrastructure in place. The existing APs (hidden away in proprietary encasements) seem to be connected via telephone lines and the owners have strongly indicated they would prefer that no new wiring be installed. Have any Slashdotters implemented similar systems? Specifically, what hardware did you use and what special considerations should I take in designing this system?"

Comments

Well if they getting comcast tv as well then

[Joe_Dragon]

Well if they getting comcast tv as well then they may need to rewire the cable system as well any ways. Any way more info on how they AP are setup and linked will help.

And to cut down on free wifi use you can set a password that you just give out to hotel guests.

No Offense...

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense... but judging by your wording, the hotel should really hire a professional. Mark my words: this will turn well for neither you nor the hotel.

Policy

[Patik]

The best hotel wifi experiences have been when I was given the SSID and (simple) password at check-in and, most importantly, the signal reached my room. There's nothing worse than having to go down the hall every time you want a signal, and many people will have smartphones so don't make the password 20 digits.

DSLAM and Auth Server

[ZeroNullVoid]

Setup your own DSL network using existing RJ11/Phone cabling.

You will place dsl modems in each area you want access points.

You can even have all rooms or some premium rooms with hidden away dsl modems and a network cable coming out.

You just need to setup a dslam after the modem and configure routing.

You would want a login interface so users have to accept terms and conditions.

Using the dsl method, you can setup access points at whatever strength seems secure enough wherever there is a phone connection or wiring, and you can splice the wiring if necessary.  You will need to place cheap filters on every normal phone connection, but that is a minimal cost.

You can also look at ethernet over power line, but there are lots of variables and speed issues that makes this not ideal.

Re:Dude, I don't wanna shit all over your question

[arisvega]

.. seems like there is an entire market of consultants ..

Yes, people hire them because they are too embarrassed to "ask slashdot" by themselves.

Wha?

[PCM2]

As usual for "Ask Slashdot," you have left out key details that would allow people to give you meaningful responses. For example:

1. What is the hotel using now and why does it want to replace it?
2. What is a "proprietary encasement," and who put the APs there? Are you expected to put new APs in the same encasements? What will happen to the old APs?
3. You say the hotel doesn't want to lay any new cable. That might just be too bad, but it also seems to imply that there is already some cable somewhere. Why not use the existing cable? You say the APs "seem to be connected by telephone wire," but you don't sound sure. Perhaps it's just long strings with tin cans at each end? Is there any way to find out?
4. If the existing network is as strange and nonstandard as you make it sound, why is that? Was there something unique to the property that made that the best solution, and is it smart for you to ignore that?
5. Before you begin, have you verified that the hotel's contract with Comcast actually allows it to offer Internet access to the public?
6. You say the hotel wants to provide the network for free, so there's no need for any billing management system. Are you then comfortable with the idea that there will be no logging of the network at all, and no record of who might have used it and when? Is BitTorrent OK? How about botnets?
7. If the patrons aren't expected to pay for the network, can they expect it to exist at all? That is, do you have a plan to test and verify that every room will have equal access to the network, and that a guest who came last summer won't return this summer and find out that the hotel doesn't seem to have WiFi anymore (when in fact it's just their new room)?
8. Are you aware of FCC regulations regarding signal strength of your antennas, for those portions of the property that might be natural dark spots?
9. Does your task include just replacing the network or does it also include managing the network, making repairs, etc.? How much time do you plan to devote to that?

There may be more to this job than you have considered.

Re:Wha?

[dynamo52]

OK, while others here have provided good suggestions you are the first to ask specific and relevant questions.

What is the hotel using now and why does it want to replace it?

They are using a third party provider that manages the entire system. This system includes a paywall that they no longer feel is advantageous to their business. Additionally, they are bringing in Comcast to provide telephone and television services as well.

What is a "proprietary encasement," and who put the APs there? Are you expected to put new APs in the same encasements? What will happen to the old APs?

The existing APs are located in individual bottom floor rooms in two story buildings. They are placed in boxes sealed with tamperproof bolts. The only lines in are what appears to be a standard telephone line and a power cable. There is also a telephone line coming out connected to the telephone. Presumably, the company who manages the current system will take the old APs. The existing networking equipment is also protected from closer inspection though does connect through standard telephone punchdown blocks.

You say the hotel doesn't want to lay any new cable. That might just be too bad, but it also seems to imply that there is already some cable somewhere. Why not use the existing cable? You say the APs "seem to be connected by telephone wire," but you don't sound sure. Perhaps it's just long strings with tin cans at each end? Is there any way to find out?

If new cabling is required then so be it. The owners would just rather it be kept to the absolute minimum necessary.

If the existing network is as strange and nonstandard as you make it sound, why is that? Was there something unique to the property that made that the best solution, and is it smart for you to ignore that?

I think the primary reason again was the desire to avoid new wiring.

Before you begin, have you verified that the hotel's contract with Comcast actually allows it to offer Internet access to the public?

Yes

You say the hotel wants to provide the network for free, so there's no need for any billing management system. Are you then comfortable with the idea that there will be no logging of the network at all, and no record of who might have used it and when? Is BitTorrent OK? How about botnets?

The ability to centrally manage the APs is a strong plus. Additionally, logging is not highly critical but the ability to ensure that bandwidth is distributed as equitably as possible would be nice. Yes, I would like the ability to restrict botnets and other undesirable traffic.

If the patrons aren't expected to pay for the network, can they expect it to exist at all? That is, do you have a plan to test and verify that every room will have equal access to the network, and that a guest who came last summer won't return this summer and find out that the hotel doesn't seem to have WiFi anymore (when in fact it's just their new room)?

It should be available throughout. I do plan to test signal strength from every room.

Are you aware of FCC regulations regarding signal strength of your antennas, for those portions of the property that might be natural dark spots?

Yes, I will add APs as needed

Does your task include just replacing the network or does it also include managing the network, making repairs, etc.? How much time do you plan to devote to that?

I will be managing the system also. I do not wish to devote a tremendous amount of time to managing this system once it is in place. A central management console will be highly valued.

Re:Wha?

[dynamo52]

Other relevant info:

There are currently ~15 APs on site

The coverage area includes approximately 350 rooms, two courtyards, and the lobby area.

There are four two story buildings that house the rooms.

The total dimensions of the property are ~100m x ~200m

Re:Wha?

[Solandri]

I've put together a wired/wireless Internet distribution system for a hotel.

The existing APs are located in individual bottom floor rooms in two story buildings. They are placed in boxes sealed with tamperproof bolts. The only lines in are what appears to be a standard telephone line and a power cable. There is also a telephone line coming out connected to the telephone. Presumably, the company who manages the current system will take the old APs. The existing networking equipment is also protected from closer inspection though does connect through standard telephone punchdown blocks.

This is just a regular DSL/DSLAM setup. Basically the hotel is acting like a phone company providing DSL, and the phones in the hotel rooms are the "DSL customers". You go to where the hotel's phone switching equipment is at, and hook up a DSLAM which is connected to your public Internet router. You then use that to "provide DSL" to each of the rooms where you want a wired network drop. The chosen rooms (or tamperproof proprietary boxes in your case) have a DSL modem, which splits the ethernet from the POTS.

You can piggyback this over your currently existing phone lines (that's the whole point of DSL), or you an run new Cat 3 lines just for the DSL (if you don't plan to offer wired network service in the rooms, and don't want customers messing with the hardware). Most hotel phone systems have plenty of extra capacity and lines for you to do this without having to install new cable. The reason for using DSL is that ethernet's specs limit it to 100 m, about 85 m in real life in my experience. That's way too short to reach from one end of a hotel to the other. DSL on the other hand is good out for several km.

It's pretty straightforward stuff if you've done any networking setup. The same stuff about regular DSL applies (e.g. use filters on any extra extensions). And unlike DSL from the phone company, you have to deal with both ends of the service. Most hotels use VDSL/VDSL2 because it allows higher bandwidth over a shorter distance. ADSL is really optimized for Cat 3 distances of several km, which isn't necessary for a hotel, and its max uplink throughput may be insufficient for a heavily used public WAP. I'd provide links but I did this about 5 years ago, so the links I have would likely be outdated.

The ability to centrally manage the APs is a strong plus. Additionally, logging is not highly critical but the ability to ensure that bandwidth is distributed as equitably as possible would be nice. Yes, I would like the ability to restrict botnets and other undesirable traffic.

Once you get the DSLAM and DSL modems set up, they act as a bridge and are transparent. The WAPs will show up on whatever LAN you have plugged into the DSLAM. If you want (and I would recommend), you can make it its own subnet. Assign static IPs to the WAPs so you can manage them. The fancier models will even let you set up VLANs, so you can do fancy things like limit direct access to the WAPs to a VLAN that's not available to customers connecting over the wireless (provided the WAPs are VLAN-aware). You will also have to handle QoS and bandwidth throttling, to prevent a single customer from using up all the bandwidth. But that's a given.

Nevermind the Wi-Fi...

[IonOtter]

Disclosure: I work for a major service provider/telco.

Don't worry about the wi-fi system so much, there are plenty of solutions for that. Instead, worry more about the connection.

You can have the best wi-fi in the world, but if your connection is down, then you've still got a hotel full of angry customers.

Some things to consider?

1. Network diversity. If you are going to get a multi-T1 setup, then make sure you request network diversity. Yes, it costs more, but if you have all of your T1 connections riding the same sets of DS3s to your hotel, you have a single point of failure. I work with this my entire shift, every day at work. The customer bought a 6-T1 MLPPP ckt to make sure their business had enough bandwidth, but all six are riding the same DS3. The DS3 craps out and *poof*. And DS3s crapping out is dreadfully common. Also, having your circuits come to you from different central offices is also a good idea. Again, it'll cost more, but it'll be worth it when some idiot takes out a telephone pole or punches an auger down through the F2 pairs.

2. Employee training. I cannot stress this enough. Every single hotel we do business with all has one, maybe two "IT people", and everyone else in the entire hotel cannot tell the difference between a Cisco or a Black & Decker (router). And trying to find that "IT Person" at 1AM is like trying to find chicken teeth. In the meantime, I'm sitting at my desk, getting escalations from your senior management, pulling my hair out and waiting for SOMEONE on-site to pull the cable out of the RJ48X so I can test to a loop.

Teach your employees where the smartjack is located and what the lights on it mean. Teach them what the CSU/DSU is, and what the lights on that mean. Show them how to do a hard-boot (unplug-replug), how to follow the cables, how to "exercise the jack" (unplug-replug). And if you REALLY wanna give me a warm fuzzy, make a loopback plug, show them how to use it, and leave a few of them hanging on a peg in your telco room.

I know that sounds like a lot to ask from your "associates", but if I can teach a grocery store manager how to do it over the phone, you can certainly do it too.

Checkbox WiFi Hotspot Router

[C0L0PH0N]

I spent several months researching wifi hotspots for a similar installation. I settled on the Checkbox Hotspot (http://www.layerfour.net/store/index.php/checkbox.html). It is a "standalone" hotspot router, which means you put out a one time purchase price, it is not an ongoing service. In addition, you can buy "repeaters" which extend the range as far as you want, and are integrated with the main "Checkbox" hotspot router. All the software is built into the router. It gives you options to print "tickets" which can be for any period of time. They can also be preprinted, say for 1 day, a week, a month, etc, etc. You can also specify "tickets" for special events which let all computers attach using the same "code". Also, you can specify "permanent" tickets. The router locks to the MAC address of the connecting computer, and the service expires when the ticket expires. Those are the key features I was interested it, but it also has a number of other features. Definitely worth looking at. I believe the Checkbox router is a "G" series router, if that is an important issue.

Re:Dude, I don't wanna shit all over your question

[flosofl]

It sounds like you have zero experience deploying enterprise class wireless for high traffic scenarios. It's a lot more than just plopping a couple commodity access points and hoping for the best.

You have to do a site survey to determine the best layout for the APs including equipment placement, channel patterns and power levels to maximize the best SNR against the overall cost. 2.4GHz or 5GHz or both? What are the structural barriers in place? Do you want to have blanket coverage or only cover certain areas? What level of WLAN redundancy do you want? How much should your coverage overlap? Are you bridging wirelessly? Using extended VLANs, centralizing the traffic and management? How are you handling zone handoff?

There's a lot of initial prep work that goes on before you even begin to place equipment.

Hotel Front Desk != IT Support

[j-stroy]

I suggest you shop for a turnkey vendor with an up-time monitoring & support package and signal strength survey as part of installation. That way when any trouble is observed, its logged and dealt with before the front-desk gets inundated with calls. Nothing is going to make you more unpopular with this business than the sheer volume of calls when it stops working. It will be inconvenient for you to drop everything to service this low-markup client. Save tinker toy wi-fi play for hobby time.

Re:Dear slashdot

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

While I do see your point with that satire(and it is a good one!), what's wrong with asking? A professional should be able to tell what he needs to do without asking, sure, but I respect the professional who both knows, and asks to check himself/find better ideas.

Leases

[ktappe]

I've read (almost) this whole thread and while everyone is talking about cabling and whatnot, I've not seen anyone mention DHCP leasing. I just spent the last 2 weeks traveling and spending every other night in a new hotel. EVERY place had problems with DHCP leases. That is, you could connect to the WiFi spot(s) but often could not get a lease and ended up with a self-assigned IP. From what I read, this is due to leaving the routers in the factory config. which is for long lease times (I think 4 days is common). That sux when you have guests coming and going daily; the leases take days to expire and the router runs out of IP's to dole out. So whatever you end up doing, please have the routers configured for *short* leases (perhaps 1 hour?) so when guests depart their slots can be reallocated to new arrivals.