I just spent half the afternoon reading the specs and white paper at Vivado, and have learned that each phased array, using all three channels, should handle about 100 clients. The FSU specs seem to use an assumption that there is no limitation to the number of users on one panel- i.e. one array for the conference hall with 500 people, and one array for an *entire* football stadium. While the arrays will certainly provide line of sight coverage for this much square footage, they will not handle this many people. By their own admission, a 4 panel 360 degree array is good for 400 people.
Not to dis the author, just seeing inconsistencies between the review and the reality.
An architect friend of mine who is working on a several hundred person complex in Hawaii asked for my advice on this very issue- is it feasible to blanket a few city blocks so that hundreds or thousands of people can get WiFi?
My answer was no, and I need someone to tell me how the ball park is going to pull this off.
Heres my logic:
a. We have 11 channels available in the US. 802.11b is good for maybe 25 users per channel. (g is more, but this will not be significant in my argument).
b. Wi-Fi broadcasts over 1500 feet, but in my experience 300 feet is about the limit of useful signal strength, even outdoors. However, one access point on the same channel will interfere with another well over 1000 feet, to the point that the channel becomes not reasonably usable
c. Therefore, we can only put access points on the same channel every 2000-3000 feet. I sketched out a diagram of a stadium and used my coffee cup to mark individual access points, and I was only able to fit 5 access points on the same channel in one park, and that was squishing them closer together than I would like.
This gives me a total of 55 access points in the park, for a total of about 1400 people all on the network. Plus, this is not even dealing with the issue that 7 of the 11 channels will overlap with the neighboring channel and cause interference.
So, please tell me, dear slashdotter, what is wrong with this picture? How are they going to place 121 access points in this park?
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I just spent half the afternoon reading the specs and white paper at Vivado, and have learned that each phased array, using all three channels, should handle about 100 clients. The FSU specs seem to use an assumption that there is no limitation to the number of users on one panel- i.e. one array for the conference hall with 500 people, and one array for an *entire* football stadium. While the arrays will certainly provide line of sight coverage for this much square footage, they will not handle this many people. By their own admission, a 4 panel 360 degree array is good for 400 people. Not to dis the author, just seeing inconsistencies between the review and the reality.
An architect friend of mine who is working on a several hundred person complex in Hawaii asked for my advice on this very issue- is it feasible to blanket a few city blocks so that hundreds or thousands of people can get WiFi? My answer was no, and I need someone to tell me how the ball park is going to pull this off. Heres my logic: a. We have 11 channels available in the US. 802.11b is good for maybe 25 users per channel. (g is more, but this will not be significant in my argument). b. Wi-Fi broadcasts over 1500 feet, but in my experience 300 feet is about the limit of useful signal strength, even outdoors. However, one access point on the same channel will interfere with another well over 1000 feet, to the point that the channel becomes not reasonably usable c. Therefore, we can only put access points on the same channel every 2000-3000 feet. I sketched out a diagram of a stadium and used my coffee cup to mark individual access points, and I was only able to fit 5 access points on the same channel in one park, and that was squishing them closer together than I would like. This gives me a total of 55 access points in the park, for a total of about 1400 people all on the network. Plus, this is not even dealing with the issue that 7 of the 11 channels will overlap with the neighboring channel and cause interference. So, please tell me, dear slashdotter, what is wrong with this picture? How are they going to place 121 access points in this park?