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HELP! Router for 300-400 people, basic Router guide
hello,
i am looking for some basic knowledge on routers.
What should i look for when choosing a router? which features allows most connected devices?
What features do i look into for better performance between multi user?
What are the key factors in terms of range.
i need around 300-400 person capacity, This is for a college non-profit organization providing free wifi to a fair organized inside the campus.
area size 100 meter by 100 meter aprox ( open space with GC Sheet roof & steel frame structure)
end goal is to have a person connect to the free wifi network and redirect to a captive portal where the user have to "Check in" and/or like even page on facebook in order to use internet.
I am a TOTAL NOOB in this case, but going through hard times, had to take this project, need to make some living.
relying on you guys, Thanks in advance.
Comments
Do you have any idea about computer network, network infrastructure?
i can work my self in router and stuffs, i can flash and use dd-wrt, open wrt, padaven for there most basic features. and i know about computers, i also know some networking, like i can use 255.255.254.0 with class B private ip dhcp routing to achieve my user limit but i dont know hardware capacity/requirement, and some sort of captive portal for the facebook part (this still not sure how i would do).
there is a os called pfsense, but would need some clear guide to use that
So you want a router or an AP? Or both?
Look into Ubiquiti UniFi series
How much area you want to cover and what are the target audience?
Should this be a segregated network or connected to the network they already have there? Just using a netmask of 255.255.254.0 might not be enough depending on your dhcp lease times.
WRT54G w/ Tomato.
E: Wait, it's 2001, right?
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2063272-need-a-wireless-router-that-can-handle-500-users-at-a-time
good morning everyone, thanks for all the response.
did look into there products, thanks need to do more research, let me know if you have used it before. and i need AP + router.
about 120k SQF or 350 feet in length and 350 in width, or 100x100 meter.
ISP provided us with a SFP gigabit media converter and 100mbit duplex connection via static IP setup on router. I am thinking 6 hours of lease time or maybe less, authorities informed me that max amount of people can be 10k in 1 day.
dose not support facebook wifi
thanks will look into it.
@fahim5001 I am going to be honest with you, please hire a network consulting company to build a solution to your requirements.
Low End Talk and Web Hosting Talk are forums set around hosting environments regarding servers in a datacenter, not hotels, office spaces, or warehouses.
My back of the envelope calculations show that 300 people on a 100Mbit connection will not be enough. That's 0.33Kbits/user, which is painfully slow and will cause high ping times due to uplink saturation.
You can try doing something with pfSense and Ubiquity's Unifi Wi-Fi gear, but your mileage will vary.
is it?
thanks for your opinion, appreciate it.
I really enjoy LET because people are helpful around here. and they open new areas on existing ideas.
In my point of view, i am trying to setup a cost efferent really tiny data center which will host 1 physical server as wireless POP for a very small and traffic dense area. i just have a special auth requirement. its same as creating web hosting but for private group of people.
Thats not how bandwidth works. 100mbit duplex will be dedicated 1:1 pipe. this type of bandwidth costs around 500$/month around NY city. but to make it more affordable to people you make bandwidth pools with contention rate otherwise we wouldnt be getting 100mbps connection speed on a 10$ VPS server. in my case contention rate will be 1:6 meaning for every 1mb bw i will have 6 users each with 1mbps connection, or a new virtual number of 6mbps. and in this case for 300 users at a ratio of 1:6, each user from my 300 people will get about 2mbps as minimum speed with a maximum chance of 0.33% of getting 100mbps.
pfsense will be very expensive, around 300$-400$ to build locally, and about 200$ to source it from china, not to mention additional cost for access points about another 200$ and labor and cabling worth another 200$ so thats a NO.
and i am researching Ubiquity's Unifi Wi-Fi gear, and maybe will go with that in the end, or couple of asus n18u
Did you seriously just say $1000 total for your use case is way too much money? Good luck with your budget.
Yeah if $1000 is too expensive - you will have to rethink things. $1000 is actually a pretty cheap price for what you're trying to achieve.
Another thing you can try is - look into open mesh. They use cloudtrax where you can manage all nodes, limit bw per user, give out vouchers, even charge peoples PayPal for usage (for example - you can set it to 1mbps free, 10mbps for $5/day). It gives you plenty of options and you can start small with a few nodes and expand as you get more $ to spend.
My 2c.
You probably shouldn't invest your money in hardware gear but rather in a lot of training, other people doing the job for you or renting some managed service. In all cases: Increase your budget. 'The internet' (or networking in general) is a little bit more complex than just buying a router and entering some commands.
Well, no. Generally you are either giving the service away for free, or charging for it.
Ubiquity UniFi but for the router bit you’ll need to take the higher end version.
Also, not in your budget at all. My home network was more expensive to build and is definitely not scaled for 500 people.
While it's in theory possible to build this for $1000 (and that's assuming one is experienced with this stuff and knows where to cut corners and where not), don't expect miracles from the network. No redundancy, suboptimal performance.
Mikrotik routers generally offer captive portal capabilities while not breaking the bank - look into that. And Ubiquiti makes great value APs. By combining these two, I see this project as possible.
Although as I said, certainly not optimal. Assuming you get 5 UniFi APs, that's still 100 clients per AP.
// EDIT: Are you seriously thinking about using ASUS home AP/router combo? Good luck.
You can't use "like" to give incentive / free access, it's violated Facebook developer policy ( https://developers.facebook.com/policy ). You can only give incentive for log in, check-in or promotions.
Facebook have a facebook-wifi page https://www.facebook.com/business/facebook-wifi ( open on your PC/laptop or if you use smartphone make use you use desktop mode ). You can find list of device that support facebook-wifi.
@fahim5001
You do realize it's possible to get a server from eBay, install a NIC card, and put pfSense on it.
I will echo what everyone else says, if $1000 is too much for you, then you really need to rethink your budget here.
How did you accomplish that?
Just running cabling to every room of a house will cost more than $1k
Aye. Especially if you want it neat.
On top of this, I require 1G WiFi in every room, there's no point to invest in anything less when deploying new gear this days.
On top of this switches with PoE and VLANs (Clearly you don't want IOT in the same VLAN as your PC, nor you want guest devices, office equipment, etc).
On top of this 100% IPv6 support is required, so no older gear due to this either.
Bill runs up easily.
Yeah my house isn't finished yet and I'll be deploying my second AP this next month to cover the other end of the house. So far total cost has been around $500. Serves 3 tv's, two computers, two laptops, and two phones.
@everyone thanks a lot.
did first trial today with asus n18u and unifi uap ac pro. both costed me about 300$ ish. the unifi one performed extremely well and covered more then my required area with a peak of 271 people connected, 70-100% usage and some bandwidth bottleneck.
asus one had the best performance but really shitty range, barely covered 15-20% area, but was at 30-35% load with 122 peak users.
I did some digging before writing this and found asus one has really good hardware (duel core 800mhz broadcom chip, 256mb ddr3 at 1600bus, 128mb nand flash) but with 3x 2db antenna with max 1.3gbit routing
unifi has Atheros 560mhz cpu with 128mb ddr2 800bus ram and 16mb flash memory with 2 gbit routing. but best range performance.
overall, bandwidth was a bit bottleneck, specially with over 200 users.
Both has built in facebook wifi, unifi had better tutorial for setting up for a large group, really appreciated that.
and cabling is really cheap at my location, 1 mile of fiber optic cable (4 core, 1.61 km) will cost about 80$ and about 100-150$ for 1 mile of cat6 copper wires including installation.
but i still want to try setting up a pfsense as router and dhcp server and use my current 2 routers as access point to see what kind of performance i get because i will need that if the event reaches more then 400-500 people
again, i am not giving 500 users 100mbps or even 10mbps each, that would require like 50gbps or 5gbps routing capacity. i am giving about 2mbps for each user, thats like 1gbps required routing capacity at its peak
anyways, if anyone wants i will update this tomorrow or let this die..
again thanks everyone for support.
pfSense build at $125 = HP T620 Plus (ebay) with 4 port Intel NIC (Reddit /r/hardwareswap), fully capable of routing gigabit and capable of AES-NI.
Refurb TP-Link EAP225 x4 $160 (ebay).
Looks like plenty of power to cover that range at far less $1000.
Why go through all of that trouble, then bitch out on TPLink? Just get some Ubiquiti airMAX and PowerBeams and call it good? The only real part the OP seems to keep missing is that bridging garbage gear together is going to make life hell to handle.
Just use multiple UniFi APs and call it done. That ASUS router is a home router and has no place in such environment.
The TP-Link EAP225 need POE power. You suggesting he use a POE 'brick' for that? :P
idk how the hell you get 1 mile of cat6 installed going to different areas for $100-$150 even in the poorest countries.
Also also, why would you be installing ebay hardware into a new deployment at a school? Is it so they have to call you back to fix it over and over again when the used hardware fails?
Probably copper clad aluminium "cat6" cables.
I say "cat6" because Cat5+ spec calls for pure copper without exceptions.