Author Topic: Wifi setup in a school, recommendations? Wzr-600dhp  (Read 3696 times)

Lsh108

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Wifi setup in a school, recommendations? Wzr-600dhp
« on: July 16, 2013, 08:44:58 AM »
I have searched the boards and Internet and have either found conflicting information or confusing information.  So I figured I'd ask the experts.

My situation: I'm still somewhat of a wifi novice, ESP. With the newer technologies, but my local non profit school ask me to assist, so here I am

Details:
3 floors in the school., thick floors 2 separate buildings
About 15 classrooms.  Each currently with a Ethernet  port in each class room. They want to add wireless
Want roaming capabilities so I can go from classroom to classroom seamlessly
Need secure main network for teachers and a separate secure guest network
Currently have 2 wzr-600dhp,  ( to test concept,  I figure I will need at least two per floor.   I'm going to do some heat mapping with these two and go from there for buying more.

My questions: how do I setup most efficiently? Utilizing the dual antennas and achieving what I want listed above?  What features /benefits of these routers can I tap into?

I want to tank you in advance.

duanemitchell

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Re: Wifi setup in a school, recommendations? Wzr-600dhp
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2013, 02:13:08 PM »
Sounds like you've got a project that is a bigger version than mine. I run a small B&B and one of the guest rooms experiences signal dropping. So I bought two of these and have been trying to set them up in a router/repeater config. It's not going well. I'm chipping away at it and making progress. You can read about it in this thread: http://forums.buffalotech.com/index.php?topic=18151.0

Since you say the floors are thick I don't know how you'd "bind" the repeaters to the router device. I think what you'd do is setup the main router with virtual interfaces for teachers, yourself, and guests. Then you could see the same network everywhere. You could then have separate virtual networks for teachers and classses with separate security.

The two big problems I'm having that I can't get answers to are, 1) after rebooting the repeater device I can no longer log into it. It automatically redirects to the main router, and 2) the network slows to a virtual halt if I try to setup the 5 Ghz band with bridge connections. So I've got my repeater setup as a single band device.

Eastmarch

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Re: Wifi setup in a school, recommendations? Wzr-600dhp
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2013, 04:33:18 PM »
Most schools have very thin walls on the floors themselves.

First off, the best bet is to connect a router configured as an access point to an unused Ethernet port. This enables wireless clients to 'jump onto' the wired network at that AP. Then walk around the floor, get a feel for what interferes with the signal and places it is weak.

Then, find a spot right at the edge of that router's reach and put another AP up. Depending on the size of the building, 2 may be perfectly fine. Three in a triangle pattern would almost certainly work, again depending on floor space.

Guest networks come built in to essentially all Buffalo routers, if you don't want the students using it for piracy and other distasteful things, lock it down or give out passwords.

That's it. Wireless network in a nutshell. There are some configuration details but that is most certainly a possible and simple setup.
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