40 Floor Building Network

[Blackrockian]

My name is Ian and I am working on a project for my employer and it involves networking and I am looking for a starting point as this is new territory for us. I appreciate any help you can provide.
We manufacture and sell a device that takes environmental measurements and transmits the data from those through a Wi-Fi connection, to a server, where the data is stored. You can view the data on your smartphone or on a PC through the appropriate app.
In a commercial environment, clients don’t like the idea of us connecting this device to their networks for the obvious security concerns. We would like to explore the idea of setting up our own separate Wi-Fi network completely separate of the client’s network, so we can connect our monitors to.
Our goal is to have a 40 floor building, have a device on each floor. Each device needs to connect to the Wi-Fi network.
My question is, is there a way to spread a network up through 40 floors in a high rise building using repeaters or extenders of some type? Would it take an extender on each floor, or would we be able to get away with a few floors per extender?
Ultimately, I will be calling a network company in to do this for us as it is way beyond our scope. My hope here is to get an idea of the options that are out there and available to us.
Thanks for your help.
Ian

 

[freeskier93]

Who's going to manage it? If your company is big enough to have 40 floors in a high rise you should probably be hiring a network/IT guy/team to build and manage this.

Either way, you're looking at a pretty typical enterprise set up here that uses many wireless APs.

 

[Railgun]

Any company with a decent network guy won't care and would just isolate your gear.

Else that's an expensive setup.

 

[sdifox]

One sensor per floor? You cannot hardwire the sensors?

Usually you just piggyback on existing wifi and vlan your sensors.

 

[SeanFL]

You'll need to feed a hardwire connection every few floors in my opinion. The repeater *may* work one floor above and below, all depends on building materials and how the floors are constructed. Even if they were all glass and open space, you would start to see a slowdown if you tried to hop more than once or twice.

Hope that helps and let us know how it goes.

 

[sdifox]

You'll need to feed a hardwire connection every few floors in my opinion. The repeater *may* work one floor above and below, all depends on building materials and how the floors are constructed. Even if they were all glass and open space, you would start to see a slowdown if you tried to hop more than once or twice.

Hope that helps and let us know how it goes.

Pretty sure op meant Ethernet repeater.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, this is what VLANs are for. Although if it's like a lot of buildings, WiFi coverage is spotty so you'll probably have to install some more WAPs anyways.

 

[Blackrockian]

Who's going to manage it? If your company is big enough to have 40 floors in a high rise you should probably be hiring a network/IT guy/team to build and manage this.

Either way, you're looking at a pretty typical enterprise set up here that uses many wireless APs.

We don't own the building. We are installing our monitors in the building.

Any company with a decent network guy won't care and would just isolate your gear.

Else that's an expensive setup.

The problem is, it’s a building with 40-50 companies in it. Some floors have one, some have two. We are installing the monitors for the owner of the building to monitor the indoor environment and while some might be open to giving us the access, most aren’t. We’re dealing with very high end businesses that handle some of the largest financial trading, as well as research. One of the largest research computers in the world is in the building. They aren’t going to allow us on their network.

One sensor per floor? You cannot hardwire the sensors?

Usually you just piggyback on existing wifi and vlan your sensors.

I wish. The sensors only connect through Wi-Fi.



Thanks for the replies everyone. My next move is to have a network specialist join me on site to see what we are dealing with.

 

[kevnich2]

You intend on putting environmental sensors in a 40 story building that ONLY communicate via wifi? It sounds like you need to design your sensors with multiple ways of communicating that include low voltage wiring and very low frequency, long range wireless connectivity. I could see very few businesses today large enough to need environmental sensors in their building that would also allow you to piggyback on their network.

The correct design for this would be low voltage wiring that connects the sensors to a main board on each floor that then communicates with a central computer on one of the floors that ties everything together. Where you couldn't run low voltage wiring, design the sensors to also communicate over low frequency so that it gets larger coverage per floor, without disturbing the other systems in the building.

In a 40 story building with many large businesses, I can only imagine the amount of RF interference from all of them with their own wifi already in place.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I think that you need to add a Network Engineer to your team or contact a contractor and price out solutions. Adding Wifi to 40 floors is going to be quite a task and it is going to use a lot of equipment. If they are willing to pay that much for the equipment, I would think that getting an engineer would not be a deal breaker. Especially considering if you attempt this on your own with no prior experience, there is a serious risk of wasted labor.

I would not hire someone without enterprise network engineer experience for this project.

 

[sdifox]

Powering these sensors is another consideration. I can't believe there is no wired option.