WPA2 AP's for > 25 users?

[OoteR02]

Hello all,

I'm in the midst of getting ready to place a few AP's in a small building to cover for a 24 piece roaming laptop cart...

I can get the coverage I need out of 3 or 4 AP's (I need to do some testing, thanks Droid/Wifi Analyzer) but my main concern is getting AP's that can handle having 24 machines connected to them at one time with WPA2.

I really have to do this on a budget, (say under $1k if possible, $500 would be more ideal)

There will be wire pulled to each AP and no need for extenders/bridges.. This is going to be in a 2k3 environment with users locked down to automagically access only our access points.

Anyone have suggestions for the hardware?

HP/whatever is fine. The key is handling the load OK, not speed.

 

[spidey07]

I like Cisco APs and they're roaming solution will make it easy for clients to move from one AP to the next seamlessly. Keep in mind however that 25 users for an AP is a lot, not that the AP can't handle it, but the performance really starts to suffer with that many. Best to keep to 18 or less per AP.

Depending on the number of APs you could even use their lightweight solution and have a wireless controller. This will be a MUST if the APs are on different subnets.

 

[ScottMac]

I agree with Spidey, of course ... but it's not so much the manufacturer or class of AP that makes the difference; it's the available bandwidth. It doesn't matter what the quality of knife you use; you can still only get 12 1" slices from a 12" loaf. Having a commercial-grade AP *DOES* make a difference, from both a sensitivity and selectivity and available horsepower and features perspective.

Since, even under perfect conditions, you are starting with ~22Mbps max per channel, however many clients connecting to that channel are going to be contending for / sharing that limited chunk of bandwidth.

The next ugly variable in the mix is the application load; light surfing and / or common email is not much of a load and you can get by with more clients. Database, accounting, or any other app that relies on a lot of data flow is gonna suck ... the heavier the data flow, the more it'll suck. Design is very important, and nobody has "perfect" conditions.

Good Luck

 

[wlee]

While I agreee with Spidey and Scott on all their suggestions, none of the Cisco or Trapeze class of WiFi will be within your budget. Their single band AP's cost about $500+ alone. And AFAIK, you don't get any of the pre-emptive hand-off and IP roaming if you use them in stand alone mode without the controller station. If you're in an RF noisy environment like NYC, you REALLY need that class of stuff. If you're in a low density area, you can get away with cheaper class stuff like the Engenius AP's. ( www.engeniustech.com )

You could get 4 or so of the EAP9550 ( http://www.jr.com/engenius/pe/EGN_EAP9550/ )
and a cheap mananged POE switch like the Cisco SFE1000P (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...8&Tpk=SFE1000P)

This "ethnically-rigged" solution will keep under your $1k budget, but the trade-off is no seamless pre-emptive roaming and no continual RF spectrum/noise analysis by an AP management controller.

 

[spidey07]

wlee - You can do seamless roaming with autonomous (read, IOS based without a controller) if the APs are on a single layer2 network.