WISP Setup

I couldn't access firewall.cx the other day and so I posted this in another forum

forums.wi-fiplanet.com/showthread.php?t=6973

but would like your guys opinion, I've noticed that where I live an adsl line is expensive and takes a ling time to be installed sometines upto 6 months.

My concern is how will I know which company uses a lot of bandwidth,I was thinking of getting a managed switch and monitor the port for that particular company or getting a server that can allow lots of network cards and monitor the particular network card.

The other issue will be the billing, unless they have to pay a fixed monthly charge,what ways of billing would be used

Sorry Here's what I got from the other forum


Here is my scenario,Say I've got a double storey building with 5 offices on bottom floor and 7 offices on top floor and 2 offices 200m from the 1st building.The offices will be let out to different small companies.What I would like to do is that all office have to have wireless internet access,I was thinking of installing a network point(rj45) in each office and plugging in an ap or 2 depending on how big the office is,all network points will then be pluggeg into a switch in the server room.Is this a viable solution or is there a better way of doing this?

defsoul
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#2 11-28-2006, 11:02 AM
M/Q
Moderator Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 4,534

First some questions and decisions you need to make.

1. First I assume you mean wireless networks and through the wireless networks the offices will get Internet access? As there wireless Internet providers.
2. The use of wired back hauls to a central location is the best and simplest approach. Please use it if possible as it will work the best and provide the best throughput for each office.
3. The switch you refer to becomes very important with reference to each office’s security and privacy. Are you intending to have each office on its own subnet/VLAN so as there will not be any chance of a computer in office A being visible on a computer in office B. This is a very important point, especially if these businesses have sensitive information. You will have to either totally guarantee the network security or publish that the network is not secure at all.
4. Wireless security is even more critical. Are you going to have each office use a specific SSID and encryption process? Once again you will have to either set this up correctly to provide a secure wireless path. If the office tenant wants the wireless portion to be open/unsecure then you need to have them sign a document stating that they accept the risks.
5. The wireless network topology is also very important. You will need to do a very thorough site survey of the facility. It will determine how many APs are needed per office, where to locate them, reduce coverage overlap/interference between offices and you will find out if there are any other wireless networks or RF interference in the area that most likely will affect your network.
6. The wireless network then needs to be designed. I assume you are thinking about 802.11b/g. That means only three non-interfering channels. So you have to design the AP layout so that adjacent APs are on non-interfering channels. Since you mentioned this is a multi level building that process has to apply in all three dimensions.

These points should give you a starting point at least.

Hi defsoul
You got a good answer there which covers the important points. I think the most critical ones break down into two parts:
1) Those you can easily plan and should think about before you do or offer anything - such as security, how you will isolate one company from another, the network design including the different subnets for each company, how you will implement DHCP and DNS services, what sort of firewalling and/or activity logging you'll implement etc
2) Those where you'll need to do some testing - a wireless site survey or (if you have nerves of steel) a good educated guess as to how many AP's you'll need in each location, how you will arrange the channels to prevent interference and what power levels to set for each AP (to make sure it serves its designated area and doesn't overspill). Some of this you might have to work out on the fly when you're installing which will add time, effort and a few cold sweats to the job
And finally don't forget the management of this, and the all important question of how you are going to charge your customers. Will it be a flat rate per month or do you intend some sort of usage charge to try to prevent them flattening the connection with luxury downloads?
Plenty to think about...

Finally, to add to the preceding excellent replies, you will need some kind of bandwidth management/information tool. This can either reside in your switch (depending on how good it is), or on a separate PC. This could be used to control average/peak rates and maximum burst sizes. It could be also be used to log bandwidth usage.

Thx a lot for the info, It's brought up a lot of issues that I had over looked,This was just a thought that I had coz one of my friends rents an office in an office building and our inter services are not as good like I said ealier.