Wi-FiGurus

The community of Wi-Fi Professionals

Top Referrer

Gino
Most Profilic Writer

jonassono
Newsletter Subscription
Name:
Email:
Format:
Select:
List:
Most Popular
Join Wi-FiGurus focus group identifying top deployment tips PDF Print E-mail
(2 votes)
Written by Jim Geier   
Wednesday, 26 September 2007

Within the Wi-FiGurus community, we’re initiating study groups to formulate best practices, solve difficult problems, and possible develop new solutions. The sky’s the limit if we all work together. Results will be published on the Wi-FiGurus site and made available to the public domain. Names of everyone who participated will be included in the results.

 

Our first focus group will identify the top ten tips for deploying a successful wireless LAN. Please post the tips you feel are important as comments to this posting so that everyone can see and comment on what we’re coming up with. After we have some reasonable content, I’ll write a draft document describing our tips and publish it in a dedicated portion of the Wi-FiGurus site. I encourage everyone to contribute! If you have any ideas for other focus groups, please let me know.

 

***Please bookmark this posting, and check it regularly so that you can continue to participate and monitor the progress of the group. Please pass this on to other Gurus!

Comments
Add NewSearchRSS
jimgeier (Administrator) 2007-09-26 20:09:44
I though that I'd kick this off with some tips that come to mind for successfully deploying a wireless LAN:

Requirements, such as client devices, signal coverage areas, and intended applications should be very well know before designing and installing the network.

Verification testing should be done after installing the wireless LAN to ensure signal coverage requirements are met for the types of client devices that will interface with the network.

What are your top tips for deploying a successful wireless LAN?
Reply | Quote
0 0
Top Tips
outbackwifi (Registered) 2007-10-07 12:18:40
My Top tip would be:
Understand the User application scenario.
Ive seen cases where the wireless network that does get deployed does not fulfill the requirements of the User. They might not understand it at the time of deployment but the moment you put in a network, you are bound to see a couple of guys trying out their WiFi phones, surveillance cameras being hooked up and so on, If you havent catered for this or even anticipated this beforehand, you are in for a lot of pain!!
Reply | Quote
0 0
karl1949 (Registered) 2007-10-08 11:01:01
Along with verification testing, documentation of the network's physical attributes as well as electronic attributes is vital to future maintainence and troubleshooting. You may know exactly what AP is connected to which switch on which port, but if you don't know WHERE that AP happens to be, say hidden in a ceiling, you can't replace it if it fails.
Reply | Quote
0 0
jennifer.huber (Registered) 2007-10-11 14:22:46
TOP TIPS:
First - you must fully understand what the client is expecting in regards to coverage, throughput, and what type of applications/clients are going to use the wireless network.

Second - a thorough site survey, including description of installation locations, and floor plan images with placeholders for the APs to be installed

Third - verification testing of the installed network with customer's own devices.
Reply | Quote
0 0
jimgeier (Administrator) 2007-10-14 10:52:19
Thanks for your tips so far. These are all great ideas. If anyone else has tips you'd like to share, please chime in. We can let this float a bit longer before summarizing the tips. I'll be including everyone's name as a contributor to the document. If you want your real name listed instead of your Wi-FiGurus username, and it's not obvious in your username, please send it to me.
Reply | Quote
0 0
Cell Size
essem_9 (IP:167.206.235.141) 2007-10-18 17:26:33
In the little experience I have with deployment, keeping the cell size to a nominal size is the key for the following reasons:

To reduce the amount of hardware most administrators/installers have high gain antennas to cover a large area. The drawback is client cards (low powered) cannot communicate efficiently (upstream) over distances, hidden nodes cause collisions etc. This in turn costs much more on support.

For time sensitive application such as voice, the capacity within an area can be increased while drastically improving user experience.

Data would be transmitted at higher data rates (assuming average network load) improving bandwidth efficiency

For small cell size deployments a switched architecture may be an ideal solution
Reply | Quote
0 0
user
Tom Poe (IP:209.234.77.198) 2007-10-19 13:38:42
CALEA is the 800 lb gorilla in this room. The government needs their backdoor, and wireless mesh networks are no exception. Who has the money for the legal liability insurance to satisfy nervous city councils or school districts to participate?

Also, if an affordable "last mile solution" such as a wireless network utilizing Meraki units is to be successful, there has to be reasonable "backhaul" available for high speed broadband. That won't happen until there is a radical change in U.S. laws. This DSL deregulation nonsense has stopped progress in a really ugly way.

On the bright side. The upcoming switch to digital broadcasting in February, 2009, promises huge changes in how communities view wireless access. Even without Internet access, the ability of even the poorest communities to establish wireless access to local digital tv and radio will dramatically alter the broadcast network horizon. Go WiFi!!
Reply | Quote
0 0
Write comment
Name:
Title:
UBBCode:
[b] [i] [u] [url] [quote] [code] [img] 
 
Security Image

Powered by JoomlaCommentCopyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.Homepage: http://cavo.co.nr/
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]