[Rack] help with robust wifi equipment for open source conference

Jonathan Lassoff jof at thejof.com
Fri Oct 28 22:06:25 UTC 2011


Hi Florian,

I've done some similar deployments for conferences and parties before.
The name of the game is splitting up APs in the RF spectrum and
getting the wireless clients to distribute their associations across
the hardware itself. The goal of doing so is to increase the available
RF spectrum and bandwidth space by sinking client traffic onto a wire
as closely as possible.

So, yes, I'd agree consumer gear is not going to cut it if bandwidth
is important.

Do you have any equipment already that you'd like to use?
I don't have any significant hardware that I can donate or lend to
your project, but I'd be happy to help create, setup, or look over
configurations.

If I was to recommend any hardware, I'd recommend Aruba networks APs
and one of their smaller controllers, or Cisco APs and their
controller. However, that can easily cost many thousands of dollars.
Ruckus Wireless has a controller-based solution that's relatively cheap as well.

Ubiquiti hardware is pretty decent, and inexpensive, though lacks a
tunneling or controller mechanism to manage client associations --
each AP is stand-alone.
Their UniFi product makes pretty cheap 802.11n APs with a
pure-software controller solution (no tunneling, just configuration
management and monitoring) --- http://ubnt.com/unifi

There are a couple Bay Area-local distributors that could probably
hook up a local pickup or quick shipping.

Cheers,
jof



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