I'm on a festival committee, which holds an annual 3 day food festival in Massachusetts each year. One problem we have is that we're in a relatively poorly served cell area. We want our attendees to be able to use social media while they're at the venue, in part because it helps advertise the event.
I'm in the preliminary scoping phase at the moment, so pretty much everything is on the table. Googling/duckduckgoing for advice on the topic invariably leads to user-centric guides (i.e. "how do I use wifi at Glastonbury?!"), so I'd appreciate a discussion here and maybe it could also become a useful resource for others.
The organisation is small and has a Comcast business starter connection (16/3), with a couple of office computers, printers and a secured wifi network provided by a consumer grade DLink wireless router. The event itself is largely held under 2-3 large 80' x 40' tents arranged in an L shape around the main building, about 30 ft away. I would say at an absolute maximum we would have a couple hundred people on site at any one time, say during the lunch and dinner rushes.
We are very budget focused, because we're a non-profit and the event is suppose to raise funds, rather than be a money sink, so requesting capital expenditure (or canvassing donations for equipment) on this project is weighed up against other needs. Straight up we'll have to bump up the internet service for the month, as 3mbit up won't gain us many followers!
Off the top of my head there are a few areas that I am concerned about, listed below, but any point would be good to hear.
1. Security, such as the dangers (to both users and the organisation) of just providing an unsecured wifi service vs. the costs/complexity of using a more secured service.
2. Affordability - perhaps a hierarchy of options from the very cheap to the more expensive is something we could develop for others to utilise?
3. Third party providers - either wifi hotspot rental providers(?) or say using comcast's wifi hotspots [network lock in].
4. Rolling out something that doesn't interfere with the existing network topography. I could overhaul the current topography, replace the existing hardware with a pfSense box etc, but what we have now works for what we need 51.5 weeks out of the year.
5. Backhaul - i.e. from APs through to the ISP. The tents are at least 30ft from the main building and have power, but are high traffic areas so running additional data cables to them may be problematic.
6. # and type of APs - N150 vs N300. When price sensitive are more numerous cheaper N150 APs a better strategy for handling many users than fewer more expensive N300s? The ISP connection will be the bottleneck regardless of the APs used...
At this point I am leaning towards loaning a box for the weekend and configuring it with pfSense and a couple cheap APs (such as the TP-Link TL-WA801ND or the 901) so that it attaches to the network as follows:
Comcast
Modem --- Router ---- regular network / secured wifi
Thanking people in advance for their input!
I'm in the preliminary scoping phase at the moment, so pretty much everything is on the table. Googling/duckduckgoing for advice on the topic invariably leads to user-centric guides (i.e. "how do I use wifi at Glastonbury?!"), so I'd appreciate a discussion here and maybe it could also become a useful resource for others.
The organisation is small and has a Comcast business starter connection (16/3), with a couple of office computers, printers and a secured wifi network provided by a consumer grade DLink wireless router. The event itself is largely held under 2-3 large 80' x 40' tents arranged in an L shape around the main building, about 30 ft away. I would say at an absolute maximum we would have a couple hundred people on site at any one time, say during the lunch and dinner rushes.
We are very budget focused, because we're a non-profit and the event is suppose to raise funds, rather than be a money sink, so requesting capital expenditure (or canvassing donations for equipment) on this project is weighed up against other needs. Straight up we'll have to bump up the internet service for the month, as 3mbit up won't gain us many followers!
Off the top of my head there are a few areas that I am concerned about, listed below, but any point would be good to hear.
1. Security, such as the dangers (to both users and the organisation) of just providing an unsecured wifi service vs. the costs/complexity of using a more secured service.
2. Affordability - perhaps a hierarchy of options from the very cheap to the more expensive is something we could develop for others to utilise?
3. Third party providers - either wifi hotspot rental providers(?) or say using comcast's wifi hotspots [network lock in].
4. Rolling out something that doesn't interfere with the existing network topography. I could overhaul the current topography, replace the existing hardware with a pfSense box etc, but what we have now works for what we need 51.5 weeks out of the year.
5. Backhaul - i.e. from APs through to the ISP. The tents are at least 30ft from the main building and have power, but are high traffic areas so running additional data cables to them may be problematic.
6. # and type of APs - N150 vs N300. When price sensitive are more numerous cheaper N150 APs a better strategy for handling many users than fewer more expensive N300s? The ISP connection will be the bottleneck regardless of the APs used...
At this point I am leaning towards loaning a box for the weekend and configuring it with pfSense and a couple cheap APs (such as the TP-Link TL-WA801ND or the 901) so that it attaches to the network as follows:
Comcast
Modem --- Router ---- regular network / secured wifi
l___ pfSense box --- Wireless APs --- filtered public network
Thanking people in advance for their input!