I would like to get some recommendations on product for wireless internet for a Holiday Inn. This is a good customer for us and we take care of all their phones and have a DSL line for their sales office. They have asked us to give them a price on providing internet service for all the guest rooms and rewiring is not an option. I need help with a wireless solution. We are perry good with PC’s and networks but have not entered into this area yet.

Look at some wireless access points from Cisco. They are a little more expensive, but work very well. You will need to have at least the Access Points hardwired. You will also needed a firewall installed and setup to block certain IP addresses, i.e. Kazaa, etc. Would want someone to come in and download music all night.

There is another option than going wireless.

Cisco has a soulution that basicly turns the existing Cat-3 wiring into a 10-Mps system.

The use the LRE interfaces (Long Range Ethernet). It is really a small D-slam that goes between the pbx station ports and the rooms.

In each room a LRE unit acts like a DSL modem.

Works great I helped install one here in a 120 room hotel.

DJ

Thanks for the info Z-man and tipandring and good point on the firewall and music, I didn't think of that.
The wire is so poor in this building that much of it is JK and not cat3. We have another hotel thinking of using existing telephone wire with a passive device in each room. I guess that is what you are refering to.

[This message has been edited by CMDL_GUY (edited February 01, 2004).]

Well believe it or not, at that hotel the risers are cat3 4 pair with 2 of the pairs carrying the LRE signals to 2 different rooms, and in the rooms there is JK wire running around the room from the jack behind the bed to the opposite wall and a jack there for a small workdesk.

I personaly did not think this would work, especially with the 2 seperate LRE signals in the same riser cable and especially half tapped to JK wire going around the room to another jack.

But the darn stuff works great!!!


DJ

If you're going to go wireless...

I'd say go with Cisco WAPs. Reason being is that they use power over ethernet, and if you use a cisco switch, you can activate power for each port that's a WAP and it makes them a breeze to install.

How many floors? How many rooms? That's going to be the tough part, getting the whole place good to go, as walls and whatnot have different effects.

For instance, a person taking a shower with wet tile can knock the signal down, but dry tile won't.

Wet trees will kill it, but dry trees won't.

Weird stuff like that.

I'd say using a wired solution with existing cat-3 or what have you would be interesting, but i've never installed one.

Depending on the size of the hotel, WAPs could be expensive.

Thanks for all the help, at least I am in the right direction. I may have more questions as we move forward.

I've had very good luck with Linksys. They are a division of Cisco.
They are more geared for Home users/Small But, but they may work for you depending on your needs and they are fairly inexpensive. They have WAP capability as well.

go to www.clcnet.us this may be your answer.

We have installed many systems using the Zyxel product.

If they want to convert the system to pay-per-use, the B-4000 has an associated ticket printer, and acts as a gateway. If they are going free to use, the B-1000's are great access points, and let you do roaming.

Personally, the Cisco stuff is great, but way overpriced for this application, and not as compatible with many laptops and WiFi cards, unless you spend a lot of time keeping the firmware upgraded. Cisco stuff does all the high end features like VLAN tagging, RADIUS and 802.1 authentication that you really don't need or want in a hospitality environment.

The Zyxel B-3000 also does POE, but frankly, with a soldering iron and $5 worth of parts from Radio Shack, you can use the blue/white, brown/white pair and do it yourself.

The biggest thing in any of these WiFi installs is channel assignment planning for the property.

Access points that can see each other must be at least 5 channels apart. DSSS uses 3 of the WiFi channels at each access point. If you assign them to channels too close together, they stomp on each other and you have a mess.

That is the dirty secret of WiFi that no one tells you.

The Cisco LRE is a very good solution, but it is pricy. We have recently had wireless properties that have converted back to wireless becuase the property owners were concerned that the WiFi users could all 'see' each other. With just a simple DHCP server, this is true.

With the B-4000 or a similar good access gateway, this is not true.

That said, we're happy to go back and put in the LRE stuff and make money. Guests, however, continue to use the WiFi system originally installed something like 10 times more often.

Good luck!