Extending wireless range in a hotel, via repeaters or what?

[r44flyer]

Hi all,

Hopefully someone can offer some advice on the best course of action with this. I'm a novice but will do my best to keep up...

I'm trying to extend the wireless network for someone who owns a small hotel. The hotel is joined to their private residence, ie. it's two houses next door to each other that have been joined by extension, one becoming the hotel. The broadband enters the private house where there is a netgear rangemax wireless router. The idea is to extend the range so that residents of the hotel can use the wireless internet.

Due to the nature of the building(s), there are lots of walls to get in the way, which is nice. I have considered using power line repeaters but I'm not sure if I wouldn't need lots of them all over the place to give decent coverage. Does each of these give good signal strength or are they a little weak and really designed for one remote room in a small house?

The other option I see is to hard wire something like the WG602 to the rangemax, trailing a cable next door to the hotel, and using another 602 to extend the range further through the hotel. Will I get decent signal propagation from the 602? Can I link multiple 602s together as repeaters and bounce the signal around them several times?

What about 'n' wireless? I hear this has much better wall penetration?

Hardwiring several access points would probably be the best option, I believe, but the building is large and complex and routing cables won't be easy or cheap. I also have to consider access to power points for repeaters, which could be ugly if they are just plonked down in the hallways neat a convenient plug.


Thanks very much for any advice.

[Dai]

Wireless is the easiest option and is what most travellers expect these days.

I have WAPs bridged together around my B&B to give wireless access in all the rooms. In addition I have a couple of RJ45 sockets in seating areas for the few that can't do wireless or the odd Mac that won't play nice with the house system.

You should think about creating a separate IP group for the hotel guest side. The owner is probably not going to want guests having access to his machines.
Some interesting reading here:
https://www.grc.com/nat/nat.htm

I'd suggest cabling across to the hotel side and going wireless from there.

[r44flyer]

Thanks DaiNasty.

I've had a suggestion from another forum that goes like this...

The cable comes into the house side, into the rangemax, then hard wire that through to the hotel to another wireless router. Connect this router to a power line kit which will take the signal through the circuit to the other side of the hotel. Plug another router into the other power line unit and re-broadcast the signal. If I'm correct, I could have multiple power line kits and several routers through the hotel, all broadcasting the same signal.

Can you see any problem with this? My only thought is degradation of signal.

With regard to the separate IP issue... is it easily possible for other machines on the network to access each other? I know my netgear router doesn't allow file sharing between networked machines.

[Dai]

"take the signal through the circuit to the other side"

That's going to depend on how the system is wired I guess. In a joined property like this with fairly major power needs you may find the electrical system is split. That's something I'd guess would be trial and error. You may end up having to run a cat5e.

Once you get a signal on the hotel side I'd hope you could use the power lines to connect within that area.

As to the best way to split the 'owners' and 'guest' sides I'm not enough of a network guru to advise you on best practice. There's talent available on the forums in plenty so hopefuly someone else will add to the thread.

[r44flyer]

Sorry, that is what I meant. Hard wire the main router (house) to a second router (in the hotel) which is connected to a powerline unit in the hotel, so the signal goes round the hotel circuit, which I hope is all on one ring. Otherwise, it might need more wireless routers. There might be roofspace access, which would make cabling easier, so I'll enquire.

I don't know whether it would be better (or possible!) to have multiple powerline units with attached wireless routers, or multiple wireless powerline units broadcasting the signal themselves. Which might be better for signal strength and propagation? Single wall penetration is essential if they are installed in hallways.

Having powerline units and/or wireless routers plugged in (in communal hallways) will probably be quite ugly, plus it tempts theft of the units and removes sockets from use by houseleeping etc. So, I also thought they could have a small bank of powerline units that can be used by guests on a deposit basis, as many of their clientele have no need for internet usage during their stay.

[dragon]

I'd probably stick an AP somewhere and then wonder around with a laptop running something like netstumbler and seeing how far the signal goes.

Also i'd segement the networks as others have suggested, pfSense or something simular could easily do this (and setup a captive portal if required)