Festival Grounds PTMP Network

welcome to crosstalk solutions my name is Chris and every so often I get emails from people who are looking for design work for special projects and they're just looking to me for advice and today is one of those times where I'm going to take one of those emails and we're gonna actually do the design for a festival grounds Wi-Fi set up so I received this email from a gentleman by the name of Bob Burkett he is the chief of the Summer Hill Volunteer Fire Department out in Summer Hill Pennsylvania and Bob writes Chris I serve as a chief of a small volunteer fire department in rural south-central Pennsylvania I am also the de-facto computer tech for the department I have a background in computers and networking but have been retired from the business for several years I subscribe to and follow your YouTube channel faithfully already points in his favor thank you Bob based on your testing and recommendations I have successfully done several small installs using ubiquity ac-lite ap's edge router X's and nano station locos your info has been invaluable my volunteer department hosts an annual arts and crafts festival each fall as our major fundraiser the festival earns us over half of our yearly operating budget in keeping up with the times I need to implement an outside inside Wi-Fi network to be used each year for the two-day festival to allow our vendors to have access for their credit-card processing devices I want to set up wireless links from building a to access points on the other buildings see attached PDF we'll look at that in just one second equipment choices are so vast and quickly changing I'm hoping you can help me out with the best ubiquity equipment selection for our application in this project we will have temporary internet access provided for the festival by the local cable provider as a volunteer department reasonable for our responsible for our own funding cost is a concern but we need relatively good performance and durability okay so let's take a look at the PDF now this is basically someone who is doing this as a volunteer set up for their volunteer fire department and sounds like this is a big amount of their annual budget so we definitely want to try to keep costs as low as possible but we have a pretty interesting up here so let's pull up the PDF and here is what we're looking at we have an area that's about 550 feet by 200 feet this is the new Germany Grove festival grounds in Pennsylvania so building a here is where they have internet then we've got building be where we need internet we've got building C over here where they need internet and then they've got two open areas we've got area one right here which has a lot of tree cover and especially in the summertime or the fall when they're doing this festival these trees are going to be filled with leaves then we've got area two over here which looks like sort of a parking lot or something like that likely they'll just have vendor booths and things of that nature outdoors and so red dots indicate the availability of AC power all right so we've that's really great we've got a lot of spots where you could potentially plug in equipment and then it says indicated buildings and areas need Wi-Fi coverage for craft vendor use okay so before we dig into my design for this network and what I'm going to do here is I will give the sort of what what the design would be if you were buying everything brand new and then interspersed with that I'm gonna give alternatives for equipment that you can buy used that would be just as good and certainly a heck of a lot cheaper pulling this up on air link we can see just really quickly that obviously this is close enough it's a small enough area that a point-to-multipoint network for dispersing that Wi-Fi is gonna work reasonably well however with the tree cover over here I'm not necessarily confident in five gigahertz so I would start by going with 2.4 gigahertz for the point-to-multipoint Network and it's gonna be pretty similar to the equipment that I use for my 2.4 gigahertz point-to-multipoint through trees video ok so go watch that video I'll put a link to it down below in the description and this is all of the equipment you can see I have it out kit.com also one more thing to mention this is a really good cause right so this is a volunteer a small volunteer fire department I mean these people are doing great work any volunteer fire department if you're volunteering your time to go fight fires you're doing an excellent job and you're doing good stuff so if anyone out there in YouTube land has any of this equipment that they're willing to donate to a good cause get in touch with me at info at crosstalk solutions comm I will in turn get you in touch with Bob in case you're looking to donate any equipment to this cause so let's take a look at the setup here and again I'm gonna go through this sort of step-by-step so that we can see all of the bits of equipment as well as the various options that I've chosen for this project you're not gonna have to buy everything that I have on this list but I did want to provide options so that you know I don't know the exact situation out there and I don't know the exact budget so take every all the information that I'm giving you and then rework it for this set up but we're gonna start with the core of the network at building a here and the core of the network I'm starting with a ubiquity us8 150 watt switch so the first question why the us8 150 watt and it's for a very good reason it's because it can do both 24 volt passive and 802 3 AF p OE ok so you have options there for which equipment you can actually plug into it it will basically power up any type of Ubiquiti equipment so the mesh access points the L are indoor access points can be either 24 volt or they could be 8 o 2.3 AF the the smaller mesh Wi-Fi antennas those are 24 volt passive the Rockets that I'm mentioning those are 24 volt passive so they have a cheaper 8 port switch which is the u.s. 860 watt which has 4 p OE ports but though that switch doesn't do 24 volt passive ok so if you want a switch that can do both types of p OE for no matter what kind of equipment you're putting in here go for the u.s. 820 for us eight 151 so that's sort of the core of the network inside this building now let's talk about point-to-multipoint okay here's the thing there are a couple of options here I have three legs of this point-to-multipoint I have one leg going from building a over here to building B then I have another leg going from building a over here to building C now while there is a lot of tree cover it shouldn't be a problem at this short a distance to pick up that you know over to building C leg if you watch that 2.4 gigahertz through trees I shot a distance actually probably about this distance maybe even a little bit further through a dense forest and I was able to pick up the signal and I got I remember when I got 100 megabits or 85 megabits or something certainly plenty of bandwidth for vendors that just need to process credit cards then the next question is if I'm going with a rocket prism here as well as an omnidirectional antenna why am i doing that versus just having to point two points which would probably be cheaper so you could do a point-to-point like a nano station point-to-point one over here to building B and then one over here to building C but while that would be cheaper it doesn't give you the option to expand if you wanted to right so like let's say this optionally out here I have an optional setup that you could take this same little setup of a nano station and a UAP AC mesh and you could replicate this same little setup right here wherever you need it on either side okay so for instance if you just had a dead spot over here you could simply toss up another nano station with AC mesh which can be powered by the second Ethernet port on the Nano station just out wherever it needs to be right you can even put it on a stand and just have it you know temporarily in a location with even like a battery backup or something like that right so that's why I went with the point-to-multipoint as opposed to two point-to-point nano station bridges and we have some options here with the point-to-multipoint antenna as well so what I have on the screen here is the rocket AC rocket to AC prism so that's a 2.4 gigahertz prism which is absolutely overkill for this deployment you don't need something that crazy good or that crazy expensive and pricing wise that is 205 dollars brand-new plus a hundred and fifty-six dollars for the antenna right so you're looking at three hundred and sixty one dollars for that core point-to-multipoint access point now if you buy the stuff used I was able to find it used on ebay the rocket to AC prism was about a hundred bucks on eBay I did not find cheaper 10 DB I am directional antennas though that was still so about 256 bucks if you buy it used the option here is to go with the rocket m2 instead of the rocket to AC prism and that'll save you about 25 bucks you really can't get the rocket m2 new anymore but on eBay they've got them for about 75 bucks used but honestly you're gonna get about twice the bandwidth with the rocket to AC prism so I would spend the extra 25 bucks buy a used rocket to AC prism and then the the 10 DB I omnidirectional antenna optionally we also have so let's see here's the switch here's the rocket to AC prism this is the omnidirectional antenna you want it's the amo - 2 G 10 there it is on Amazon there it is on eBay and then this guy right here this is the RF farmer u OS 2 X now this is an extra hundred bucks but this RF armor $100 case is going to protect that access point again totally optional because you're only gonna have this thing up on the roof of that building for a short amount of time but if you were gonna have it outside permanently I wouldn't say that the RF armor case is not optional definitely get it but if it's only for small amount of time you know if you're gonna have it up for a week or two in the fall when the weather's probably not that bad in south-central Pennsylvania then you can probably skip the RF Armour device in fact in my calculation here I'm just gonna pull that off of the use price we'll call it the used slash optional price all right so let's also take a look at this link on UI link UI calm so we have this specked out again I'm seeing like full bandwidth here let me move my little picture out of the way real quick there we go so I'm saying full bandwidth here no problem on the bandwidth I'm assuming that you can get it up to about 40 feet on building a and then we're putting it down to well we said it was about 20 feet less elevation over here so we'll put it back down to about 20 feet on this building over here building B so again full strength you've got 100% signal you can expect about a hundred and fifty megabits per second actually a little bit less than that because on linked at UI comm the only option for the receiving antenna is the rocket m2 and 150 megabits is the maximum speed of the rocket m2 so having a nano station there instead is probably gonna get you about 80 to 90 megabits per second but I just don't have the capability of showing that on link that UI comm same thing over here building C will put it down to about 20 feet and we have 100% signal again the trees might degrade that signal a little bit but it won't be too bad let's look at one other thing let's look at our coverage map so if we look at our coverage boom look at that this antenna is so strong on top of here let's zoom out and see where you can actually put the receiving antennas you can put them all the way out here to cleats taxidermy right you can still have a receiving antenna and still probably pick up your signal so you've got definitely room to expand and you've got room to put antennas basically wherever you want on this new Germany Grove hall fairgrounds property there should be no problem anywhere around here okay so going back to the design let me zoom out a little bit here here's another option okay so we've got our our external point-to-multipoint antenna then we got to talk about indoor Wi-Fi and what I would recommend for indoor Wi-Fi is either the you APA CLR right so the long-range antenna because it can be powered by 24 volt passive or if you want to spend a couple extra bucks get the you ap AC Pro now the question is for a building of this size do you want one of those or two of those right so you could I put two on this drawing but honestly I would just start with one you APA CLR right in the center ceiling of this building inside and that will probably provide coverage to the whole building and then you can add a second access point if you've come to find out that hey it's just not providing the covers that we need inside that building but honestly I would be shocked if one access point didn't provide the coverage that you need inside the building additionally also connected to the u.s. 28 150 watts which is a UA PA CM Pro this is the ua p mesh pro and i have it on the outside wall of the building covering this area over here or at least part of the outside area where all of the trees are where your vendors are going to be okay so that's a great antenna optionally you can try the UA PA CM so the non pro version but this pro antenna is so darn good I would definitely try to spend a few extra bucks to get the pro to cover such a large area now notice I've got another one over here we'll talk about that in a second okay moving on though because we got to come over here right so let's do our point-to-point link to our nano station that's picking up the 2.4 gigahertz link over here let me move my picture again point-to-point link over to this nano station again you can expect probably about 80 to 90 megabits per second over to this device I would put one you APA CLR inside since the you APA CLR can run on 24 volt passive POA it can be run out of the secondary Ethernet input of the nano station m2 okay so just turn on 24 volt passive pou pass through and you can power up this antenna you can also power up the ua p AC mesh pro that i have on the outside of this building again it should just be somewhere along this wall here so that it can power up or provide Wi-Fi coverage to this outdoor area so if they're gonna have vendors out here you probably just want it like on the corner of the building so that it can get this area back over here and then also cover this whole area right here one of these mesh Pro access points would be great again you could drop that down to just the standard UAP mesh that's a great form factor wire it in but yeah it's it's not going to provide as good coverage as this mesh Pro here's the thing you're gonna have to have a POA injector though for the mesh Pro right because I'm not using a switch in this building we're just doing a point-to-point a point-to-multipoint picking it up with the nano station we're using eath two of the nano station to go over here and power up the UAP a CLR and then we're using eath one to power up or to provide network to the mesh pro access point but it will have to still have power so you'll need a POA injector for that mesh Pro ap moving over to building C we've basically got the same setup we have a nano station the 24 volt passive of the nano station is going to power up a UA PA CLR that's going to be the inside wireless access point for building c and then you can optionally have another mesh Pro out here on the outside wall of building C so now see what we're doing here we're potentially having one here which would provide coverage to you know save this this half of the outdoor area and then you have another mesh Pro here that provides coverage to this portion of the outdoor area there's probably going to be some overlap and I would say that this mesh Pro is going to be optional based on how well this one performs right so if this one provides coverage to the full area then you don't need a secondary mesh Pro access point over here on building C you can just get away with the one that you have on building a but without actually being there on-site and setting this up and testing it with like a wireless analyzer I have no idea if the tree coverage is gonna affect everything or affect anything and I don't know you know if this will stretch all the way over to here I could dig in further and try to figure that out but we're not actually gonna do that for this video okay so the last thing that I have here is completely optional and this is what I was talking about you could have these little sort of pods if you will of a nano station m2 that powers up with 24 volt passes through the secondary Ethernet port au AP AC m just the smaller mesh access point because it can be powered by 24 volt passive so this little set of equipment here you could literally put it on a stand like the Wi-Fi stand that I use and just move it around wherever you need it with like a battery like if you had one of those battery those battery what's it called the this thing the jakhary portable laptop charger right the jakhary power bar could power this equipment for easily probably 4 hours or so and so if you needed extra coverage you could have that as a pod on a stand that you literally move around where you need it again this is just showing the example because you had power right at this location instead of this mesh access point you could do something like this right and then just have this smaller mesh access point kind of wherever you need it right so again just options that you can do so let's look at total cost for this setup we have the rocket to AC prism 205 dollars we have the 10 DB IMU directional antenna we're gonna skip the RF armor since again that's optional you can have that but since you're only gonna be outside for a small amount of time with this setup it's probably not necessary if you're going through like harsh Pennsylvania winters then you would want that RF armor you know protecting the prism and sort of the cables that connect to the omnidirectional antenna then we have the u.s. eight 150 watt we have one UAP a CLR on building a and then we have our mesh Pro access point building B we have the Nano station m to the L R and the M Pro building C we have the M to the L R and the M Pro we're looking at a total of fifteen hundred and sixty nine dollars if you're buying everything brand new again though I went through eBay and I just looked at like generally what could you probably get this stuff for on eBay and instead you could actually get everything for just over a thousand bucks okay so what I see about one thousand eleven dollars again it's your depends on your timing on eBay and whatnot and I didn't include in this price this extra pod here right so this is just the equipment that I have at building a the equipment that I have at building B and the equipment that I have at building C you're looking at just over a hundred bucks if you were gonna buy all of that stuff use excuse me just over a thousand bucks if you're gonna buy all that stuff used on eBay so hopefully you didn't give me a budget Bob but hopefully that would be like within your budget like around a thousand bucks for this full setup that's gonna power the you know new Germany what's it called the new Germany Grove festival grounds alright so there you go again if anyone wants to help Bob out by donating some equipment get in touch with me at info across talk solutions comm and I will get you over to Bob if you guys have anything to add to this set up do you agree with my setup do you think it's a good setup for Bob do you think that there's anything that you would change instead of the way that I have it configured put that down in the comments below that is going to be excellent feedback for not only Bob but for anyone else who's watching this video and might want to attempt a similar setup okay hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did enjoy this video make sure you give me a thumbs up and if you'd like to see more videos like this please click subscribe my name is Chris with crosstalk solutions and thank you so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Crosstalk Solutions

Views: 47,289

Keywords: ptmp, point to multipoint wireless ubiquiti, point to multipoint, point to multipoint network, point to multipoint wireless, point to multipoint ubiquiti, point to multipoint wireless bridge, point to multipoint topology, point to multipoint wireless bridge ubiquiti, 2.4ghz vs 5ghz wifi, 2.4ghz wifi, crosstalk, crosstalk solutions, ubiquiti, ubiquity, wireless bridge

Id: jDUfRpXp0Jw

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020