@Boriy 

With most new devices preferring to connect using 5GHz and not legacy 2.4GHz, the APs placed in the hallways is not a good idea these days. I have an install where we have 110 APs in the hallways that we were asked to install using a design and cabling done by another party and we had forewarned customer that performance will not be good. And that is what has been happening.

5GHz penetration inside the rooms and especially the signal back from the cell phones back to the APs placed in the hallways is not good.

We had better success with an APs placed inside hotel rooms every third room and that way, the APs don't have to go thru the concrete firewalls and instead they contend with drywalls separating rooms.

Placing APs in the hallways, will cause all these APs to hear each other too loud and they will dial down their power and that will also result into reduction of signal going inside, but that might be okay anyway to balance the power with the smartphones. Another thing to keep in mind is to stagger the placement of APs from floor to floor. Don't place them on top of each other and try to have 6 feet separation horizontally from the AP above and below. And you may need to set 2.4GHz power to be low and turn 2.4 radios off on every other AP, and then set 5GHz radios power on all APs to be medium.

While R1D2 had already designed the whole solution for you, and looking at all this long thread, it seems that all you are doing is to hire cable technicians or electricians to cable and do the physical install work based on all the design guidelines advised by R1D2 and few others and that you will simply configure equipment yourself. There is really nothing left for any consultant to do. So if you will do it your self, make sure that you read the detailed user guide for SDN controller. OC300 is now available for controller (or will be in few days and weeks), so use that one as that is rack mountable and has built in power supply. It also has two 1Gbps ports (though even 100Mbps should be enough for management and control traffic) and two Ethernet ports are bridged, so you could really plug them into two different switches for resiliency. Then run each of the remote switch into two core switches and ensure the overall design has some resiliency against single core switch failure. You could even install two OC300 (they are inexpensive, probably cost of a single foiled UTP will be more than one OC300. And you can have both identically configured (or export config of one into second) and that way, if lone OC300 were to fail, then you can quickly move the cables over to the second warm standby. Unfortunately there is no option for redundant controllers or active / standby. but with APs management IP addresses in the same subnet / vlan as the controller management address, it should work as long as you have only one controller plugged in.

Hopefully @R1D2  and @Fae can further clarify on these.

@Nek 

We're preparing 2 rooms for testing. Meaning that rooms will be fully designed and equipped so that we can also see, how it will look in real life. Once those rooms ready, we will do a signal strength test (wi-fi site survey), and see how it will work in real life. 

Agree, learned so much from all these posts.

Thank you, guys.

Hey @dpsguard,

Thank you for the advice.


We already ordered a few AP points from different vendors and we will do wi-fi survey once they arrive. 
No problem, we can check the signal strength from corridors and also from each room. We install AP in 1 room and check the signal strength in other rooms, so we can see, how many AP we need and in which rooms would be installed. 


We had better success with an APs placed inside hotel rooms every third room and that way, the APs don't have to go thru the concrete firewalls and instead they contend with drywalls separating rooms.
In that case, does it mean, that the guests in AP room will use 5Ghz, but the other rooms will be using 2.4Ghz. Is that correct?  


Another thing to keep in mind is to stagger the placement of APs from floor to floor. Don't place them on top of each other and try to have 6 feet separation horizontally from the AP above and below.
Got it. Even if we place them in vertical line, there still will be around 5 meters (16feet) from AP to AP (floor to floor). In Horizontal it will be 12 meters (40 feet) away from each other


Then run each of the remote switch into two core switches and ensure the overall design has some resiliency against single core switch failure
Once everything is done, we're gonna have some AP, Switch, and Controllers in our storage inside the hotel. Meaning, if any of those devices fails, we can just replace them very fast. 


P.S I also read, that having AP in close might create interference, since they hear each other loudly, but does it matter if they use different non-lapping channels? 
Also using Wi-FI 6 with BSS coloring

@Boriy 

Checking signal strength will not help much as you are not checking the signal received by AP from the smartphone. Keep in mind that smartphones being battery powered, transmit a fraction of the power of what AP will transmit. So generally you should test with setting 2.4 radio to low and 5GHz to medium.

Installing APs inside the room, will allow all 3 rooms to get good 5GHz coverage (depending upon size of the rooms).

16 feet separation is not enough and try staggering them over floors.

You can try turning off say odd number of APs for 2.4GHz and then set the even numbered APs 2.4 radios to medium power and then see if that works for hallway use case.

BSS coloring does not help with the interference. in AC APs and even in AX APs it may only help a bit in not so busy networks. Unless large AX networks have been deployed and tested for co-channel interference affects, it is hard to say.

Good luck,

@dpsguard 

Thank you for the recommendations.

If we buy 3 AP for testing and install them in corridors, then can we somehow check their noise level and other parameters? 
I mean, instead of getting 1 AP and checking only its signal strength, we could get 3 AP and check their signal strength, noise level, how they speak loud to each other, roaming and other parameters

Am I getting it right? It's gonna be like a real-world test, but without the internet, using PoE injector in each AP. Is this possible?

@Boriy 

I will recommend that you leave all this to an experienced consultant, unless you only are hiring electricians to do the physical work of pulling cables and mounting the equipment. I will also recommend that this higher end hotel hire a professional to do a proper site survey, whose report will include the AP quantities, types and locations and will also come with the performance guarantees.

Hey guys, 
I've got some updates.

About walls:
Walls made of polystyrene concrete and will be around 20-25cm width (0.6-0.8 foot) and this type of wall will be used everywhere, meaning walls from hallway to room and each room divided with this type of wall. Also fittings will be placed between each room (wifi signal might have very hard time penetrating)

AP placement:

Probably we come back to our 1st idea of an AP in each room. If not count the price, this option looks much better and could some guarantee excellent wifi in each room.

Wi-FI survey:
We should receive some AP for the test this coming week. Letting another company do Wi-FI survey probably not an option here. Since I talked to them and explained about wi-fi placement, like having AP in hallway (corridor) not good idea, but what I heard is that, none of those companies placed AP directly in rooms, all of them placed AP in hallway (corridor) and all of them recommended using UTP cable, but we already bought some F/UTP CAT 6 cables. In other words, not much trust in them. 


I wonder, what could go wrong, if we simple put an AP in each room ? Are there any bad sides or effects from this ? We still can change it's TXpower so they won't hear each other. 

 

Hey guys,

I was able to get 2 piece of Unifi 6 Lite AP for testing. Ordered from USA and it took around a month to get there.
Unfortunately I couldn't get any WiFi 6 Tp-Link AP for testing, but here we go.


Here some information about WiFi Survey:

Environment:
Survey was made on 2nd floor (American) / 1st floor (British) / 1 floor up from street floor (Rest)
Inside building only walls standing and some electric cables (no doors, no windows, etc...)
Average temperature from +5C to -5C  (41F to 23 F) (on a day when survey was taken)
Walls made of polystyrene concrete and will be around 20-25cm width (0.6-0.8 foot)

Hardware:
1 x Macbook Pro M1 2020 (3x3)
2 x Unifi 6 Lite AP (2x2 on both 2.4/5ghz)
2 x PoE injector to power AP

Software:
NetSpot PRO edition (for WiFi survey)
Unifi Network (for AP configuration)

Modifications:
I changed AP TXpower on both

2.4Ghz   20mhz    Low Power
5Ghz      20Mhz   Medium Power

The same environment, the same building, but left side of the building.