School Deployment 500 users AP?

periko

Hi.

I want to setup a pfsense server for a school, they are 500-600 wireless users+20 LAN.
My question is about access point.

I have been searching in different sites about what access point products can support this amount of users, linksys, netgere, tp-link have products for home, I don't want users to complaint that the system close their connection or cannot connect and latter find out that the AP reach his limits.

I had made my task, I will need +/- 5 AP, this are like "business level", some one could point a good product that support this amount of connections?

I will appreciated, thanks!!!

ZGamer

This probably should get moved to "General Discussions".

That being said, it all depends on budgeting, AP/User density, how many features you want, and how much time you want to spend.

If your looking at 20+ clients/AP doing a fair amount of load then I would be looking enterprise style-APs from Aruba/AeroHive/Meraki/Cisco/ect. Each has their pro's/con's but generally in smaller deployments I would probably go with AeroHive/Meraki as with the cloud-based controllers it is a simple web-page for site-wide management.

If low density and you don't mind the overhead, I'd probably run whatever cheap AP's that have decent reviews capable of running DD-WRT.

Always remember you can do a large amount of filtering with pfSense to reduce the load on the AP's via per-IP throttling via QoS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usi195rK35I), country filtering, Squidguard plugin can take of filtering out the adult sites and such, ect…

periko

Always remember you can do a large amount of filtering with pfSense to reduce the load on the AP's via per-IP throttling via QoS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usi195rK35I), country filtering, Squidguard plugin can take of filtering out the adult sites and such, ect…

This is one of mi priorities, thanks Patrick_ for your excellent info.

robi

To cover large areas Ubiquiti UniFi is a great solution.

jimp

While I don't have any direct experience with them, I have heard from quite a few people who used Ubiquiti equipment in such deployments that they work great and are quite affordable compared to other similar choices.

periko

Thanks all of u, love this forum!!!

RudiMM

General discussion; agreed.
I would and do recommend the Aruba Instant Wireless 105 (2x2 MIMO). Does not require a controller, cloud or physical. The 135 is a 3x3 MIMO, but may be overkill. Be careful about layout in 2.4gig spectrum. Remember you need gig switch interfaces and 802.11af.

Rudi