Wifi For 60 Space RV Park

[alluseridsrejected]

Just got a call from an RV park owner. They are currently running wifi for 60 RV's off a phone company router with 20/2 mbit dsl line. Naturally the router is locking up on them regularly. I have a 9AM appointment to assess the situation. I am thinking I will propose an Untangle box with a a minimum of load balancing if I can not talk them into the entire package.

The 20/2 dsl is the best speed they can get, but the phone company should be able to install a 2nd line that I will recommend, so they would also need load balancing and fail over from Untangle. I will probably also recommend some outdoor APs from Ubiquiti.

Anybody else here setup an RV park before that can offer a few tips?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

To be honest...as much as I love (and make a lot of money from) Untangle...I don't think I'd use that here. Takes a bit of touching every now and then...it's a UTM and for a general public usage...I see that causing more headaches. Love 'em for businesses...but for rotating/changing public use...I'd stay away.

I'd go all Ubiquiti. Their edge router, and outdoor wireless.

 

[acscva]

I took over handling IT servers for an RV Park that has 198 sites. They had already installed Engenius access points with DSL service and have a ton of internet issues trying to share with that many people. We have done some optimizations and upgraded them to 50MB Comcast Business internet services. I also plan on putting in a WatchGuard UTM appliance and eventually replacing the older AP's with Ubiquity AP's as they seem to be much better and are fairly inexpensive. Also make sure to separate the office from the guests which wasn't the case when I first picked up this account which could have been a nightmare.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

To be honest...as much as I love (and make a lot of money from) Untangle...I don't think I'd use that here. Takes a bit of touching every now and then...it's a UTM and for a general public usage...I see that causing more headaches. Love 'em for businesses...but for rotating/changing public use...I'd stay away.

I'd go all Ubiquiti. Their edge router, and outdoor wireless.

I just looked through the EdgeOS Guide and it looks impressive, but isn't it missing many capabilities Untangle would offer for managing the limited bandwidth among many users? I hear what you are saying about rotating/changing use, but isn't untangle popular with hotels? And can't I just set it up to lower a connections priority as it uses more and more data and based on the type of application/access like streaming video and file sharing networks and so on?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Well, EdgeRouter isnt' a UTM...it's a high performance router. Sorta of like PFSense or MikroTik.

Dunno if Untangle is popular with hotels...it's pretty rare IMO...don't think it's popular at all...rather exclusive.
The success of Untangle..meaning the reliability, uptime, length of service..much depends on the hardware you install it on...and that can get expensive.
PFSense has a great traffic shaper.

 

[GhostDog]

I'd go Ubiquiti. We run a network for a 250 site RV park on the Unifi system. Lots of feedback on the UBNT forums.

 

[TAPtech]

ZyXEL would be an option too. I recently deployed one of their NXC2500 wireless controllers, pretty dang snazzy. The USG40 has AP controller features, I'm not sure how many AP's it'll handle though, or how many you need. For 60RV's I would think you would want a lot of radios. The Mesh feature is nice if there are a few AP's that you can't run a hard wire to but still want to extend the range.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

Ok, After I went out there this morning, found out they don't have a 20mbit dsl, only 10mbit and they run that straight to a single ubnt nanostation that is mounted outside on the roof pointing out across the park. And they have 68 RV spaces that are all full, not 60.

We called the phone company while I was there and they will install an additional 20mbit DSL line next week.

Naturally they want their cost to be reasonable and I plan to look into these options above, especially the all ubiquiti. But they are willing to pay the $2700 a year up to 150 device Untangle subscription and what ever equipment I recommend as long as it works. When I pointed out the Untangle subscription of $2700yr was only $3.30 a month per customer, then it did not sound that bad to them.

The main reason this RV park is full is because they offer wifi. All the other RV parks around are outside of town and outside of DSL line service. I have had a couple of other RV park owners in my shop telling me they are desperate to offer wifi because that is the first question everyone asks and the ones without wifi are mostly empty. In fact I am investigating setting up a wireless bridge to get internet about 2 miles outside of town to another RV park that is totally empty because of no wifi. I just need to get him a radio mounted high enough to do it.

I like the Untangle box option for one because I already have a number of them out there, just not at RV parks. But being an RV park, would it not be important to offer:

• A spash screen with usage terms?

• Maybe the web cache untangle offers?

• The ability to log usage? (What is their responsibility of providing internet where there could be illegal activity and having law enforcement show up on their door?)

• The ability to prioritize bandwidth according to usage? I am sure the ubnt routers are as great as the outstanding everything ubnt makes, but why would bandwidth prioritization not be required? Or how should I do it with only ubnt equipment?

I really appreciate everyone's input!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Splash screen/captive portal...most biz grade wireless does this anyways...Ubiquiti APs can. Some routers handle that...lots of others do, PFSense for one.

Proxy Servers (caching) were useful back in the dial up days when a large office shared a dial up or shotgun modems....or the earliest days of DSL (~1 meg pipes) or true old T-1s (1.45 meg pipes). And they had just a few websites they'd go do, stuff like that.

These days...with 60+ rotating/changing users, going all over the place...I can't see a proxy server being of any help. Just additional overhead...and it will just beat up the hard drive like crazy and premature eja..uhm...failure.

Logging usage...that's up to them..but again...constantly rotating clients...likely by the time some issue came up, client is long gone...hard to prove, etc.

QoS...yes, important..but most biz grade edge devices do that now.

LIkely just need 3 maybe 4 APs...60 per AP ain't all too high, get another 2 or 3 in there..68 slots...approx 20 clients per AP...more than adequate coverage. The bandwidth will be the limiting factor, not the AP power.

Again..I love Untangle...we have deployed a LOOOOOTTTT of them over the years...but they are such for business networks...the features on them, reports work best when active directory connector is on them (not peer to peer ..so can't see logging being useful at all in this setup), and so many of the default features will just cause headaches and complaints with residential users like this. It will be a headache for you...tons of calls to turn off things.

 

[TAPtech]

You'll need multiple radios in addition to the bandwidth metering. Don't want any single client to sop up the bandwidth, but even with just web browsing, you're going to saturate a 2x2 radio very quickly.

 

[altrenda]

I agree, the limiter in pfSense would be an easy way to spread the bandwidth around. 20/2 divided by 60 is not going to be pretty when you get 10 or 15 Netflixers, or folks Skyping with the kids back home.

What ever you use make sure it has sufficient throughput to avoid bottlenecks. SOHO routers won't cut it. I use pfSense on repurposed Dell Opti 780's with a pair of Intel NICs for clients that upload and download video files, but we have at least 50/50.

Also, my experience is try to keep the Ubiquiti AP's to under 20 users each

 

[GhostDog]

Unifi manages the bandwidth pretty good, but you are probably going to want more than 1 AP. We have each AP connected to a 13 dBi Omni antenna and it covers about a 400ft radius well.

We use Nanobridges/stations to do PtP to each AP. Everything I have read said stay away from meshing.

Handoff is smooth. I walked the part doing a voice chat with someone at the office and jumped from AP to AP, never dropped the call.

Ours is set up to take payments through stripe for daily/weekly/monthly terms.

As easy as Ubiquiti is, though, it is proprietary. Need to use their APs. No complaints about quality, but unlike some other systems they lock you in. But price is great. Free controller, and maybe $500 per NS/AP/Omni point.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

I agree, the limiter in pfSense would be an easy way to spread the bandwidth around. 20/2 divided by 60 is not going to be pretty when you get 10 or 15 Netflixers, or folks Skyping with the kids back home.

pfSense sounds like it could be a reasonable alternative in this situation. Have you or anyone tried flexible limiters like discussed here?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/3e67dk/flexible_vs_fixed_limiters_troubleshooting_with/

That sounds better than just flat out dividing the bandwidth nn ways.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

you are probably going to want more than 1 AP

Yes, I plan to add 2 more to the 1 they have now.

 

[altrenda]

I have not used the flexible technique as it doesn't suit my needs. I only want to guarantee that my users get usable bandwidth. The typical setup has an Aspera file server that likes to eat all the available bandwidth. So I need to limit it during the day when people are working but give it all it can get during the overnight transfers. I also max out bandwidth for some heavy users to keep things balanced. pfSense and it's scheduled Limiter function works well and is easy to configure.