[94951] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: wifi for 600, alex
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Karsten)
Thu Feb 15 10:40:52 2007
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:39:46 -0600
From: Carl Karsten <carl@personnelware.com>
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com>
Cc: Marshall Eubanks <tme@multicasttech.com>, NANOG <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <bb0e440a0702141625g698d2aaal3d49d1db77f315ac@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
That is a really nice list. Is there a wiki somewhere I could post this to?
Carl K
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> There are a few fairly easy things to do.
>
> 1. Don't do what most hotel networks do and think that simply sticking
> lots of $50 linksys routers into various rooms randomly does the
> trick. Use good, commercial grade APs that can handle 150+
> simultaneous associations, and dont roll over and die when they get
> traffic
>
> 2. Plan the network, number of APs based on session capacity, signal
> coverage etc so that you dont have several dozen people associating to
> the same AP, at the same time, when they could easily find other APs
> ... I guess a laptop will latch onto the AP that has the strongest
> signal first.
>
> 3. Keep an eye on the conference network stats, netflow etc so that
> "bandwidth hogs" get routed elsewhere, isolate infected laptops
> (happens all the time, to people who routinely login to production
> routers with 'enable' - telneting to them sometimes ..), block p2p
> ports anyway (yea, at netops meetings too, you'll be surprised at how
> many people seem to think free fat pipes are a great way to update
> their collection of pr0n videos),
>
> 3a. Keep in mind that when you're in a hotel and have an open wireless
> network, with the SSID displayed prominently all over the place on
> notice boards, you'll get a lot of other guests mooching onto your
> network as well. Budget for that too.
>
> 4. Isolate the wireless network from the main conference network /
> backbone so that critical stuff (streaming content for workshop and
> other presentations, the rego system etc) gets bandwidth allocated to
> it just fine, without it being eaten up by hungry laptops.
>
> 5. Oh yes, get a fat enough pipe to start with. A lot of hotel
> wireless is just a fast VDSL or maybe a T1, with random linksys boxes
> scattered around the place.
>
> --srs
>
> On 2/15/07, Marshall Eubanks <tme@multicasttech.com> wrote:
>
>> > Carl Karsten wrote:
>> >> Hi list,
>> >> I just read over: http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0302/ppt/joel.pdf
>> >> because I am on the PyCon ( http://us.pycon.org ) team and last
>> >> year the hotel supplied wifi for the 600 attendees was a disaster
>
>> > How was the wifi at the resent nanog meeting?
>>
>> I thought it was quite good. I also think that the IETF wireless has
>> gotten its act together recently as well;
>> I suspect that Joel Jaeggli has had something to do with this.
>> > I have heard of some success stories 2nd hand. one 'trick' was to
>> > have "separate networks" which I think meant unique SSID's. but
>> > like I said, 2nd hand info, so about all I can say is supposedly
>> > 'something' was done.
>
>
