Meraki MR74 Mesh Design on 5 acre lot

[rcorgill]

Hello all I am new to these forums and somewhat new to Meraki....I've been tasked with trying to provide wifi coverage on this property - this is out in the middle of nowhere Texas and the ground cannot be drilled so there are no options of running cat5 cable...the crude drawing illustrates where wifi is needed (yellow circles) and the source trailer (labeled as Inet) with the 2 MR74's acting as gateways.  This property is roughly 5 acres and I'd normally execute this with Ubiquiti but I have no choice but to use the MR74's that were previously purchased along with the factory omni antennas.  I spoke with support a bit about using sector antennas on the 2 gateways but I'm really not sure....The rectangles are essentially just construction trailers and within these trailers are where the connectivity is desired but I'm told they would prefer to also have coverage in all the trailers in the illustration- Any ideas? Again I've never attempted this with Meraki so I'm honestly not even sure if this is feasible.   Thanks5acres

[PhilipDAth]

@RumorConsumer has a similar type of operation.  Perhaps he can give some of his experiences.

[PhilipDAth]

This is the MESH deployment guide.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Deployment_Guides/Mesh_Deployment_Guide 

You are going to need to use directional antennas.  I think you need more gateway nodes to form point to point links.  I think you'll struggle to form multi-point links with those angles.

[rcorgill]

Thanks for the info. If I’m trying to include coverage of the trailers would it be better to use directional antennas and possibly mount the MR74 on the back of the trailer maybe 4ft above the roof? With the Omnis I figured the mr74 could go on the front of each trailer and we could rely on the radiation pattern of the Omni to cover behind the AP but I’d think you would want the directional antennas on the back even though that would increase the distance a few feet

[PhilipDAth]

I'm not completely sure, but I think the MR74 has 2 x 2.4Ghz connectors, and 2 x 5Ghz connectors.  Hopefully @NolanHerring will come along and confirm.

If this is the case, you could use an omni on the 2.4Ghz radio, and a directional antenna on the 5Ghz radio for the backhaul.

[rcorgill]

Ok so I have been chatting with the folks on site and am told we can get an ethernet cable to each MR74 (in blue on the drawing) so we won't have to use Mesh - If I use sector antennas do you guys think I can provide all the yellow trailers with wifi along with the empty spaces (labeled as "need wifi coverage") on the drawing?  These trailers are simple construction trailers with aluminum walls which definitely will cause multipathing but heck maybe it can work to my benefit - what do you think?

[PhilipDAth]

I think you'll get coverage, but I think you'll run into the hidden nodes problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_node_problem 

Hopefully the client count will be low.

[rcorgill]

Thanks for the help Philip - considering that this newer configuration isn't using mesh  would you still recommend sector antennas on both radios of the 4 MR74's?  Thanks agian

[PhilipDAth]

>would you still recommend sector antennas on both radios of the 4 MR74's

Yes.  Otherwise you wont get enough coverage.

[rcorgill]

Thanks again - since I am trying to increase range for both bands do you recommend the dual band sector antennas or is there any reason to separate the sector antennas per band?

[cwf]

If you find there are gaps in coverage you may want to fill in with a couple of MR74s in mesh mode using the 5Ghz antenna to mesh with a gateway and serve clients with the 2.4.

[PhilipDAth]

>recommend the dual band sector antennas or is there any reason to separate the sector antennas per band

I can't remember for this model.  Some have separate band connectors, so you have to physically use saperate antennas per band, some use an integrated set so only one antenna is needed for both.

[rcorgill]

So as a test I took an MR74 with (4) Omni antennas and deployed in a local area with a very low noise floor..the Omni's appear to function very well on 5ghz maintaining around 22dB signal at about 60 meters across my notebook and ipad.  At this distance throughput was great at around 180mbps (traditional speedtest)...unfortunately I was not able to test with Iperf but latency was low and regular inet browsing was snappy.  Technically I was able to carry decent throughput all the way out to 100 meters but once another device connected the connection for both dropped drastically which I would expect with omnis.  This test was run with the Outdoor profile and at this point I am thinking I could utilize the omni's along with the dual band sector antennas but maybe only just 3 sector antennas on the 3 furthest MR74's.  I didn't expect the omnis to perform as well as they did and considering I won't be relying on mesh I'm kinda hoping I can save a bit of $ by leveraging the omnis I currently have and just add 3 dual band sectors...what do you think?    

[rcorgill]

actually now that I think of it if you connect 1 connection of the dual band sector to the first 5g connection on the mr74 and the other connection from the sector to the first 2.4 connection on the mr74, would it benefit me at all to use Omni's on the remaining connectors?  I believe support stated that the remaining connectors would basically become useless for each channel the sector was connected to