Wifi access for a tent

kYutobi
Kind of a big deal

Wifi access for a tent

Through COVID times some people are talking about setting up tents during the spring for outside classes. What would anyone recommend for a wireless setup of about 2 tents and about 30 kids per tent? MR84 with antennas/ without antennas, inside the tents how should I mount AP's? Any suggestions would be great. We haven't started anything as it is just a conversation but I would like to be ready for it. Much appreciated Meraki CREW! 💚    

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3 Replies 3
GreenMan
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

That sounds like a good plan, in principle, but sub MR86 instead of MR84, for currency.   Either way, you will need antennas with them.   How would you uplink them to the network?   Wired connection is definitely preferable.

You could mesh them though, if cabling is not possible and if an existing gateway (wired) MR is near enough.   Your choice of antennas may well have an effect on that - MR84/6 is dual-band, with the 4 antenna posts serving both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, so you can't have one antenna optimised for mesh uplink and one serving the clients.   (You could do that with MR74/6 where each radio has its own pair of antenna posts, but those AP models arent so powerful, for the qty of users here)

I would look at the ANT-20 first (qty 2 = 4 antennas) and check you'll get good mesh uplink, without the need for directional antennas.  If you have to go directional, your coverage within the tent will likely suffer - unless your directional antenna is placed to have both the clients and the gateway AP in the direction of signal travel.

 

The APs would be mounted with the antennas pointing straight up and straight down - probably pole mounted, out of reach of people in the tent itself.

BlakeRichardson
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@kYutobi  wow this brings back memories, about 10 years ago the city I live in suffered a massive earthquake, our campus lost 80% of its buildings and as a result some classes were taught in large marquee's.

 

You definately want outdoor rated access points not because of rain but due to condensation that can build up on the roof. If you can hardwire I would because either wat you will need to be running power to the units so a single network lead isn't much extra

 

We had cheap large screen TV's mounted to the poles of ours as well so that assemblies and chapel services could still go ahead. Some of these marqurees remained onsite for over a year and during winter it was a bit miserable for those working in them. 

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kYutobi
Kind of a big deal

@BlakeRichardson thank you for the info bro. 😁

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