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Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
So this posting is the last of a series of 3 posts which discusses how to approach a multi access point wireless network setup. Part 1 considered wireless requirements planning and wireless product selection and Part 2 went on to look at issues surrounding wireless surveying and the positioning of access points. This final posting covers the last stage of wireless network setup: installation and testing.
The installation stage of a wireless project generally follows the following path:-
The Survey documentation will dictate where CAT5 needs to be installed to connect access points to the network infrastructure and / or wireless controller. And while it is being installed the selected wireless equipment products can be off site tested and preconfigured. It is important to test every aerial / access point when installing a multi-access point wireless network. If the aerials are being placed in close proximity a faulty aerial can cause connection problems.
Once the CAT5 installation and protocol testing is completed the wireless equipment can then be installed with PoE (Power over ethernet) switches and injectors as required by the survey. The wireless controller should be congfigured with the SSIDs and encryption standards that it will be supporting and each access point should be tested on it’s own as it is installed to make sure it is working correctly. Depending on the requirements the configuration may also include access point grouping and VLAN.
When fully installed the whole wireless network needs testing to make sure that SSIDs are being advertised in the correct areas, the encryption standards are working and the network services behind the wireless network are accessible. When installing wireless networks in areas shared by the public as well as private staff it is common to use separate SSIDs on different networks and not to advertise the SSID for the private network even though it is encrypted.
Finally, when the wireless network goes live and there are many users connected, it is worth checking the connection status of each access point to make sure that it is maintaining connections and happily supporting multiple users.
So in this series of posts the considerations of large scale, multi-access point wireless network setup have been touched on and if you would like to know more or get in touch with us have a look at this article: wireless networks or contact us.
[...] you can learn more about planning, surveying and installing a large wireless network. Or if you would like to find out more about how we can help you then [...]
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