New to Ruckus - Extending a WiFi Signal to an Outbuilding

[rpatti]

Hello all, I'm not very familiar with Ruckus products. I'm hoping someone can point in the right direction with the products I might need for this...

- Customer already has an established Ruckus wireless network in a small hotel
- They want to extend the guest WiFi network to an outbuilding, a club house, that's about 200 ft away from a roof mounted radio that's transmitting the signal for outdoor clients.
- Currently no WiFi signal inside the club house, but signal outside is good
- My thought was to mount a receiver antenna of some sort on the outside of the clubhouse with Ethernet into the building to a router and switch to power 2 indoor APs.

Would this be doable? What Ruckus products might work for this? Thanks for any help.

[michael_brado]

If you're using a controller (ZD or SZ) today, you might be able to mesh another outdoor AP on the clubhouse rooftop, if it has good line of sight to the current roof mounted AP.
A T300 (omnidirectional antenna) might be able to Mesh back to the hotel rooftop AP, and provide clubhouse devices with stronger signal (than just from the hotel rooftop).

Or maybe, a T301n or T301s (narrow or sector antenna) to mesh with the Hotel, and a local indoor AP (any model) using PoE power from the same switch, for the clubhouse patrons...?

[rpatti]

Thanks Michael. They're running a ZoneDirector 1200. LoS to the existing roof AP is possible. Was trying to avoid mesh, since there might be a signal strength hit, but maybe that's the way to go? I don't want any changes to impact their current outdoor coverage.

[DarrelRhodes]

Hi Slopo,
I second Michael's reply for sure.  If your customer has a ZD then SmartMesh is DEFINITELY the way to go! SmartMesh will adapt to give you the best throughput based on the signal it has to work with.

You can then cable from the external AP on the clubhouse to an iternal AP inside and provide guests with excellent service.  The ZD will provide you with full managment stats for the SmartMesh link and client connectivity to the remote 'eMESH' AP in the clubhouse.  You can also do SpeedFlex tests from the ZD to check throughput.

Hope that helps,
Darrel.

[robert_lowe_722]

Mesh would be the way to go I would suggest. Install an AP on the outside of the club house to form part of the mesh and, depending on the size of the club house, wire it back to a small POE switch and then connect an internal AP for additional coverage. The internal AP will mesh back to the controller using the external AP as the bridge.

You shouldn't see any negative change in coverage, likely an improvement near the clubhouse but obviously when you enable mesh you will effect the throughput of the external network because of the airtime utilisation of the Mesh management. That said, if its just a guest network i wouldnt expect this to be noticeable either.