MyWiFi

Building an HotSpot Wi-Fi network

The making of a HotSpot/Wi-Fi network is a very delicate phase. Factors influencing the design are many: size of the area to cover, the presence of obstacles (walls, vegetation etc.), availability of a wired Ethernet network, number of estimated users etc.
The purpose of this guide is to show some solutions to solve the most common problems that you may face in the implementation of a network Wi-Fi hotspot.

The hardware choice

A network Wi-Fi hotspot is basically composed of two elements:

Basic Configuration

The minimum configuration necessary to manage a Wi-Fi hotspot consists of a Hotspot Router (wireless) connected to a modem (ADSL, DSL, satellite, etc.).

As seen from the diagram above, the installation of a hotspot like this is trivial. But this is a small hotspots which cover a rather limited because the Wi-Fi signal is issued only from the router Hotspot Router.
The size of the covered area are difficult to predict. In open space coverage can have a radius of 20-30 meters, while inside a building will decrease drastically until a radius lower than 10-15 meters. In the latter case the covered area is strongly influenced by the number and dimensions of the walls in the room.
Generally, a network of this type is enough only for Wi-Fi hotspot in Bars, pubs, restaurants and libraries.

Using Access Point

The most efficient way to extend the coverage of Wi-Fi signal is to connect the access point hotspot router via ethernet cables.
To use this configuration it is essential that disabled the option "Separate from the WiFi Lan" in the location of My Wi-Fi Service.

The Access Point can also be connected to the switch in turn connected to the Hotspot Router.
In this way you can cover an area of arbitrary size using all Access Point required.
This configuration is well suited to cover large indoor environments, such as hotels, or the outdoor areas such as campgrounds and resorts.
In the latter case you will need to use outdoor access point such as Ubiquiti Picostation M2 that have the great advantage of supporting PoE (Power over Ethernet cable). In this way, each antenna will be achieved only by ethernet cable.

The configuration of these access points is reduced substantially to setting the SSID and IP address, that must be in the same subnet Hotspot Router.
This subnet is 192.168.182.0/24 for devices based on DD-WRT, OpenWrt and CoovaAP, while Mikrotik routers operate on 10.182.0.0/16. In the first case we are going to use a configuration like this:

-IP address: 192.168.182.2 (3,4,5...)
-Subnet: 255.255.255.0
-Gateway: 192.168.182.1

while, for Mikrotik:
-IP address: 10.182.0.2 (3,4,5...)
-Subnet: 255.255.0.0
-Gateway: 10.182.0.1

If you use the antennas "Picostation" will also need to disable the technology Airmax.

Using WDS

There are cases where you can not connect the Access Points to the Router HotSpot via ethernet cables. Consider, for example, Hotels that do not have a cabling ethernet, or camping where the placing of cables is particularly complex and expensive.
In these situations we can build our network using the wireless technology to repeating the signal, called WDS.

In the image above we note that the Wi-Fi network has been expanded with two routers that, using the WDS, are connected to the Hotspot router without cables.
Hotspot users can now connect indifferently either to the Wi-Fi signal of the Hotspot router or to the signals of other wireless routers, or move between the coverage areas of the routers.
The big advantage of this approach is to not require cables, while the disadvantage is the loss of performance (bandwidth) that grows with the number of connected devices in WDS. In general, however, the reduction of bandwidth is not a significant problem because the transmission speed of the Wi-Fi is always much higher than the speed of the Internet connection that you have.
In this kind of configuration plays a crucial role the deployment of the various routers, each of which will have to be configured to connect to the one located closest to it. In open spaces the distance between each device may be also of many tens of meters (hundreds of meters in the case of antennas Ubiquiti), while in closed spaces hardly the distance may exceed 20 meters. Currently My Wi-Fi Service supports WDS only for Hotspot Router with OpenWrt firmware. The other routers in the WDS network must be the same model than the Hotspot Router since the WDS operating is only guaranteed by using router models of the same type or at least with the same chipset for wireless signal.
Let's look at the configuration of the devices in a WDS network based on TP-Link wireless router 841.
The Hotspot Router (which generally comes preconfigured with the basic package of My Wi-Fi Service) is a Tp-Link 841n with OpenWrt firmware ver. 14 and other routers are still Tp-Link 841n, but with their original firmware.

Hotspot Router configuration

First of all make sure to deactivate the "separate WiFi from LAN" option from the location setting in the MyWiFi Service control panel. Then, the only thing to do on this router is to enable the WDS: in Network | WiFi | Edit | Interface Configration we will have to ensure that the mode is set to "Access Point (WDS)".

How to configure others Tp-Link with original firmware

The operations to do are the following:

The configuration of the other routers is quite similar. The only differences are in the IP address, nell'SSID chosen and the chance to decide whether to establish a WDS link with the main router or with one of the other routers that are already in WDS mode.

How to make a bridge with two antennas connected in WDS

Suppose we need to cover a campground in which there is an isolated area not reached by ethernet cables.
To spread the signal Wi-Fi in this area will use two antennas Picostation, the first connected by cable to a Mikrotik Hotspot Router (suited to handle the high loads of a campground) and the second connected to the first antenna in WDS.

Both antennas also provide a Wi-Fi signal to which users can connect to the campsite.
Moreover, a switch is connected to the second antenna via the LAN port of the PoE and to the switch are connected several additional Access Point (or other antennas).
This configuration is possible because the Wi-Fi and LAN interfaces are bridged to each other and so the Hotspot network is also accessible from the doors Lan antennas.

Let's see how to configure both antennas:

WDS connection of an antenna to a Hotspot Router Tp-Link

In this example we see how to make a connection between the WDS Hotspot Router (TP-Link 841 with a firmware OpenWrt) and an antenna Picostation.
This type of connection is possible because, although they are different devices, both use the same chipset for wireless (Atheros).
Consider that in this case, users can not connect directly to the antenna but must do so through the access points connected to the antenna.

To configure the Hotspot Router applies the same considerations of the WDS configuration between TP-Link, while for the antenna will need the following steps:

Networks with multiple SSID

In case of simultaneous use of an Hotspot and one or more Info Portal Wi-Fi we are in presence of a network with at least two SSID.
In this case, the above schemes are not applicable to repeat all the SSIDs. It's necessary to recur to the VLANs use as shown in the tutorial Building Info Portal newtork.