Selecting Wifi for a school

Selecting Wifi for a school is a minefield of choice and vendors who are "experts" in Wifi professing that their solution is the right one for your school. The biggest problem is that many educators and supporting staff have little experience of performance Wifi short of the type that came with their home broadband. This guide will give you and idea of how it works and questions to ask.

Here is a quick Wifi primer as a google presentation as given to an ISANet slam

Wifi primer

There are 3 real rules for Wifi

• How many radios can I see with signal strength > -65 dBm (minimum) as more visible radios means more available bandwidth *BANDWIDTH is WHAT YOU NEED IN A SCHOOL*
• More signal strength = more speed as the bit rate falls with distance
• does the system I have bought move clients to other nodes intelligently as the radios get loaded.

There are currently 2 vendors I use to meet the above requirements these are:-

Xirrus and Ubiquity Unify

I use Xirrus where I need Roll Royce performance and Unify where I need to fill holes or install wifi in an "Awkward" building.

When Dealing with Suppliers

• Wifi vendors typically send salesmen who rarely really know the "techy" stuff
• Always tell them that they have to meet and demonstrate they have met your performance specs (is amazing the amount of vendors who will not provide performance data after install)
• In high density areas ask for 60 devices all pulling 600Kbps as your worst case (this will make them go pale but you will need this if you are doing video or domain logins.)