Who knows about outdoor Wifi

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I may take on support of the outdoor Wifi at a church camp grounds I have a cottage at. The company that installed it went out of business. There are outdoor antennas every other telephone pole. Maybe 10 or 15 total. That's all I know. It does not work and quotes to fix are very high. I have experience on my own home WiFi but nothing outdoors.
 
I have done some outdoor wifi. The larger the area the more difficult it becomes. Ten APs is a large system-- there is a reason they want a high price.

Yes you would want to know the make/model of the APs for possibly keeping them in use.

Also are the APs interconnected by Ethernet cable or only wireless between them? What is the speed of the site's Internet line?
 
I've done external WiFi at resorts and healthcare facilities. As others have noted, we need significantly more detail on what the system is presently comprised of before offering up advise as to how to proceed.
 
Sounds like a good deed, I had worked and currently work part-time at a church for extra cash but I learned the hard way not to get too involved in anything other than my intended job. They'll hound you and drain you anyway possible when the WI-Fi goes down or has problems. Just my 2 cents.

Get yourself a MI-FI WI-FI HOTSPOT for you and your family and enjoy your cottage.

Have a happy and safe 4th
 
Since they are on utility company poles I assume it's POE? I do not see any kind of power coming off the electric wires on the pole. How far can POE run?
 
I'd RUN from this chore unless you are a WIFI expert. Don't let the church take advantage of you. Get a professional quote, and have them do it.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Since they are on utility company poles I assume it's POE? I do not see any kind of power coming off the electric wires on the pole. How far can POE run?


Depends on the equipment and the medium. The outdoor Cisco stuff I've dealt with uses coax with a power injector and has a cable range of around 1,000ft IIRC. Traditional PoE is around 500ft I believe, but there is some margin in that number.
 
Originally Posted By: bubbatime
I'd RUN from this chore unless you are a WIFI expert. Don't let the church take advantage of you. Get a professional quote, and have them do it.


Exactly my feelings.
thumbsup2.gif
 
I work for an IT department, and we farmed out the job to do our back parking lot at the Police Department, so that the cars can upload their video footage wireless.

It was a fiber link from our datacenter, to a switch, then all outdoor rated network cable up to utility poles.

We use the cisco meraki solution, and those outdoor AP's are not cheap.
 
Ubiquity products are great, in fact Ubiquity is one of the few who do WiFi the right way. If you take this on, you'll learn a lot about how things work and you'll end up being their support for a long time. It will use a lot of your time, so be careful what you take on. Once it's set up correctly, it will pretty much just work, until lightning takes something out, then you'll get a phone call.

I've set several of WiFi networks up, if you'd like, PM me and I'll steer you in the right direction (which may be to tell you to run!)
 
Well I know a lot about volunteering. I have been Treasurer of my church since 2013 and just walked away 6 months before the end of my term. Too many Trustees telling me how to do things. Old thinking people who want everything on paper and do not understand backing up for DR or the requirements for PII data. I do, it's my day job.

The main church had a severe fire last Nov and it could have easily been the other building where the office is. They want everything in file cabinets with broken locks.

I digitized most of the financial documents and stored them within QuickBooks.

Very organized, secure and confidential. But they do not get it. They want paper everything.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Well I know a lot about volunteering. I have been Treasurer of my church since 2013 and just walked away 6 months before the end of my term. Too many Trustees telling me how to do things. Old thinking people who want everything on paper and do not understand backing up for DR or the requirements for PII data. I do, it's my day job.

The main church had a severe fire last Nov and it could have easily been the other building where the office is. They want everything in file cabinets with broken locks.

I digitized most of the financial documents and stored them within QuickBooks.

Very organized, secure and confidential. But they do not get it. They want paper everything.


Sounds like the Episcopal church I work at.
 
I went through the network topology today. They have a cable modem/router with 4 Unifi outdoor AP connected to one port on the cable modem and another 4 Unifi outdoor AP connected to another port on the cable modem. It looks like they have two Unifi security gateways but both are broken and not connected. There are 2 switches that are not Unifi and some distance extenders for runs to the AP longer than 300 feet. One switch that splits one Ethernet cable with PoE into two. Currently no management software running. No Unifi cloud key.
 
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