New Space Question

[Josh Aberson]

Hey all,

Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut right to it.

I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota.  Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet.  We've got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people.  It's a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.  

Any of the larger spaces out there have insight?  I'm currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up.  Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.

Would love some thoughts.

Best,

Josh Aberson

in...@workmeso.com

m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

220 S. Phillips Ave.

Sioux Falls, SD 57104

fb.com/workmeso

@workmeso

www.WorkMeso.com

[Pat Ramsey]

Josh,

Congratulations, first off. Welcome to the fun! 

What are the connectivity needs of your users? Are they pushing large amounts of code & files daily? Are you serving data from your end? 

We've always gone with a "reasonable" uplink. Business DSL for a long time, then a cable line in addition, eventually adding fiber for data & keeping a dsl for 1 member's VOIP phone.

I've been in IT long enough to know you can never have a large enough pipe, so set the expectations early, find out what's the right size without busting your budget & work with your members - know them well enough - to avoid any hurt feelings, problems, etc.

We're at around 40-ish members now. Our data line is fiber, 5 up / 5 down, I think it is. Our core router is an Airport Extreme base station. Off that is a 24-port gigabit switch, as the space came with some wired data ports. We run another Airport Extreme to extend the cloud in the main room. Extended off that is a Linksys & a D-link wireless router (both flashed with dd-wrt). Each of these has a old network printer attached to it.

Easy-peasy, pretty much runs itself.

Cheers!

Pat

[Josh Aberson]

Thanks Pat, appreciate the help. 

I was looking into the Airport extreme option. I really like that it has USB connectivity for shared drives, and that it's a dual antenna so can separate out networks for different uses. Am mainly concerned with firewall protection on the main line coming in. 

Have you ever had any issues with the firewall on those?  Also, if you didn't have two, do you think your 45 members would bog it down?

Thanks again!

Josh Aberson

Sent from my iPhone

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[Alex Hillman]

Another vote for Airport Extremes here. We just added two more for additional coverage, but they're the most rock solid wireless access points we've tried (and we tried just about every consumer wireless router on the market).

We back it up with hard lines as well, and coverage is great.

-Alex

/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[john....@gmail.com]

I'll third the Airport Extremes.

Right now we have one in the middle of the space, but will likely move to two (one at each end) for better coverage as we get more people and the space gets more fleshed out.

Pipe wise, we went with comcast biz internet, and did the 40mb down. But with a phone call can be 100mb if we need it. We wanted to start with what we thought our first few members needed and save a bit of money, but can grow as needed, vs. have crazy fat pipe and no one using it to it's fullest and throwing money away.

if that helps.

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | Ignite Denver| Denwhere | 360|Flex | 360|iDev

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
~ Bruce Lee

[Pat Ramsey]

Josh,

Never had any issues with the firewall. I eyeball the logs every so often & haven't seen anything odd. 

The primary base station works great as a central router - no DHCP issues, NAT works great, DNS etc. Very low-key & stable, as it should be.

On the wireless side of things, there's no way we would be able to satisfactorily handle more than 15 or so people on 1 wireless router. Don't even try it. So I bought two (plus, it made the little red light in the back of my head slow down. 2 is 1, 1 is none, etc) of the Extremes.

We segmented out our cloud into three, in order to provide connection points for the different speeds without causing a slowdown for faster devices. Each uses the same wireless key, so it's convenient for users to get on. My original plan of 1 cloud for all failed spectacularly the day we had a visitor with an old 802.11b card connect, killing connection speeds for everyone. D'oh!

Cheers!

Pat

[Ryan Price]

Hey Josh,

We are getting ready to run 20-30 Ethernet wires all over the space - really similar to what Pat is talking about. We want to be able to provide the members with a reliable connection, and hard wired is the best for that.

Peace,

Ryan Price

rpr...@ryanpricemedia.com

@liberatr

UrbanReThink.com

[Pat Ramsey]

Ryan,

I should note - the space came wired & we went ahead & made 'em hot - but no one uses them. Ever, outside of the one VOIP phone 1 member uses. As mobile as 95% of our members are, nobody carries ethernet cabling with them. 

Cheers!

Pat

[john....@gmail.com]

We opted to not even bother with ethernet. We might run one to a voip phone for the space. We asked members and looked at who we wanted to attract and being tied to a ethernet cable didn't make sense. We're all wireless. The printer will be hung off an Airport Extreme or ethernet next to the airport.

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | Ignite Denver| Denwhere | 360|Flex | 360|iDev

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
~ Bruce Lee

--

[Jerome Chang]

Hi all.

Sorry folks, but I'd have to disagree.  I tried to use an Airport Extreme, then added another and we quickly overwhelmed them.  We upgraded to a DLink commercial grade router and within a year (or less!), that fizzled.  We now use Meraki AP's and router (since March 2011) and so far so good.  Basically, the Apple Extreme's simply couldn't handle the load for about 40 simultaneous "devices."  Remember that many people now use 2-3 devices (laptop + phone/tablet), so you should anticipate x2.

For the Apple Extreme's, we ended up having to often turn off and on sometimes 1-2/day.  The reason was that these Apple Extreme's would not flush out IP addresses.  We concluded that in an environment where you might have the same 40 people, these AE's might be appropriate.  But when we host an event for 50 people...

Also, AE's don't allow you to manage the user connections: no throttling, no activity per IP address, etc.  In an age of dropbox and all things cloud, all it takes is one uneducated user to think they can upload a 1 gb movie file to ruin the bandwidth for everyone else.  Or say, when video streaming and other heavy bandwidth usage peaks around lunch time because everyone's watching NetFlix streaming while they take a break.

Finally, how is everyone getting these fat 40mb pipes???  We pay $600/mo for a 5/5 EoC, and $900/mo for 10/10.  And some $200/mo I think for 10/2 DSL (SLA, not consumer).  I can only speculate a 50/10 or something must be $$.  Oh, and we need the synchronous 5/5 or 10/10 for our VoIP handsets.  We use QoS to prioritize the phone data packets; otherwise, we'd need 20/20 or more!

Jerome

______________
BLANKSPACES
"work FOR yourself, not BY yourself"

www.blankspaces.com
ph: 323.330.9505 | 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) Los Angeles, CA 90036 
ph: 310.526.2255 | 1450 2nd Street (@ Broadway), Santa Monica, CA 90401

[Alex Hillman]

Ah! SO sorry, I made a huge mistake and left out an important part: we use the Airport Extremes for wireless ONLY. They're dumb wifi repeaters.

We use the DLink DIR-655 for assigning and managing IPs, traffic shaping, etc. It runs like a champ with all of our traffic. Hasn't had to be rebooted in months. The D-LINK's wifi kinda sucked though, so we shut that off.

http://www.dlink.com/DIR-655

-Alex

/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

We have Comcast business class 50mbps/10 up/down and can have 35
people on our wifi router which I think is a Netgear-N I picked up at
Bestbuy. The router also handles two different networks. One for
people with older computers and one for newer computers (B/G vs A/N).
Mixing the two was a nightmare and all the new computers were dragged
down to the old computer's speed capability which is why we split them
up.

We also have 4 hardwired ports. One member went to Home Depot and
custom made 4 short cables for $7 that we keep on a shelf if someone
wants to grab one and another member donated 4 10/100 ethernet
switches which we haven't used but probably will in the new space. All
this magic costs us $199/month.

As for reliability, the only time we had issues is when they were
relocating the utilities in our back alley and every time a truck
backed over the cable they were burying we lost internet. That was a
stabby 3 days for all of us.

Angel

On Aug 25, 9:09 am, Josh Aberson <jjaber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut right to it.
>
> I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota.  Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet.  We've got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people.  It's a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.  
>
> Any of the larger spaces out there have insight?  I'm currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up.  Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.
>
> Would love some thoughts.
>
> Best,
>
> Josh Aberson

> i...@workmeso.com
> m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

[Joshua Marpet]

up to a certain level, the consumer and "prosumer" solutions being proposed here are perfectly cool.  Above that level, it needs to get serious.

Astaro is a great provider of enterprise grade WAP's that just work.  They also sponsor the Bsides security conferences that are free, and awesome!  (I help run one, and present at several others.) 

Just an FYI.

Joshua

[Mike Pihlman]

We can chat more offline, but, I am really happy with the Netgear router we use at home (it has two channels) and is rock solid. I have a Linksys here in AltamontCowork which has been great too (but in the past my Linksys routers had a tendency to go bonkers occasionally requiring a swift kick in the reboot).

I have Comcast Business Internet since I do video conferencing testing and needed upstream BW as well as downstream.  It has served us VERY well.  Just did a quick speed test, via WiFi: 18 Mbps down / 6 Mbps up.  The BW's you are looking at are awesome!  South Dakota?  Hmmm....  :-)  

Locate the router, if you can as close to the middle as possible.  150 feet should be easy since the spec says 300 feet (or it used to when I followed that kind of techy stuff).  

Mike

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[Alex Hillman]

Picking up on a super-old thread, I'm wondering if Jerome or anyone else can weigh in on Meraki, Ruckus, or any other similar wireless solutions that they're using and love? Pros, cons, configurations, number of members/devices you support per Access Point, etc?

We're looking at options again now that we're expanding to 2 floors and determining efficient ways to cover 8000 square feet on 2 floors of a cement-structure building. Adding more Airport Extremes is an option, but stuff like "beamforming" and high-power antennae has my attention :)

-Alex

indyhall.org

[Jerome Chang]

Hi.

We and NextSpace both use Meraki.  I believe Link does as well.  Many pros, and the only cons I encountered was the upfront cost a year ago, which since have lowered.  Otherwise, operationally, it's been bliss.  Totally ideal for dynamically changing spaces such as coworking.

Jerome

______________
BLANKSPACES
"work FOR yourself, not BY yourself"

www.blankspaces.com
ph: 323.330.9505 | 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) Los Angeles, CA 90036 

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[Alex Hillman]

Sweet, thanks Jerome. 

How many access points do you use to cover your location(s)? Any recommendations for planning coverage?

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Jerome Chang]

For 7500sf, we have 3, but partially because we have a heavy-usage event space up front, so 2 of the AP's kind of double-up coverage.
For 5000sf, we have 2.

I would recommend discussing details w/ Chris and Josh, cc-ed here. They have worked w/ me for nearly 4 years so they've seen us go thru 3 gens of wi-fi gear.

Jerome
______________
BLANKSPACES
"work FOR yourself, not BY yourself"

www.blankspaces.com
ph: 323.330.9505 | 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) Los Angeles, CA 90036

On May 7, 2012, at 10:42 AM, Alex Hillman wrote:

> Sweet, thanks Jerome.
>
> How many access points do you use to cover your location(s)? Any recommendations for planning coverage?
>
>
> --
> /ah
> indyhall.org
> coworking in philadelphia
>
>
>
> On Monday, May 7, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Jerome Chang wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> We and NextSpace both use Meraki. I believe Link does as well. Many pros, and the only cons I encountered was the upfront cost a year ago, which since have lowered. Otherwise, operationally, it's been bliss. Totally ideal for dynamically changing spaces such as coworking.
>>
>>
>> Jerome
>> ______________
>> BLANKSPACES
>> "work FOR yourself, not BY yourself"
>>

>> www.blankspaces.com (http://www.blankspaces.com)

>> ph: 323.330.9505 | 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) Los Angeles, CA 90036
>>
>> On May 7, 2012, at 10:27 AM, Alex Hillman wrote:
>>> Picking up on a super-old thread, I'm wondering if Jerome or anyone else can weigh in on Meraki, Ruckus, or any other similar wireless solutions that they're using and love? Pros, cons, configurations, number of members/devices you support per Access Point, etc?
>>>
>>> We're looking at options again now that we're expanding to 2 floors and determining efficient ways to cover 8000 square feet on 2 floors of a cement-structure building. Adding more Airport Extremes is an option, but stuff like "beamforming" and high-power antennae has my attention :)
>>>
>>> -Alex
>>>

>>> indyhall.org (http://indyhall.org)

>>>
>>> On Friday, August 26, 2011 12:15:02 PM UTC-4, Jerome wrote:
>>>> Hi all.
>>>>
>>>> Sorry folks, but I'd have to disagree. I tried to use an Airport Extreme, then added another and we quickly overwhelmed them. We upgraded to a DLink commercial grade router and within a year (or less!), that fizzled. We now use Meraki AP's and router (since March 2011) and so far so good. Basically, the Apple Extreme's simply couldn't handle the load for about 40 simultaneous "devices." Remember that many people now use 2-3 devices (laptop + phone/tablet), so you should anticipate x2.
>>>>
>>>> For the Apple Extreme's, we ended up having to often turn off and on sometimes 1-2/day. The reason was that these Apple Extreme's would not flush out IP addresses. We concluded that in an environment where you might have the same 40 people, these AE's might be appropriate. But when we host an event for 50 people...
>>>>
>>>> Also, AE's don't allow you to manage the user connections: no throttling, no activity per IP address, etc. In an age of dropbox and all things cloud, all it takes is one uneducated user to think they can upload a 1 gb movie file to ruin the bandwidth for everyone else. Or say, when video streaming and other heavy bandwidth usage peaks around lunch time because everyone's watching NetFlix streaming while they take a break.
>>>>
>>>> Finally, how is everyone getting these fat 40mb pipes??? We pay $600/mo for a 5/5 EoC, and $900/mo for 10/10. And some $200/mo I think for 10/2 DSL (SLA, not consumer). I can only speculate a 50/10 or something must be $$. Oh, and we need the synchronous 5/5 or 10/10 for our VoIP handsets. We use QoS to prioritize the phone data packets; otherwise, we'd need 20/20 or more!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jerome
>>>> ______________
>>>> BLANKSPACES
>>>> "work FOR yourself, not BY yourself"
>>>>

>>>> www.blankspaces.com (http://www.blankspaces.com/)

>>>>>>>> in...@workmeso.com (mailto:in...@workmeso.com)

>>>>>>>> m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
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>>
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[Alex Hillman]

Chris has been VERY helpful off list. Thank you for the recommendation!

-Alex

--
/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

On Monday, May 7, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Jerome Chang wrote:

The content of the message has not been downloaded yet.

[Martin]

Hey guys, greeetings from Buenos Aires. I'd been evaluating a Meraki solution after spending some time @ Blankspaces. The only thing that was holding me back were cost concerns and an undefined networked solution as Meraki was going to solve the wifi part of the puzzle (access control, open-mesh, QoS).

We recently hosted an event for a group called Hacks/Hackers and they installed a tremendously simple set of small AP's (http://www.open-mesh.com) that created an instant mesh-network which were ccontrolled by the open-source CloudTrax http://www.open-mesh.com/index.php/cloud-controller). Worked like a charm for the 100+ attendees.

I'm now thinking of going this route as the functionality seems to be comparable to Meraki but at 10% the cost.

Anyone have any experience with this Open-Mesh AP's + Cloudtrax (cloud controller) combo solution?

I'm looking to update the 6 consumer AP's I have distributed around my 5,500sq ft. 2 floor space with aprox 70 members. I'm also looking to setup VLANS for each member's team (we have about 60%+ of our members in private offices. Not sure yet how we might integrate the wifi mesh network with the wired VLAN's. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that's hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don't.

We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.

Angel

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

I lied, we use Netgear routers. They're odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.

[John Wilker]

We're probably a good model of overkill but we're also hi bandwidth users. Our current setup is

Comcast Business gateway (50/10) that we can increase with a phone call if needed.

4 Airport Extremes extending a single 5GHz network, with a 2.4GHz network off of one unit for Phones to use.

Airports aren't really business class robust they work and are low maintenance. On our short list of improvements is connecting them all over ethernet to reduce the wireless usage to clients only, but that's a few weeks out as we figure out how to make it work

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences

(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

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[Alex Hillman]

I'm working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we've grown for my blog, I'll share it here when it's done. Here's a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.

On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220. 

pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware from http://www.hacom.net and it runs $800-1500. 

It's a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000's of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It' usable, but you'll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.

For us, that means a much easier to manage "network policy". You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it's causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.

The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don't' ever lose their connection.

On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we'd never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn't seem like a good fit for us.

Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don't get their enterprise support, but I'm not too worried about it. I'm very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We're using the Ruckus 7962 - http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I'm a happy customer. 

I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It's a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!

-Alex

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[John Wilker]

I can second netspot, we used it at Uncubed to see what was going on around the building and see where our weak spots were

John Wilker
Founder, 360|Conferences
(720) 381-2370
twitter: jwilker
johnwilker.com | 360|MacDev | 360|Stack | 360|iDev

[Toni Hogan]

This is REALLY making my head hurt! :-(

Toni Hogan

On Jun 4, 10:59 am, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm working on a complete redux of the evolution of our networking equipment as we've grown for my blog, I'll share it here when it's done. Here's a bit of a preview of the latest evolution.
>
> On the router side of things, we now have a pfSense-based appliance called a Firebox. pfSense is a very robust piece of router software and can be run on a variety of appliances that range in price, but we were able to pick one of the older models (RX6264S) up on EBay for ~$220.
>

> pfSense itself is free and open source, but specialized hardware can run it optimally. We looked at new hardware fromhttp://www.hacom.net(http://www.hacom.net/) and it runs $800-1500.

>
> It's a LOT more powerful than anything in the consumer arena, handling 1000's of users and millions of connections. Consumer gear starts to slow down with anything north of 50 users. It' usable, but you'll start noticing problems. Also, pfSense gives us REALLY great analytics for finding and squashing problems, like connections that are flooding the network for all users and also gives us really useful tools for giving things that need connection priority (like Skype and SSH connections) over things like Youtube and torrents.
>
> For us, that means a much easier to manage "network policy". You can use just about anything on our network, and the router figures out if it's causing problems and throttles the amount of network it has access to.
>
> The hardware we bought also allows for bridged WAN, which means we can install a fallback ISP for when our primary ISP is having issues, and that way people don't' ever lose their connection.
>
> On the wireless side of things, we tested Meraki and Ruckus and went with Ruckus. Meraki APs seemed to have a shorter range and while the Cloud Control system was badass, we'd never use 99% of it. The sales people were really nice and helpful, but it didn't seem like a good fit for us.
>

> Ruckus, on the other hand, was challenging to work with through their normal enterprise sales channels so we went to Ebay again and bought a new AP for 25% off list price and it works awesome. We don't get their enterprise support, but I'm not too worried about it. I'm very happy with the performance of a single access point (covering and supporting >100 users on 2 floors) and plan to buy a 2nd AP to beef up the coverage. We're using the Ruckus 7962 -http://www.ruckuswireless.com/products/zoneflex-indoor/7962

>
> Thanks for the recommendation for Ruckus from the Cambridge Innovation Center crew. I'm a happy customer.
>
> I also strongly recommend NetSpot (www.netspotapp.com) for doing a site survey, which I was recommended by Chris Johnson (copied on this email). It's a free app that lets you do a heat map of signal strength and signal to noise ratios. It gave me a TON of insight into placement and the resulting coverage of wifi. Probably the most useful tool I learned about last month!
>
> -Alex
>
> --
> /ah
> indyhall.org
> coworking in philadelphia
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, June 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:
> > I lied, we use Netgear routers. They're odd. They needed to be restarted constantly when we first moved in but now run very smoothly.
>
> > On Sunday, June 3, 2012 8:55:04 PM UTC-6, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote:
> > > We use Dlink routers. One in the basement conference room where the juice line comes in that's hardwired up to the 3rd floor where most of the coworking happens. Both are activated for wireless. Additionally, I think the guys ran hard wires all the way upstairs and then hooked up a couple of switches. Several people hard wire in while at Cohere but the majority don't.
> > > We have 5-10 people in the space at any time and we have Comcast Biz class 50/10 for $200/mo. It all depends on how your city is wired up. We have some special consideration being just a couple of blocks away from a large university here.
>
> > > Angel
>
> > > On Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:09:58 AM UTC-6, JJ wrote:
> > > > Hey all,
>
> > > > Without getting into too much introduction and details, I'll just cut right to it.
>
> > > > I'm opening a space next week in South Dakota.  Working on finalizing details right now, and one thing I'm not too sure about is internet.  We've got 20 members or so pre-signed to move in day 1 and in trying to plan for the future, am trying to figure out what sort of internet speed I need, and what sort of router to handle the space's size and amount of people.  It's a long space, about 150ft, and we could very easily have 100 people accessing the network at any given time.
>
> > > > Any of the larger spaces out there have insight?  I'm currently looking at an internet speed of 50 down/10up or 100 down/15 up.  Also am looking at 801.11n routers that have two to three adjustable networks built into the device.
>
> > > > Would love some thoughts.
>
> > > > Best,
>
> > > > Josh Aberson

> > > > i...@workmeso.com (mailto:i...@workmeso.com)
> > > > m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

>
> > > > 220 S. Phillips Ave.
> > > > Sioux Falls, SD 57104

> > > > fb.com/workmeso (http://fb.com/workmeso)
> > > > @workmeso
> > > >www.WorkMeso.com(http://www.WorkMeso.com/)

>
> > --
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[Alex Hillman]

My advice is to keep it simple and grow as you need. 

A high-end consumer router (around $200) will and wifi access points handle <20 concurrent users without too much trouble. Once you break 20 people on the system at the same time, especially people who have a laptop + a smartphone with wifi, you'll start noticing issues that can be taken care of by adding more additional wifi access points.  

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

To post to this group, send email to cowo...@googlegroups.com.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to coworking+...@googlegroups.com.

[Jacob Sayles]

We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great.  The WAN fail-over is a little clunky so don't expect seamless transitions.  It takes about 10 seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped.  That said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down.  That's why we pay $200/month for a second internet connection.  We balance it out by having that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).  

Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme.  5000sqft and solid coverage.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

[Alex Hillman]

Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP? 

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Jacob Sayles]

Yes, just one Airport Extreme.  At the moment we have 42 devices connected to the wireless out of 63 in the space... but it's also a quiet day.  Last Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space.  I can't see how many of those were on the wifi.  I say "devices" because most users are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop.  Today we have 26 members in the space.  

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

[Alex Hillman]

Impressive. How many other wifi access points are within range? 

I have a feeling that our signal to noise ratio was hurting our ability to run that many devices from even 4 Airport Extremes. 

I guess the lesson here is "your milage may vary" on any of these pieces of equipment, so don't expect a silver bullet.

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Jacob Sayles]

We have a lot of traffic with 4 apt buildings surrounding us so there are approximately 20-30 competing signals depending on where you sit.  We still have issues if someone is on 802.11g only (2.4ghz) but most users are on the 5ghz band.  The full place is wired though so if anyone has issues, we just tell them to plug in.  When I hear "I'm having wireless issues" I check out their laptop and 9 times out of 10 it's an older machine that only does 802.11g.  

One piece of hardware I would love to find is a google cloud print server.  Currently anyone needing to print from a chrome book needs Alexandra to be logged in to Chrome and it goes through her account.  This is a horrible solution.  Anyone got a better solution?

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

[Toni Hogan]

I had an Airport Extreme in my hands about an hour ago but I got
nervous. We only had 4 people here today and the Linksys and been
blocking additional users since yesterday. It's only letting on person
connect. The Netgear only works for about 10 minutes. I had to go home
to get my Clear Puck...imagine that. It's working just fine. We are
broadcasting two free coworking days next week and a few people have
already signed up for Wednesday so we have to be ready...and we will
be. :-)

Toni Hogan

On Jun 13, 2:17 pm, Jacob Sayles <ja...@officenomads.com> wrote:
> Yes, just one Airport Extreme.  At the moment we have 42 devices connected
> to the wireless out of 63 in the space... but it's also a quiet day.  Last
> Wednesday, our busiest day ever, we had 107 devices in the space.  I can't
> see how many of those were on the wifi.  I say "devices" because most users
> are at least 2 with their phone and their laptop.  Today we have 26 members
> in the space.
>
> Jacob
>
> ---

> Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolationhttp://www.officenomads.com-  (206) 323-6500
>
> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > wrote:
> >  Just one Airport Extreme How many people share that AP?
>
> > --
> > /ah
> > indyhall.org
> > coworking in philadelphia
>
> > On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Jacob Sayles wrote:
>
> > We run pfsense on an old P3 machine and it works great.  The WAN fail-over
> > is a little clunky so don't expect seamless transitions.  It takes about 10
> > seconds to switch over and all VPNs, file transfers, etc are dropped.  That
> > said, 10 seconds of outage is better then being down.  That's why we pay
> > $200/month for a second internet connection.  We balance it out by having
> > that line (comcast) handle all our phones (4).
>
> > Wifi we are happy with our Airport Extreme.  5000sqft and solid coverage.
>
> > Jacob
>
> > ---
> > Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation

> >http://www.officenomads.com-  (206) 323-6500
>
> > On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com

> >  *Josh Aberson*
> > i...@workmeso.com
> > m: 521.6158 | @JoshAberson

[Matthew Arkin]

Airport extremes are really awesome, much better than the more consumer oriented Linksys and Netgear stuff.

[Matthew Arkin]

Jacob, you should be able to "Share" printers with Google Cloud Print http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1329537 

[Jacob Sayles]

Yes, that is what Alexandra did, and that is why it is linked to her account.  If she doesn't have chrome open, logged in to google, then the share doesn't work.  :(  

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

[Jordan Running]

Jacob,

Take a look here: https://github.com/armooo/cloudprint

If your printer is on the network or connected to your pfSense machine you can install CUPS on the latter (there's a good guide on the pfSense forum) and then this script acts as a Google Cloud Print daemon. This depends on your willingness to SSH into pfSense and there being BSD support for your printer.

I haven't tried it since we don't have any ChromeOS users yet but it appears to be well-maintained. Hope it helps!

Jordan Running
Busy Coworking
Iowa City, IA
http://busycoworking.com/

[leon.s...@ezeep.com]

Hello everyone,

if you are looking for a cloud-managed printing solution for your space that is set up in a few minutes and runs your complete printing management infrastructure, you should definitely check out our service at ezeep.com. It is used and loved by coworking spaces all over the world.

If you are interested in some more info, a short demonstration or a week of free trial, just get in touch with me.

Email: leon.s...@ezeep.com

Phone: +49 30 208 981 303