Sunday, November 1, 2020

Looking to get WiFi across the street

Hey all, apologies if this is not the right sub; I was referred here by r/homenetworking. Most of the other posts in this sub are a lot more technical than this one, so if I have the wrong place I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

On to my issue - I work for a nature preserve and I have been tasked with getting wifi down to our parking lot from our office. After some research, it seems that an access point is what I need, but I have absolutely 0 experience with them and I don't know if they will do what I need them to do. I will list all of the relevant information I can think of below, but if you need any more info I am happy to provide it.

  • We currently have internet in our office building, but the office is about 200-350 feet away from the parking lot (depending on which end of the lot you are in). Ideally we want people at our map shelter (where we have the map of our trails and other information about the preserve) to have internet. This is about 350 feet away from the office building.

  • There is a road between the office and the parking lot, meaning that we cannot bury any lines across the road. The closest we could get would still leave us about 200+ feet away from the map shelter. This is going to be our biggest issue.

  • Our parking lot has a capacity of ~30 cars (and cars often park along the street when the lot is full, especially since COVID hit). With that being said, as this is the start of a 5 mile trail we will never have that many people trying to access the WiFi at once (unless we have a group hike scheduled, in which case we can just warn them ahead of time).

  • We do not need to support a bunch of people streaming or playing games or things like that -- we mostly need it so people can call an uber (there is 0 cell service in the area), check the map, and so staff can check emails and things on their phones from the lot.

  • There are some trees between the office and the parking lot, so line of sight isn't perfect. I can see the lot and most of the cars in it from the office, but there is a thin strip of forest between the office and the parking lot.

  • Price is a secondary concern, however it will certainly be considered. We likely don't want to spend $10,000 on an access point, but we would rather have something that is reliable and has a good range than save a few bucks.

First of all, given the distance we need the wifi to travel, is an access point what we should be looking at or is there some other solution we should be considering? Based on the googling I did before posting it seemed like the only reasonable solution, but as I mentioned earlier, I am not experienced with them at all.

Secondly, if an access point is what we need, do you have any suggestions? The first unit I was considering was this Engenius model, and another redditor recommended the UniFi HD. The UniFi HD seems like the better unit, and as long as my boss OKs the cost, that is the unit I am leaning towards.

Thanks in advance for the help! Our hikers from next season also thank you!



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