Monday, June 8, 2020

Recommendations for APs for a densely racked warehouse

I'm looking for recommendations for APs for a warehouse fit out. The customer wants hand held devices to work anyware in the warehouse "live" ie without cacheing. Given that requirement, the wifi coverage needs to be as good as possible.

The warehouse is 24 aisles. The aisles are about 60m/180ft long and the racks are around 18m/55ft tall.

I believe that if we were to put 2-3 APs (ceiling mounted) per aisle then client devices would have close enough to an AP, and only have line of sight to the APs directly above them, fine... However, if every aisle has 2-3 APs, that is 48-72 APs that are on the same plane and more or less have line of sight of each other (racking does not extend quite all the way to the roof) and there will be all kinds of same channel interference even using 5Ghz.

All this makes me believe that we will need to use narrow sector type APs pointing down into the aisle to minimise AP to AP interference. (Not the aruba omnis that the customer already owns and understanably wants to redeploy).

Am I right to be worried about "adding loads of omnis on low power with a channel plan and hoping for the best" as a deployment strategy?

If so, can anyone recommend a system suited to this environement I.E. centrally mannaged sector/narrow beam APs that don't cost the earth. I know and like Ruckus 7782-N and they now have the T310n which is ultra narrow which seems ideal, but Ruckus harware/licencing is $$$

Any insight into this kind of very channinging deployment RF would be appreciated, along with any specific AP/system recommentations

Thanks in advance people :)

TLDR help my buy lots of APs for a warehouse



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