July 1, 2024
This blog post is part of a multi-part case study series on how we at Metro Wireless upgraded a marina WiFi network to help it provide a great internet experience for its members and staff. We now manage that outdoor WiFi network, and support the marina in monetizing its WiFi connectivity, allowing them to recuperate their investment.
We’ve broken this blog series into a few parts:
This article is about the fun stuff: upgrading the WiFi access points and wireless point-to-multipoint backhaul network to provide ultra fast speeds and increased network capacity!
The fastest way to get started on your new marina or other outdoor WiFi and wireless network is to email us at [email protected] or call us at (888) 203-5826. It’s helpful if you also provide:
Our design and technical engineering team will assist you every step of the way, and we provide FREE remote surveys, which will give you a predictive picture of what your project will look like once completed, as well as a budgetary estimate to install and maintain your network.
Once the preliminary design is completed, we’ll schedule an on-site survey to finalize the network design. After our business clients accept the proposal and pay the deposit, we can order, provision, and install most WiFi networks within eight weeks.
An expert isn’t required to tell you that the latest and greatest WiFi networking equipment is essential in order to provide quality internet to clients, especially in large outdoor settings like marinas where many users will be sharing an upstream internet connection.
Our consultation and design phase focused on selecting the right hardware to meet the needs of the marina, as well as coming in with a budget they could readily afford.
In other posts in this multi-part blog series, we detail how we upgraded the structured cabling environment, as well as configuring and managing the network via cloud-based portal.
During our site survey, we encountered that the the existing WiFi network hardware had multiple issues including:
This clearly required upgrading in order for the marina to offer WiFi as an amenity that was capable of modern user demands. Many of the marina’s users wanted to ‘work from boat’ and stay connected with their friends and family, hence necessitating a serious upgrade in their wireless network.
As part of our design and consultation process, we reviewed the client’s needs for a modern WiFi network that could be offered as an amenity to the boater members.
Initially, we were planning to offer a standard 1Gbps capable backhaul and WiFi network, but the client opted for an upgrade to a future proofed network, and instead desired a 1.8Gbps capable backhaul system to support the outdoor WiFi 6 access points.
The system we designed was also a lot more cost effective than the system it replaced, and doesn’t mandate subscription management fees like other WiFi network providers (e.g., Meraki, Ruckus), saving the marina money for other important projects.
The new network is designed to support thousands of simultaneous users over the Marina’s 49 acres (or 2.1M Sq Ft) coverage area.
Once we better understood the needs and desires of the marina, we leveraged our RF Engineer to design a heatmapped coverage area of their new WiFi network, based on the equipment we selected to fit their needs. We include this service for free, by the way, as part of every free design and consultation process we do!
The heatmapping software, typically Ekahau’s Site Survey, an industry standard tool for this type of work, utilizes parameters such as office or warehouse floor plans, maps of outdoor spaces, building material types (e.g., drywall, metal), and other factors to help predict WiFi coverage with a high level of accuracy.
Once completed, the heatmap revealed areas where we felt highly confident there would be adequate WiFi coverage, as well as some potential trouble areas where we may want to add additional WiFi nodes to bolster coverage.
We’ve heard that spacing out WiFi nodes about every 6-8 dock slips is best practice. We recognize that can get costly, so we sometimes advocate to spread out a bit farther apart initially; we can always infill with additional WiFi access points as needed to provide more coverage. We always have this conversation with our clients up front to set expectations.
MacRay was also interested in recouping their new WiFi network investment by monetizing their network access. This would help offset both the initial investment made into the new network, as well as the ongoing costs for maintaining and managing the network, including their 1Gbps DIA dedicated internet connection.
More details about this in our WiFi network configuration blog post for this project.
We selected Cambium as our wireless and network hardware partner for this project.
They best met the marina’s requirements for premium WiFi coverage and provided an enterprise feature set we sought to manage their system after installation.
Powering the new wireless network is the Cambium XV-23T series of outdoor WiFi 6 access points.
These high powered WiFi 6 access points are omnidirectional, providing a 360 degree blast of WiFi signal wherever they are placed. We deployed 28 total access points for this project.
Each WiFi AP supports hundreds of simultaneous users, and offers the ability to wireless mesh with other Cambium WiFi APs. However, for this project we deployed a Cambium fixed wireless backhaul network to individually provide connectivity to each AP.
These outdoor focused access points deliver long range power, which is important for ensuring that WiFi signal penetrates the fiberglass and metal of the boats and yachts, which are notoriously hard to penetrate.
We had considered the Cambium XV2-2T, but given that our mounting locations were close enough together, we didn’t feel the need for our marina client to overspend on those units.
As mentioned above, the existing backhaul network was replaced with the 1.8Gbps capable Cambium cnWave series to deliver a point-to-multipoint wireless backhaul network solution. The V5000 distribution node acts as a hub for the V2000 client nodes which act as spokes.
This backhaul network operates on the 60Ghz spectrum, which is materially higher frequency than the 5Ghz based wireless backbone network that it replaces. 60Ghz can carry more speed throughput than 5Ghz, and doesn’t share or face interference with other WiFi and wireless gear like 5Ghz does.
While one hub (Distribution Node or DN) can support up to 30 spokes (Client Nodes or CNs), any CN can wirelessly connect to another CN (i.e., mesh), even if the CN doesn’t have line of sight (LoS) to the DN.
Not many wireless backhaul PtP systems are sophisticated to simultaneously support line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight (mesh) radios on the same network deployment. In this case, the longest ‘spoke’ for this wireless backhauls system was not longer than 1000 feet, but we can deploy these business wireless point-to-point systems for up to 10 miles and longer!
All the wireless point-to-point hardware and outdoor WiFi access points are IP67 rated, which we view as necessary for any outdoor environment, especially marine environments. This level of protection is more than IP65 and IP66-rated products, which are often described as "water-resistant" rather than "waterproof".
This wireless network is guaranteed to work in inclement weather, as we all know marinas can face severe storms and also strong weather conditions in midwestern winters. All the hardware is also rated for constant direct sunlight.
Behind the wireless network hardware is the Cambium NSE, a firewall and router that supports all internet traffic routing and security for the new WiFi network. This hardware appliance, installed indoors near the marina’s ISP connection, is also managed by the cloud-based portal, Cambium’s CNMaestro X.
We can also set up this hardware for ePSK, as well as monetization to help the marina recuperate their investment. See our more detailed post on ePSK and monetizing the Marina’s WiFi network.
This client elected for an upgrade from the standard two year warranty to an extended warranty covering more scope. Here’s a bit of detail on the two warranty options:
For a marginal incremental cost, our client opted for the premium warranty, giving them peace of mind.
As we had discussed with the client during the design phase, we predicted that additional WiFi access points would need to be added after the initial installation to ensure blanket coverage.
We didn’t want the client to overspend initially, so we opted to not include the additional WiFi access points and backhaul radios in our initial scope. However, shortly after installation, we found limited coverage gaps that our client found important enough to want to add additional wireless backhaul / backbone to.
Fortunately, since the Cambium system is very scalable and flexible, this wasn’t hard to accomplish. Once we decided on the prioritized areas to boost outdoor WiFi signal, we designed an upgrade to account for three additional WiFi access points and corresponding fixed wireless backhaul radios. These were easy to install, and the client was satisfied!
Once the underlying structured cabling infrastructure was remediated, upgrading the outdoor WiFi access points and wireless point-to-point backhaul network that supports it was in order.
This part of the project required well less than two weeks to procure, provision, and install, and comprised about one third of the total project cost.
This enabled the marina to provide WiFi connectivity as an amenity commiserate with modern day user demands.
All new WiFi 6 outdoor rated access points with a 1.8Gbps capable wireless backhaul feeding each AP will ensure that the upgraded network will support users for many years to come. Better network management and monetization of the new WiFi will also result from this upgrade.
To learn more about our Managed WiFi offering, check out our managed WiFi solutions page here. Of course, Metro Wireless deploys a lot of indoor (e.g., office, warehouse) type focused solutions, in addition to outdoor WiFi networks.
We run a robust, yet streamlined and fast process to consult, design, deploy, and manage outdoor WiFi networks like this Marina’s.
In order to start the process, send an email to [email protected] with:
Our design and technical engineering team will assist you every step of the way, and we provide FREE remote surveys, which will give you a predictive picture of what your project will look like once completed, as well as a budgetary estimate to install and maintain your network.
Once the preliminary design is completed, we’ll schedule an on-site survey to finalize the network design. After our business clients accept the proposal and pay the deposit, we can order, provision, and install most WiFi networks within eight weeks.
Tyler Hoffman
