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Site-wide wireless network solutions
Wireless Network Solutions for holiday parks, caravan sites and marinas
Is your WiFi coverage a little flaky?
Do you even offer your guests WiFi?
People no longer want to ‘get-away-from-it-all’ these days, they want to stay connected, whether this is to social media, the office or just to check local attractions online and with this in mind one of the key requirements, when away from home, is how good the WiFi is at the campsite, hotel, marina or holiday park.
Here at Solwise we offer a number of solutions for delivering broadcast WiFi for public areas such as holiday parks, caravan sites and marinas. We can also help you with what you can do for user management. The purposes of this management could be so you can offer a chargeable service and/or so you can control and have traceability for site visits and usage: This final point might well be something that you need if Ofcom come knocking on your door accusing you of downloading a rip off DVD through your internet connection!
The WiFi broadcast methods discussed here centre around scattering WiFi nodes around the site to give complete WiFi coverage. However, before going through the various methods to achieve this, first of all, we need to discuss the issues of where a signal will reach and where it will not. The key point is wireless doesn't go through walls or buildings or caravans! So you need to mount your outdoor wireless devices so that users can get clear line of sight to where the WiFi is being sent from. If the user is in a caravan or a metal hulled boat then that means the window of the caravan/boat needs to be aimed at where the WiFi is coming from. This means, when covering a park or 'van site, that you need to scatter WiFi transmitter nodes around the site to give all users clear connectivity. Of course, you also want to keep the number of nodes down to reduce interference, boost throughput and to reduce costs. Deciding how many WiFi nodes to install and where to mount them for optimum coverage is, in my opinion, the hard part!
Methodology of Distribution
It would be great if the site could be covered by just a single outdoor Access Point on the outside of the site clubhouse. Unfortunately, unless the site is very small indeed, this is never the case. Most sites will, therefore, require multiple access point nodes, carefully sited to give seamless coverage. Once you've picked the best location for the access point
nodes (see Physical Implementation below) the next problem is how do you get the network (Internet) to each node. There are a number of ways you can do this; each of them has its good points and its bad points:
1. Hard-wired Access Points
2. Access Points with a wireless backbone
3. Basic 'repeater' access points where the WiFi on the access point used for the local coverage and also the linking back to the source
The subject of covering your park with WiFi is a massive one. Steve Mace of Solwise has written a White Paper on the subject, it covers the methodology of distribution in more detail, roaming, performance, range, user management, legal implications, site surveys, along with details of suggestions for WiFi infrastructure.
Click here to download the full White Paper.
For more information on products you may have seen in Caravan Industry & Park Operator Magazine :
USB Patriot & Repeater kits for users of your park - click here
Hotspots for internet management for guests - click here
Outdoor Wireless Access Points for site-wide coverage of your park - click here
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