Ok, here’s the thing. I’m working at a beach condominium resort in Mexico that has never had fully functioning wi-fi. We’re looking into expanding the wi-fi service to the whole complex, this consists of 2 10 story condo buildings (max 13 units per floor).
The contractor that’s going to do the setup has given us 3 options.
1.- Purchase range extenders for every 2 units to improve signal.
2.- Set up 20 access points (10 for each building, 1 for each floor) and install repeaters every 2 units (46 repeaters per building).
3.- Hard wire the buildings with Cat6 cable & 1 48 port hub & 1 16 port hub per building.
The current set up is in the middle of both buildings we have a DSL connection to a 3com OfficeConnect ADSL Wireless 54mbps 11g firewall router, that feeds 1 omnidirectional antena (for ground coverage arround pool area) and 2 D-Link ANT24-1800 2.4Ghz 18dBi indoor/outdoor high gain directional antennas.
We know for a fact that the use of range extenders has not worked in the past. And we would prefer to have the wi-fi instead of hard wire. But we cannot get a second opinion since this is the only contractor in town that can do the service. But I’m not sure this contractor is having the customer’s best interest in mind.
I would like to see if you have any recommendations for this situation.