Using Peplink routers to increase speed and Pepwave Mesh Connectors to increase the converage on a single building apartment complex.

Business Need:

A client approached us with a need to improve wireless converage in their apartment building.  They already paid a company to install a wireless solution, however there were two problems:

1. The coverage was poor because of the strick firecode which makes the walls hard to penetrate wireless signals through.
2. The speed was below expectations because a 5Mb expenseive Fiber was being shared with 66 residents.

The client spent $2000 each for three BelAir wireless access points that were mounted to the roof.  They also purchsed expensive Cisco routers and expensive Fiber internet which they are now stuck in a contract for.

The customer gave us the following critaria:

1. fix the coverage for as little money as possible.
2. increase the speed without increasing the cost of the fiber internet.

Pepwave and Peplink Solution:

The first goal was to improve the wireless coverage.  We spend a great deal of time looking at the coverage.  The client wanted us to use the existing equipment and proove that we could provide better coverage.  We first bought 2 Pepwave Mesh Connector 400's so that we could program them to work with the current BelAir equipment.  After installing the Mesh Connectors we realized that the BelAir devices weren't passing MAC information along so we installed a TAG, updated the firmware (important), and everything started working.  The walls in this building a insulated, firewalled, and thick which basically means they are exterior walls inside which makes wireless travel difficult.  With 1 Mesh Connector 400 on each floor, the outer apartments were still complaining about converage.  We ordered 2 more mesh connectors and placed them 2/5 and 3/5 on each floor.  This solved the problem.  The neat thing is that 4 Mesh Connectors and a TAG were cheaper than 1 BelAir device.

In order to fix the speed we ordered two COX Cable 15d / 3u internet connections and added that to the Fiber 5 Mb connection.  We installed a peplink 310 router to share all three connections.  For less than the cost of 2 BelAir wireless devices, we increased the speed by 6 times, and fixed all the coverage issues.

Equipment Used: