Question of multiple hotspots

[rsampaio]

Hi there im a potential costumer of wordspot and i have some questions.

I have the task to bring wifi to a school and because its very large it will need 5 to 6 routers (probably wrt54gl whit ddwrt)
 
To prevent abuse and minimize the mac spoffing i would need to use the ticket system but for all that i read i have some two

A. put wordspot in the main router and connect all other routers normaly by lan to the first (so all connections will eventually pass by the main one)

B. install worldspot in all routers, can tickets be use in all my routers inside the school? as students move around alot this would be preferable since i would like to monitor and log the hotspot areas (cantina, yard, etc) seperatly.

Any ways since the students wont be charge and i will probably make 1week tickets to minimize abuse (but always same login student number)

Will i pay 9c for the hotspot and make all kind of tickets (any limit/duration)

Other question dos the ticket system prevents two persons whit diferent mac to use the same ticket?

Security is everything for me.

Thx in advance. Plz answer asap so i can take the costs to the head master and initiate the project.

[WorldSpot]

Hi

Solution A is recommended if you can because there are several advantages:
- You get full roaming, this means that your users will be able to move between access points without being assigned a new ip address each time you move.
- Also the hotspot will maintain a single per user connection state. With solution B, if a user leaves a hotspot without disconnecting, and goes to the other hotspot, worldspot will consider it still connected because the connection stop signal was not received. The user will have to wait 10 minutes because the first hotspot takes 10 minutes to auto disconnect the user.
- With worldspot, a subscription is for each hotspot whatever the number of access points. With solution B, you would have to pay for each hotspot.
Note that you can wire any wifi access point, they don't have to be dd-wrt unless you use WDS.
The maximum number of simultaneous connections to the hotspot depends on the amount of ram of the main router. If you expect to have more than 10 to 20 people connected simultaneously, consider choosing a router with more than 16mb of ram.

Will i pay 9c for the hotspot and make all kind of tickets (any limit/duration)

Yes with a subscription you can do whatever you want.

Other question dos the ticket system prevents two persons whit diferent mac to use the same ticket?

Yes

[rsampaio]

thx for the quick anser and now i have a couple more questions

As i may have several wap then in this case a "master" with no wifi and just running wordspot will have a 8port switch and then all the other routers connected to him is the best choice.

Does any one has any experience with such large project?
i was thinking that each router will have at most 20 to 30 users (locked  to 50kbps for web email and msn) and a total of 60-80 users in the total network.

    internet----------Master----switch----------AP1
(50down/3Up)        worldspot      |------------ AP2
                                              |------------ AP3
                                              |------------ AP4
                                              |------------ AP5
                                              |------------ AP6

Will a wrt54gl (16mb ram) and worldspot handle all the users?

[WorldSpot]

There are 2 separate problems: the large wifi coverage and the number of simultaneous users.
With wired access points there won't be any problem. You can add any number of them.
for 60 to 80 simultaneous users, a wrt54gl won't be enough. It has only 16mb of ram.
You need a linux router or PC with enough memory.
I would say that a 32mb ram router would be enough (although not tested)
For 50mbit/s, it is a cpu speed problem. I think a router like the wrt might be at its limit. But if you limit the speed there should be no problem. I think you should use QOS rules instead of simple speed limits...