We were having the same issue at our more 'techy' building with lots of heavy bandwidth users, here was our expensive but effective solution:
1. Upgrade bandwidth to as much as we could afford, which is 50/50 mbps symmetrical. One-time cost of $5k (to install microwave antenna on roof), then $125/mo. We also have backup dual-line DSL for failover and VOIP. We have the option to upgrade to 100/100 in the future if needed. 2. Upgrade Wifi Access Points to Ruckus Wireless. We originally had the Unifi APs, and they worked reliably and provided good coverage, however they do not have any sort of load balancing or rate limiting features. Ruckus APs are a significant cost at $660 per AP and over $1000 for the hardware controller, but they have some incredible features, such as AP roaming, rate limiting, and what they call 'airtime fairness'. Airtime fairness works to dynamically shifting more RF energy to the devices that need it the most (such as those streaming video or syncing to a cloud server). Most APs shoot RF in every direction, like a lightbulb, meaning that all devices get the same 'priority' in terms of the RF reaching them. Ruckus APs 'point' their RF in a particular direction, like a lighthouse with a rotating spotlight. This means that light users browsing the web or checking email won't be bogged down by heavy users streaming or syncing. Ruckus also supports rate limiting at the AP level, though we've found that just the airtime fairness feature was enough to solve our bandwidth issues, so fine-tuned rate limiting isn't needed. However, I did configure a hard cap of 45/45 mbps via the Ruckus APs, so that no single device can ever max out our bandwidth, leaving a 5/5 mbps buffer for all the hardwired devices that bypass the APs. At $10-15k this is not a cheap solution, but it has solved all of our network/bandwidth-related problems practically overnight. For our third and future buildings we will be rolling out this system from the beginning. -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
