More Wi-Fi and More Check-In

Lately we’ve been faced with a great problem to have in a church: More and more people are showing up, and as a result we now have some bottleneck issues to deal with.  Call it what you will, but when systems and processes at a church need changed because more people are showing up, I think that’s a great thing!

One of the solutions we are going to implement is putting additional check-in stations in play so that more people can be checked in at once.  To add flexibility, we will be giving these new check-in stations wireless capability so that they can be repositioned as necessary.

To prepare for this, I needed to do some beefing-up of our wireless infrastructure. Until this past week we only had 2 active wireless APs in the building, which made for quite a few dead zones.  Our original plan was to add 4 Proxim AP-4000s in key areas where we would be checking people in.  Before heading to a retailer though, I did some shopping on Ebay and managed to come up extremely lucky: 6 AP-4000s for about $1900 total…you can’t pass up a deal like that!

I spent Tuesday morning updating and configuring the new APs… the ability to do CLI over serial and conduct TFTP config file downloads makes for decently-fast mass configuration, considering the fact that there’s no central management involved.  Through Tuesday night and Wednesday, cabling was pulled or repositioned to make way for installation, and by Wednesday evening 5 of the 6 new APs were up and running.

The plan for wireless check-in is to use the Proxim’s 802.11a radio to talk to the check-in stations. (If you’re curious as to why I’m not using 802.11b/g, read Jason’s post on the matter.)  Each check-in station will have a Proxim 802.11a-capable radio, as well.

I’m hoping to see out hardware coming in over the next couple of weeks.  Once we have a couple stations build and ready to go, I will come back with Wi-Fi performance results.  I’m hoping to see great things!