Solving Wi-Fi woes in high-density areas

Daniel Ferrero

February 25, 2020

From universities to metro stations, from hotels to hospitals, and from sprawling shopping malls to stadiums, Wi-Fi connectivity is on the front line.

Updated on November 30th 2020

For the millions of people around the world who use mass transit every single day, always staying connected is crucial, be it in the airport, on the train, above and below ground, or on the road. To keep their business humming, hoteliers need to ensure that guests and staff always stay connected. Meanwhile over on a campus, administration teams are scrambling to manage the demand for connectivity as every student brings, on average, two or more devices with them. And, in sports stadiums, concert halls, museums, visitors expect connectivity. While public service need to continue, as well in government buildings, as in hospital operating rooms, wards and waiting rooms.

Know the woe

With all of the above weighing heavily on networks across industries, some might suggest that delivering secure, reliable, efficient connectivity in high density areas is one of today’s greatest challenges. To keep users and operators connected, safe and secure, all high-demand environments need to:

• Provide strong Wi-Fi radio coverage

• Ensure a quality user experience for all clients who access the network

• Deliver secure and resilient high network up-time 

• Deliver high-speed Wi-Fi that is simple to deploy and scale

Ensuring all users have high-speed, best performance network access from anywhere, at any time is essential to delivering seamless services and applications.

4 Ways to tackle the Wi-Fi woes

The 802.11ac Wave 2 high-end, Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar AP1230 series provides three Wi-Fi radios 4x4:4, multi-gig capacity, and a high number of client associations, making it an ideal access point for high density and key IT applications. Here are just some of the reasons to consider AP1230 series access points for your large, dense deployments:

1. Three radios are better than two

Many solutions offer only two radios and with lower throughput. OmniAccess AP1230 series (AP1231 and AP1232) provide three radios (two 5GHz and one 2.4GHz) that help deliver a quality user experience while maximizing network traffic load. Think of each radio as a highway lane. In heavily congested and dense environments the three radio AP1230 delivers 3 highway lanes to allow a seamless flow of traffic compared to only two radios from other Wave 2 access points in the market. It is perfect for high traffic venues such as stadiums, hospital waiting areas, airports, rail environment, public venues and university campuses.

2. Up-time is crucial

For environments that demand very high network up-time, the AP1231 and AP1232 deliver increased network availability with aggregated dual uplinks. With its 1 Gigabit Ethernet and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet uplink capability, when one link goes down, another can take over.

3. Size matters

The OmniAccess AP1230 series are the only APs to provide multi-gigabit throughput for up to 768 concurrent client connections. With MU-MIMO and 4SS, it delivers raw accumulated data rates up to 4.2Gbps across multiple devices.

4. Circumvent the wiring challenge

Wiring multiple buildings to the same network can be complex and very costly. With the Stellar AP1231/1232 you can use Wi-Fi to connect an access point from one building to an access point in another building: No cabling is required. For MESH applications, The OmniAccess AP1230 series can dedicate one high capacity 5GHz radio for MESH while still providing one 2.4GHz and one 5 GHz radio for access services. For BRIDGE applications, all three radios are aggregated to provide high bandwidth connection between two sites.

The 802.11ac Wave 2 OmniAccess Stellar Wi-Fi access points provide high throughput and deliver a seamless user experience, making them ideal for enterprises that require state-of-the-art wireless technology that is simple, secure and scalable. They provide fast, cost-effective coverage for healthcare facilities, hospitality environments, on education campuses, and in the transportation industry.

Learn more about how OmniAccess Stellar Access Points provide high-density, high-demand environments with the connectivity to provide coverage for a wide variety of deployment scenarios.