Outdoor WLAN for 1.300.000 sqm. in below zero conditions

[theoadon]

Hi experts,
We are facing a challenging issue with a huge plant of an existing customer, that needs to deploy a WLAN in a really big territory with metal scrap. The area is about 1.300.000 sqm and mostly during the year the temperature is below zero Celsius.
We are investigating the possibility to cover the area with AP 7562 with mesh on the one band and for the traffic the second one.
The challenge in this case would be the temperature and the metals that the area is full off, such as old iron parts for scrap.
Has anyone done a similar project and has any experience in such big areas WLAN?
Looking forward to have your inputs on these.

Regards,

Theodore

[Dmitry_Solovyov]

Hi,

We did about the same, but on 200+ dual AP6532 with custom PVC enclosure. Before start, we did some comparative research for AP7161 and AP6532 and choose AP6532 to stay in budget.

Main problem of "about zero" weather conditions is moisture condensing inside non-secured cables and enclosures.

Our bottleneck was performance on Mesh MCX, that didn't cover our high-density WiFi requirements. Then we switched to use network boxes for PoE and optical Ethernet network with MCX on backup.

We built carrier network with pre-terminated FTTH fiber and fanless gigabit switches with two 1GigE SFP + 8x 1GigE PoE+. Each network box served six AP's and additionally equipped with two IP-CCTV cameras. Power supply protected with 620VA smart UPS.

No additional heating or cooling required to keep heat balance inside boxes and enclosures within normal range. It was -25C (winter) to +40C (summer).

Works stable for five+ years.

Best wishes,

Dmitry Solovyov