How well does the OpenWrt One scale-up for enterprises?
I need to build-out wifi for a new 10-story building. I'll need 3-5 APs per floor, so maybe 40 APs in total. I like the idea of running open-hardware running open-firmware.
Previously I've done such work with Ubiquit or MikroTik.
How does the OpenWrt One scale-up to mass deployments for large enterprise buildings & needs, compared to Ubiquiti, MikroTik, ettc?
Check OpenWISP, you can even keep most of your ubiquiti/mikrotik fleet.
Bananapi makes multiple similar routers, some 1 step lower some 1 step higher than OpenWrt One.
Other manufacturers too (probably need to ask to add poe field for enterprise needs)
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi
Does OpenWISP have a mode where every night (or at some frequency) the routers listen for traffic on various frequencies and, knowing which routers are ours are which are not, it adjusts the fleet of APs' power and channel to minimize interference?
@nemesis knows better, basic OpenWrt can only escape DFS, not change channels to improve coverage.
if you set the channel to auto and run a script every night which does "wifi down" and "wifi up" you should obtain a cheap version of what you're describing.
wifi up alone is enough, and does not destroy background scan data.
I am deploying 120 of these for a tech conference today (running through sunday) and expect them to work well.
I would NOT set the channels to auto, that can lead to a cascade of changes as something upsets one router, it changes channels, which disrupts another radio...
see the paper I presented at LISA 2012 https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/lisa12/lisa12-final-32.pdf
you will need to check how your building affects the signals, try to not re-use a channel close enough that the APs hear each other (ideally, make it so that a client will only hear one AP on any one channel), this may mean that instead of using wide, high bandwidth channels, you end up better off with narrower channels so that you can not re-use the channel for a larger distance.
Thanks for your professional input.
Why does this have to be done manually?
APs can "hear" other radio traffic that would collide. I don't understand why a central controller (eg OpenWISP) shouldn't be able to figure out which radio traffic it doesn't control, which of "our" APs those uncontrollable network traffic is closest-to, and then begin to alternate the channels along the "edge" of our network, then setting the channel and power accordingly for each of our own APs to minimize interference.
Why hasn't this been automated in OpenWRT?
You can set acs weights to prefer some dfs channel, not hard set channel or auto.
There's no date on this document, and it seems pretty outdated.
Of course the general rule of "more APs and lower power" remains accurate. But I would expect the APs to be able to "hear" each other and automatically lower their power and adjust their channels accordingly.
2012 was thirteen years ago, what date did you require?
LISA 2012 conference was October 16 2012.
Easier said than done. Companies which have invested big money in implementing these features are selling it and making money. Who is it going to do it for free? Call me when it's ready, I will be happy to use it as well!
Even the "enterprise" wifi managers can run into problems if they are set to dynamically adjust the network, it's too easy to get into a continual cascade of changes.
If every AP is making the decision independently, you can really end up with the network churning.
Instead, what the systems do is to do an analysis once, and set the layout.
OpenWRT does have 802.11r and 802.11k that are supposed to be better than just having them on the same SSID like I am doing, but they still have problems with clients that don't cooperate. @maltfield besides that, what do you think is outdated in that paper? I think it holds up pretty well.