In the post: Internet Broadband for hospitality: opportunity for the channel?
I  proposed a market segmentation of the hospitality market based on four business quadrants.
In this post I will show how to implement a wifi mesh cloud solution for operators active in the first quadrant: The Cloud segment.

The Quadrant I : the needs for a Cloud Service.
In this market segment the host wants  to offer a Wifi connection but he can’t phisically install many appliances and he would have not, anway,  qualified staff to maintain them. Typical examples:
- Camping. In this case it is necessary to offer Wifi (and sometimes VOIP) services to bungalows, campers and caravans.
- Simple Hotspot points that are widespread on the territory (ex. waiting room of professionals, small waiting rooms of  tyre shops, small train stations).
- Private Access Point for a chain of shops that are widespread on the territory. For example an Access Point used to bring connectivity in a solution of video advertising in a chain of drug stores.
From all these example it is clear that the ICT operator must offer a solution that:
1) must relay on appliances that can be easily installed;
2) must be monitored in remote;
3) in case of hardware failure, the replacement must be done by the host itself (usually with no ICT experience).

Engenius CloudTrax: the components.
The CloudTrax Solution is simple in its concept, easy to implement and  to monitor.  In case of a failure of an Access Point anybody can phisically replace the fault appliance as there is no need of local configuration.
The solution consists of an indoor EnGenius EAP3660-cc and one outdoor EnGenius EOC 2611p-cc. These APs support MESH technology and must be controlled and monitor through a cloud service.  We propose two pratical examples to explain this solution.

Example 1: how to set up an outdoor Wifi Mesh Networking.
We will place three outdoor AP’s  to cover the external perimeter of a temporary exposition organized in the “Tour and Taxis” area in Bruxelles.
After creating a master account (in this example we created Valadis belux office) we can create the networking schema for “Tour and Taxi”.  For this project we will have three AP’s  (so three nodes). The AP ‘ValadisNode’ is the node cabled to the Modem/router (so it is the Gateway). The other AP’s  will be linked to “ValadisNode’ in a mesh technology.

Insert the road adress of the area (like you would do in Google Map), click ‘Add/Edit Nodes’, insert a name of your Access Point and his Mac Adress. Drag it on the map and the game is done (Fig 1).

Fig 1 -  How to insert Access Points in the Cloud Trax Solution.

Notice that when the Mac Adress of an AP is linked in CloudTrax to a specific networking then it cannot be used any more for other Networking unless  it is  first delete from the networking itself.
Personally, I prefer to identify the outdoor AP spots in Google Earth and then report them in the CloudTrax Networking (Fig 2).  Google Earth allows infact to be much more precise and flexible (you can rotate the map, see the building in 3D, etc) and this can often avoid a phisical visit of the place.
To translate the Latidute and Longitude from Google Earth in Decimal notation for Google Map you can use
Convert Latitude / Longitude Between DMS And Decimal Formats.

Fig 2 – Using Google Earth to position the AP  in the CloudTrax Solution.

It’s time to phisical install the 3 AP”s  on the ground.  It is of course necessary to respect the Wifi Point to Point infrastucture best pratice.  Then:
- mount the 3 ap on their poles.
- connect the AP ‘ValadisNode’ (the Gateway) to the modem/router.
Notice that the AP ‘west entrance’ and ‘east entrance’ will connect by themselves by mesh to the Gateway. Afer some minutes, the Wifi Networking is up and running.
As the AP ‘West Entrance’ and the AP ‘East Entrance” are one hop distance from the Gateway, they have about half of the total connection speed of the Gateway (Fig 3). Users on mesh networks will lose half of their maximum speed for every hop they are away from a gateway. Therefore,  it is a best practice to place the gateway(s) in a central position and avoid more than 3 hops for each gateway.
It is also a best practice,  in a mesh configuration,  to avoid more than 5 AP or repeaters for a single gateway.

Fig 3 – How it looks a Mesh Networking in  the CloudTrax Solution.

On the Node Map, click on a node and  then select Neighbors:  all nodes must  have at least one (preferably two) connections with an RSSI of 17 or more (Fig 4). If not, you need to reposition your node closer to the others or in a better line through fewer walls (in case of indoor AP’s).  You may need to add new nodes.

Fig 4 – How to monitor a Mesh Networking in  the CloudTrax Solution.

CloudTrax allows to set up 2 SSID.  Let’s configure the public SSID.
We select CloudTrax as a captive portal. This allows us to use a Splash Page already supplied by this portal. We flag the “Block Pre-Authenticated Users” field as we we want to activate a paid service for the hot spot (Fig 5).

Fig 5 -  How to configure a Public  SSID in  the CloudTrax Solution.

Press the ‘Edit Splash Page’ to see the proposed pages by the portal.  As we are planning a paid service, you need a splash page that allows  to insert the login key. You can customise each page just using HTLM code (Fig 6)

Fig 6 – How it looks a splash page in the CloudTrax Solution.

When an user logs to the AP through the activation code, he will be redirect to the web page of the specific event of that day (in the example http://www.etudes-professions.be/). We flag the ‘required voucher’ in order to activate a paid service through a voucher containing an activation key (we will not use Pay Pall in this example – Fig 7)

Fig 7 – How to configure a splash page for using vouchers.

Select the tag ‘General’ to create the Voucher.  In this example we will print an initial batch of 100 vouchers for the reception. We will limit the band connection for each user to just allow a usage of Wifi phones or email (Fig 8). In this way we will have  a Wifi networking that can connect about 250 users at the same time to Internet.

Fig 8 – How to create Vouchers in the CloudTrax Solution.

Let’s configure the SSID2 to create a private Wifi Networking for managing 3 IP Camera’s. The IP Camera will be phisically  placed on the same pool of the AP  to allow users to communicate with the reception in case of need (we will exploit the motion detection feature of the IP Camera to start the communication).

Fig 9 – How to configure a Private  SSID in  the CloudTrax Solution.

Example 2: how to set up an indoor Wifi Mesh Networking.
We are going now to plan and install 3 indoor AP’s  for this exposition.
Let’s create a new networking and then load a map of the place (Jpeg, Gif or BMP). Notice that the map must not be bigger than  75KB  (Fig 10)

Fig 10 – How to import a map in the CloudTrax Solution

Like we did for the outdoor AP, we can press the button ‘Add/Edit Nodes” and create a new AP directly in the map (Fig 11)

Fig 11 – How to add AP in a private map in  the CloudTrax Solution.

The steps to configure a public networking are pratically the sames of Fig. 5.
Finally, we can use the SSID2 to connect the wired lan of the employees to the Wifi infrastructure (Fig 12) in order to allow them Wifi Mobility in the exposition field.

Fig 12 – How to connect a Wifi Networking to a private Lan in the CloudTrax Solution.

In the case of failure of an AP, just delete from the Cloud Trex map the relative node, create a new node (remember to note the Mac adresse before sending the product) and phisically replace the broken AP with the new one.

Are you using other cloud solutions for this hospitalty segment?