They are coming back!
They're ready to travel and now many of your guests can now work and go to school remotely, allowing them to stay longer when they can work online, putting your WiFi system under a lot of strain.
It’s time to make sure your guest WiFi service is ready for the season ahead.
Here’s a few areas to consider as you get ready for them:
- How much bandwidth do you have coming in?
- Can your system get all of that bandwidth out to your guests?
- Is there enough signal coverage for guests to connect reliably.
Bandwidth is the capacity of the Internet connection coming into your property. With guests working remotely and streaming video the minimum requirement is 5 megabits per second per guest room, camp site or boat slip. If you have a 200 room hotel or 200 site RV park your goal is 800 Mb/s service from your Internet service provider. Sometimes it can be tough to get enough bandwidth, and it may require using multiple connections to a provider or providers to achieve that level of service.
Once you have your bandwidth coming into the property you need to get it out to your guests. The heart and brains of your guest WiFi system is the controller. This device manages the bandwidth, validates guests, ensures that no user is monopolizing all of the bandwidth and negatively affecting other users, and manages the wireless access points.
The controller needs to have the processing capacity to manage all of the jobs in real time, and if it is under powered or older it may not be able to handle all of the bandwidth coming in or manage all of the users during peak periods.
Now that we have enough bandwidth coming in and a controller that can manage the bandwidth, users and access points we want to be sure we have signal coverage to connect with the guests. Your access points are responsible for broadcasting to and receiving from your guests, and the number of access points needed for reliable coverage depends on a few factors, including the density of users and the capacity of access points, building materials the signal needs to go through and of course distance.
It can be tough to determine how well you WiFi system will work when the property is empty – more users mean more strain on resources and a system that works well when there are few guests may fall apart under a heavy load.
Types of Internet Connections
Before you can provide Internet to your guests you have to bring Internet onto your property from an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Different ISPs use different technologies to connect Internet to your property, and the same ISP may use different technologies even in the same area. Some technologies are better than others. Here is a quick rundown of the different technologies your ISP may use and their relative advantages and disadvantages.
Fiber – The best choice. Fiber uses cables that conduct light, not electricity to move data. In general fiber offers the highest bandwidth capacity and synchronous speeds (upload speeds that match the download speeds). Fiber speeds can reach 2Gb/s and beyond, although are often offered at lower speeds as well.
Real fiber service requires fiber that is wired all the way to the property (in industry terms FTTP, Fiber-to-the-premise). Some providers brag about their fiber network, but the fiber stops at their office or remote switches and they wire coax cable to the property. That is not real fiber service.
Cable – A good choice. Cable networks from your local cable TV provider can provider good download speeds but have lesser upload speeds. Download speeds can be as high as 940Mb/s or beyond, and are usually offered at lower tiers of around 200 to 500Mb/s.
DSL – It’s better than nothing. Digital Subscriber Line uses the old copper telephone lines to bring in bandwidth of speeds from 1Mb/s to 15Mb/s. Sometimes the phone company will bond two lines together to provide up to 25Mb/s. Service can be less than reliable.
Cellular Data – 4G and 5G cellular data service can have good speeds, but service will vary by location, can be very pricey and does not really scale well enough to power large guest networks.
Geo Synchronous Satellite - This is an older satellite technology that uses satellites parked 22,400 miles above the earth. Geo Synchronous means that the satellite moves at the same speed as the earth, so it appears to be in the same position to us at all times. Geo synchronous satellites suffer from two drawbacks, capacity and latency.
Each satellite can service a limited number of users and because geo synchronous satellites are in the same position there are only so many parking spots up in the sky, limiting the number of satellites and total capacity. To compensate for these capacity issues satellite companies will impose data limits on users, however they also will over sell capacity, gambling that not all users will use all of their data. This leads to congestions and performance issues, especially at peak periods.
Latency is the time it takes for data to get from the server to you. On ground based networks latency is typically around 20 to 40 milliseconds. In most cases that data is travelling to you from a server less than a thousand miles away. If you add in a round trip to and from a satellite that is an extra 44,800 miles, which adds an extra delay of at least 600 millisecond or more. This can be frustrating when trying to load web pages, and it make the connection unusable for applications that run in real time, such as phone or video calls, gaming and other applications. VPNs may not work across high latency links.
Low Earth Orbit Satellite - Low Earth Orbit Satellites, also called LEOs, are a new technology that address two of the big shortcomings of geo synchronous satellites, latency and capacity. Low Earth orbit satellites, as the name implies, are closer to the earth than geo synchronous satellites, typically only a few hundred miles up in the sky. Because of the closer orbit the latency is typically under 40 milliseconds, comparable with ground based networks.
Low Earth Orbit satellites are not in a fixed orbit around the earth, they are traveling at a different speed than the planet so to us they appear to be moving across the sky. Where Geo Synchronous satellites could cover all of North America with two or three satellites, in order to provide continuous coverage LEOs will need to use thousands of satellites so that as one moves out of view another comes into view. However more satellites also mean more potential capacity, so LEOs can provide more bandwidth to more users.
Low Earth Orbit Satellites are just coming online now, with one company, Starlink, leading the field, and with several others not far behind, and can be a viable solution when Fiber and Cable are not available.
So as you get the rest of the property ready for the guests to come back, take a few moments and consider if the WiFi is ready for what this season will bring.