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4/5G based Wifi for Charity Event

nspr

Member
Apologies if this is in the wrong place, needs moving etc.

I'm involved with a charity that's run a large (15,000 attendee) show near to Chelmsford for a few decades now. The events run by a different group of our membership every year and having looked back, I've found we've paid what strikes me as an absurd amount of money previously for an external supplier to provide a private site WiFi network for ticket scanning, card machines etc, and haven't heard anything good about the service provided.
As with everyone we're facing massively increasing costs since we were last able to run this (2019) and are looking to make savings wherever we can.

Whilst I've got in touch with a few alternative providers for quotes, I'm also exploring buying the equipment for us to do this in house.

I've experience with networking within a small business environment (~15 employees & 20 or so devices + two servers etc) so I'm happy I can configure the actual network with little difficulty but the 4/5G side & long range wireless stuff is all new to me.
Whilst doing some digging I've stumbled across this forum, and I'd be grateful if any of you could comment on my current plan.

The main site needing coverage is a 10 hectare green field. Additionally, I'm considering providing a single access point nearer the entrance ~400m away to potentially mount IP cameras. We will have a compound on site with stacked welfare units, to which my intention is to mount a 2/3m pole carrying two 2x2 MIMO antennas, one omnidirectional and one directional, connected to a dual sim 5G capable router (say a Proroute H900?), using two networks; I've used the coverage map at mastdata.com, and O2 & EE seem the best bet. The logic behind using two antennas is ease of initial setup (we're on site for around a week for setup with the event being the last day) through the omnidirectional antenna (looking at a FullBand MIMORAD?), with time to get the directional antenna (Poynting?) pointed at a distant mast to ensure we can get a connection on the day of the event; I'm expecting potentially 10,000+ mobile devices on site saturating any local masts. Between this and the dual networks we should hopefully have the level of redundancy I'm looking for. I've tried to use the local planning portal and cellmapper.net to find towers but this does appear to be a potential stumbling block; there's plenty around but proximity and landscape makes it difficult to find one out of reach of the public's mobiles but in LOS.

In terms of distributing this across the showground, I'm planning to use 10-12 TP-Link CPE210's; three acting as transmitters and the rest for access points, as these can run off PoE, meaning I'd only need them to be within ~50-60m of power. These should provide sufficient bandwidth for the remote equipment, with the router giving us the highest speeds we can get in the site office.

If anyone could provide any advice, point out anywhere I've got the wrong idea as to how this works, or recommend better antennas, products or methods I'd be hugely grateful. I'd much rather buy durable quality equipment that's going to last us longer term than keep paying external contractors or deal with issues from cheap gear, especially when it seems the hardware is going to cost a fraction of what we've been paying annually.

Current part list:

TP-LINK PoE 2.4Ghz Outdoor AP(s)
2.6m Antenna Pole(s)
Proroute H900 Dual Sim 5G Router
Fullband MIMORAD 5G Antenna
Directional 5G Antenna
PoE+ Switch(s)
Boatload of RJ45
O2 Data Sim - 1m 150gb 5G
EE Data Sim - 24m Unlimited 5G
 
Mastdata seems to be well out of date, at least it is for my location, it uses the last publicly available database which must be a decade old but they seem to be active again and have some updates. Try Cellmapper.net, its user fed from people with the app on the phone. At the end of the day the only reliable way to find out is to get some PAYG sims and try out in the actual spot. I use two 4G routers connected to a dual WAN Draytek which load balances the 2 Wans, so one 4G router can go down and the Draytek just switches to only use the working connection. As for antenna, if you have line of sight of the mast then directional works best, no line of sight then omnidirectional, so sight visit needed again.
 
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