The owner of the CG where I spend my summers had had it up to his eyeballs with the company that is "supplying" him with wifi for his cg. It has been particularly untrustworthy this summer, in part because of some trees outside the cg interfering with the signal (they've grown quite a bit in the six years the park has been open). Additionally, the wifi operators seem to refuse to answer the phone.

The owner is looking to buy and install a commercial wifi system that will not rely on outside sources to provide support. I know there are a few of you cg owners on this forum and would like your advice. The cg has approximately 42 sites in the main cg area, all located with about a (my guess) 75 yard radius, with approximately 10 other sites strung out along a line leading away from the main area about 200 yards. The latter are used as overflow and are rarely used.

What does he need to buy, cost, any info that might be helpful for him to start up? If you would rather PM/email me that is fine. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have in case I haven't stated the case clearly enough.

You might get more help on a wireless site on the web.
But with 2 routers one at each end. 2 omni directional antennas, one at each end. Then you need a bridge and a yagi antenna at one end to receive signal from the main end.
That should cover what you described. You must remember that the week link in the whole system is the antenna in the customers lap top. RV construction also offers a challenge at times.
Computers were designed for coffee shops and small outdoor areas.
I do not have the knowledge to tell you how to configure the system. Cost is under $1000 dollars.
Forgot to mention you will need 2 coax cables from router to each antenna and 1 other cable from bridge to router.
Pog.

Hi Abbygolden,

I am by no means an expert in this area, but here are some thoughts.

#1 lots of bandwidth. Folks are used to high speed at home so unless there is enough to share there may be complaints.

#2 antennas up where there is the possibility of "line of sight" transmission to every RV in the park.

To do this properly may be fairly costly, and there may be "on going" maintenance needed. Westernrvpark has a system in his park which is in a remote area--so eh can speak to the lack of bandwidth.

The other possibilities are to offer a wifi hotspot at a club house or an area near the office. That can be done at reasonable cost with a simple wifi router and a good omni directional antenna.

it depends on the lay of the land.... but basically;

you need a router that connects to the internet and provides the firewall.
then you need wifi Access Points, they can be routers, but the basic AP is all you need.
Then you need a tall place to put the AP, with a power source.
You can get fancy with panel antennas if you want to build a boundry that is hot and cold.
You can add yagi antennas if you need to transport from the node to another node without repeaters.

Then you need to set up the access points so that they are configured as a mesh network using the MAC addresses, MAC 1 talks to MAC 2, and only allow the APs to talk to each other.
The APs talk to the users via the IP address.

You also set up the DHCP server to only allow "X" number of workstations/user by limiting the number of IP address leases.
Also, limit the number of uses that log on, hog bandwidth, by setting the lease to 1 or 2 hours instead of days.

anyway, thats how I would start.