I work at a medium-sized retail company, and we'll be moving warehouse sometime early this year. One requirement that we have for the new warehouse is that we need a proper, stable wireless network covering the entire warehouse area, since we work a lot with web-based tools which require constant connectivity. A rough estimate says that it's about 10 meters high, and maybe 50 x 50 meters along the walls. In our current warehouse, which is of similiar height, we have a couple of HP MSM430 mounted to beams in the ceiling, and controlled by a HP MSM710 controller. This setup has proven unstable and spotty in it's connectivity, which puts a bit of pressure on us to get it right this time.
We're using UniFi AP Pro's in our retail locations, and they've proven reliable so far, but I'm concerned about how well they'll perform in a warehouse environment since there'll be greater distances to cover (if they're mounted to the ceiling), and more devices connected to them than in a store.
What I've come up with so far is to use UniFi AP Pro's, and have the access points mounted in the ceiling, placed above the "aisles" between the shelves, two APs per aisle. There's 10 aisles, and I'm planning on "shifting" the placement in the ceiling along the aisles so that every odd row has the access points lined up with eachother, which I imagine will give better overall coverage. Simple illustration:
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Is this a sound idea, or is there better ways to do this?
Best Answer
Hire a professional who has warehouse experience. If you were using an enterprise vendor, I would suggest looking at their consulting services as they have probably done this with their products a number of times.
Warehouses and stadiums are considered the two most difficult wireless environments to work in with 802.11. There are many factors that make warehouse areas very difficult to work in, for instance, open spaces combined with metal rack shelving, the long thin aisles that can channel energy further than you suspect, the adding/removing of invenorty that changes the environment on a continual basis, etc.
Without the proper tools and experience, you are simply gambling on your wireless network. It may work, but odds are you will have strange issues, issues in certain locations, and other unforseen problems.