Challenge

Salem Baptist Church had been struggling to provide decent Wi-Fi coverage to a growing number of users and wanted to replace its collection of ad-hoc wireless routers and access points with a unified wireless networking solution that would provide fast and reliable Wi-Fi for three distinct user communities: Staff, Choir, and Members and Guests. Other requirements were that the solution provide (1.) a scalable platform for future expansion and (2.) easy administration for day-to-day management tasks.

Unifi AP installed to high ceiling in lobby Unif AP installed to ceiling at library Unifi AP installed to ceiling near adult Sunday School rooms Rack mounted equipment servicing wired and wireless networks

Solution

Being familiar with their network, because we had implemented a bandwidth management solution a few years ago to overcome difficulty streaming multimedia of services and events, we knew the church already possessed a solid networking foundation and could easily up-fit their current topology to obtain the desired results.

Modifications were made to the existing vlan topology to consolidate network segments and we disabled the built-in wireless function of their existing Dell SonicWALL NSA 220 Wireless and removed a small number of ad-hoc sources of wireless broadcast transmission to mitigate against unnecessary interference.

We introduced an HP Aruba 2530-24G-POE+ L2 managed network switch that would support the vlan topology and could furnish Power over Ethernet (802.3at/af POE) to the six initial access points and at least six more for a planned expansion.

The wireless access point we chose were Unifi APs from Ubiquiti Networks because they can all be managed through Ubiquiti’s slick Unifi Controller Software, providing the ease of use and scalability needed to fulfill the customer’s requests. Being the most affordable enterprise-class wireless access point on the market didn’t hurt, either.

We qualified all the cabling to ensure each station received sufficient bandwidth and mounted them to the ceiling throughout the corridors, carefully selecting each location to optimize coverage. Using an inexpensive HP Stream Mini Desktop to host the Unifi Controller Software, we tuned the operation of each station, so that overlapping channels were dealt with appropriately.

Protecting the customer’s investment is always important to us, that’s why we topped it all off with an APC Smart-UPS 450RM and PDU, ensuring against damage related to electrical events.

In the end, it was a wireless network that any church would love and, best of all, it was received with overwhelming gratitude. Thank you Salem Baptist Church for allowing us the privilege of providing our services to help you further your ministry and outreach.

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