hotelwifi

I use the DSA 3100s in my hotspots at hotels. They are basically routers, made just for Internet gateway usage. I did a site survey two days ago at a hotel with 250 rooms and several large meeting rooms.

Therefore I might want to use two DSA 3100s together for extra capacity rather then buying the very expensive DSA 5100, which has 400 user capacity, but quite expensive. The DSA 3100s are nice, but have a lower capacity.

Not being a networking guru, I'm trying to figure how I might hook two (or more) DSA 3100s together that will give me additional user simultaneous capacity.

I don't thinkj you can hook two DSA 3100s together on the same subnet for additional user simultaneous capacity. So I'm thinking of assigning a couple (or more) DSA 3100s to different subnets to get more capacity.

I'm thinking of having the several large meeting rooms use one DSA 3100 on one subnet and the hotel rooms go to another DSA 3100 on another subnet, and then have those two subnets go to one main router then out to the Internet.

APs (hotel rooms).....>switch....>DSA3100..........>to router A

APs (4 meeting rooms)...>switch...>DSA3100.....|to router A

.......>routerA.....Internet

The router might have a 2 port switch built in it, in order to accept the two DSA3100s. If not, then I'd insert a switch there, before the router.

Remember I'm networking challanged...lol. So...

...Would DHCP be turned off on the two DSA 3100s and DHCP turned on, on routerA? CAuse I understand you don't want DHCP behind another DHCP.

I'm not sure about the NAT though. I imagine NAT is turned on, on both DSA3100s and on routerA.

That sound reasonable?

I can't see how two DSA 3100s can be combined together on the same subnet to raise the simultaneous capacity. I don't think they can.

If I had high usage in either the meeting rooms or the hotel rooms (above 50 at a time), then I would have to go with the DSA 5100, which has a 400 user capacity...but then everything might be on the same subnet. I would have to check out to see if the DSA5100 can take different subnets. Pretty nice Internet gateway, but expensive.

Or maybe I could take the 4 meeting rooms and assign more DSA 3100s to those rooms and feed their WAN ports out to a switch, which goes to a router, which goes out to the Internet? Seem right?.

I kind of like maybe using more DSA 3100s and giving me more subnets, since I can have different login screens for the different types of users.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.

modemfox

You can link 2 together but not on the same subnet. if you subnet them out you actually half the amount of clients it will hold -2. Cause you always lose 2 when you subnet out. Now you were saying you didnt want 2 dhcp servers running. so then the only solution would be to change the existing network. you would need a Network.Network.client.client setup instead of a network.network.network.client setup. so basically if you routers will (and not many do ) change to a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 your set. but if not you will have to have 2 dhcp servers running but you would have to have one that you consider the "master". then when you set up the second router set its default gateway for the address of the other router. If this seems a little deep I suggest you go here: http://www.learntosubnet.com/
That site goes through step by step on basically how to do what you are wanting to do.

modemfox

I just researched your routers. The setup to do what you want to do is as follows ex1.
Keep in mind what i call router 1 will be the DSA and the rest would be wireless AP's.
Router 1: Address: 192.168.1.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 DHCP on. Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Router 2: Address: 192.168.2.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 DHCP on. Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Next if any would be:
Router 3: Address: 192.168.3.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 DHCP on. Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

See were im going with this? basically you main router router 1 would be the gateway for them all. Being that you are using D-Link hotspot Routers you don't have a lot of options. These particular routers don't seem to have a lot of "friendly" features. Which is really wierd since they are aiming at small business. anyway, if you have more questions just post or Private Message me.