Greetings!

I am installing network for hotel rooms.

The hotel has 120 rooms (6 floors).

I plan to do like this:

2 switches on each floor (10 rooms per switch).

And connect all the switches to a router.

My questions:

what kind of router able to handle 120rooms?

i want the router to have capability, so that every guest who connect to the network can be diverted to a login page once they start the browser.

also concerning cables, i know that cat 5 cable limits to 100meters. does this 100 meters means point-to-point?

or from switch to guestroom = 50 meters, and from switch to router = 60 meters which added up to 110 meters, means it can not connect because the distance is >100meters?

Thanks,
Tom

A single 24 port switch per floor (centrally located) would service each floor. As long as the furthest room (connection) from the switch was within the cable limit (100 metres) you'd be fine.

I don't know if a SOHO level router would be able to handle that amount of traffic, especially if your rooms are full all the time, but you could find out by writing the manufacturer of a few and ask them. I can't see why not honestly. If not, there are some not-too-expensive mid-range routers that would suit your needs.

also concerning cables, i know that cat 5 cable limits to 100meters. does this 100 meters means point-to-point?

What it comes down to is this. The limit is 100 metres per segment. So if it's 50 metres from room to switch that's one segment. From switch to router is another separate segment. You don't add the two together.

As for the connecting to the browser bit, that I'm not sure of. If it were me, I'd do some checking around and googling and see what I couldn't figure out on my own with regard to how that's setup. If I couldn't figure it out, I'd find a consultant who's done this type of thing for other hotels and I'd either pay him a consulting fee to explain it to me, or I'd contract with him to set it up.

i want the router to have capability, so that every guest who connect to the network can be diverted to a login page once they start the browser.

That "feature" would not be accomplished by the router. You'd need to install malware on the guest's computer that would forcibly reset their default home page. If any hotel tried to do that to my computer, I'd take legal action against them.

What you should be doing is use managed switches so that you can enable/disable the rooms network port as needed. You'd also want to use a web proxy server, such as Squid, and a dedicated hardware firewall to better control their Internet connection.

Actually, this 'Login' feature is pretty common. For example in my university, once we start the browser, it diverts me to 'login page'.

I don't see why we should legal action.

I did a google and this can be accomplish by software called 'm0n0wall'

http://ask.metafilter.com/45571/How...

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