Talk:Wikimania 2005 network

Medical support

My laptop transformator is specified with 230V, 1.5A. This tends to be more than needed, 1A seems apropriate.

Hackcenter: 200 laptops * 1A * 230V = 46 kW.

This corresponds to the heating power needed for 4 small houses. Add the heat 200 people provide. Add the heat the medical support team provides while carrying the people out of there.

I think the sizing is much too big. We plan for 400-500 people. Remembering the Wikipedia booth at the 21C3 and the last Wikipedia Meetup in Frankfurt (WLAN access available) I assume an upper limit of 250-300 laptops in total. During meetings, many of them will be turned off. The "hackcenter" ( I assume this is the room at level -1 ? ) will perhaps provide space for 50 people at the same time, basically at night when the other rooms will be closed.

24 port switches and an AP for each meeting room is much, too. Many of the smaller meeting rooms have about 8-10 places. 4 ports like provided by many APs internal switch will be sufficient for the small rooms.

Most traffic will be from user PCs to the internet. Only a small set of local services will be offered. Internet link will be somewhere in the 10 MBit/s range. An internal gigabit network backbone seems like overkill for this application.

We will have only a small time to set up the network, especially cabling worries me. I'm not sure about the quality of the building's earthing, so fibre would be needed for many links. Would it be an option to have some private 802.11g WLANs as backbones? -- JeLuF 23:22, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed on all counts. 16-port switches should be adequate in the same distribution, especially if we have a supply of lender WiFi cards on hand. 100baseT should also be plenty fast. (No need to kill the budget on technical wizardry.)

I had already given some thought to 802.11g bridging, and for clustered meeting rooms this could save us a lot of trouble. It won't get us completely out of tacking cat5e to baseboards, but like you say, we'll have to get this network up in a matter of hours.

a WiFi backbone isn't a good idea. I don't know how thick the walls are. Perhaps it's best to cable some larger rooms and connect the rooms around via wifi. hohjg 23:46, Mar 03, 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone have a floorplan for the HdJ? Austin 00:57, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Revised plan

I've expanded and revised the network plan based on the ongoing discussion of the past two and a half weeks; little of this is actually new, but none of it is by any means final. Important points:

• This is a conference for 300, not 1,000, and not all of them will be bringing computers. (We don't need a /21, and I can't see how we'd use it even if we could get it.)
• This is a gathering of intellectuals and academic types, not a hackfest or a LAN party. (Planning for 480 GigE links is a bit over the top.)
• Everything we purchase for this event will become WMF property. Equipment should be as reusable as possible and not needlessly extravagant.
• Perhaps most importantly, we're retrofitting an old German hostel for the 21st century in a matter of hours, and for less than a week. Keeping the design as simple as possible (while still allowing for a capacity well beyond our planned load) limits the number of places things can go wrong, and modularizing it allows us to easily swap components out when they do—and believe me, they will.

The revised plan scales back the grandeur a bit, but also increases the level of wireless coverage. I want to blanket the place with WiFi love, which in addition to allowing people to roam about with their laptops lets us bridge back to ethernet wherever we want. In fact, my current equipment estimate is probably a bit lean in that area; I'll have a much better idea of what's actually needed if I can get even a rough layout of the building and grounds (and maybe pictures)

Much work remains, but this outline better reflects our progress. Edit as you see fit. Austin 05:56, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

I agree to your suggestion, but I don't want to rely only on wireless network. If we have floor plans, we should able to plan ethernet lines and find locations which are good for setting up access points. hohjg 23:55, Mar 03, 2005 (UTC)