Hi Everyone,

First time here so please forgive me if I am asking in the wrong place. I am trying to design up a site for a client that has many large metal moving objects, all at the same height, across a large outdoor area with multiple buildings scattered around the perimeter. The main management building is is along one side pretty much dead centre along the length of that side making it roughly equidistant to all other buildings - a good place to put an omni-directional AP.

The desired goal is to have a 'private' network connecting the other buildings to the main building. It is not possible to cable between the buildings. What has worked well in the past with other systems is to have a single AP at the central location, and then to have directional devices on the remote buildings aimed towards the central AP creating a link between them.

Now of course we have the opportunity for mesh networks. This changes the design considerations. Perhaps using a mesh is going to be easier and more effective.

Original design philosophy would look something like this: [Remote Building LAN]---CPE---2.4/5G---EAP---[Central Building LAN]

Perhaps something like this is a better approach:

[Remote Building-1 LAN]---EAP-1---[Central Building LAN]

[Remote Building-2 LAN]---EAP-2---EAP-1 (MESH)---[Central Building LAN]

[Remote Building-3 LAN]---EAP-3---EAP-2 (MESH)---EAP-1 (MESH)---[Central Building LAN]

Does this make sense? As long as I can lock down the devices on the mesh network so that it is not being used for other purposes I think this would work.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Hoges