HotelChatter

A fact worth considering as well is that even if you have increased Internet bandwidth serving your property to cover your guests' Wi-Fi needs, you may have to look at how the Wi-Fi wireless network is designed.

The bandwidth available at a Wi-Fi access point is shared by all of the users; compared to switched Cat5 Ethernet where each device connected to that network has its own bandwidth. I would also investigate how many access points are being operated across the hotel; especially the guestroom floors. Some properties may use one to cover say every ten rooms. What would then happen is that the guests in those rooms use that same bandwidth even if you use client-isolation techniques for your guest network.

I would look at gradually increasing the number of access points so that you have one access point to cover four or five regular guestrooms with me considering a suite as two guestrooms. These may not need to have much RF coverage because they would be covering a smaller footprint. Also I would investigate deploying "mixed-mode" 802.11n Wi-Fi through the property as more guest-owned equipment supports 802.11n Wi-Fi.

This could be done by working on improving a part of the executive floor (if your property has one), then covering that floor and "building out" the same setup across the other floors.

It may also be worth investigating the idea of some rooms having their own access point, where the occupants have their own wireless LAN bandwidth. This could be tried for some premium room classes like the suites.

As Simon pointed out, client load is one thing and having more APs to distribute the load is one way to alleviate that issue but by adding more AP's you can also create more headaches. You may actually introduce more RF interference in the equation, even if you lower the transmit power.

Then there is also outside RF interference to take into account, especially in a downtown, highly congested area. Next time you are in a hotel, how many different wifi networks can you see? All of those could be interfering with your hotels wifi. If you lower the Tx power of your access point to only cover 4 or 5 rooms, when the guest sits by the window and the offices across the street has their wifi blasting away... the office wifi can "drown out" the hotels signal if on the same channel. Chances are, one of those offices are on your channel(s).

Another thing to look at is airtime fairness. Not all enterprise grade APs do this well with some big name AP manufacturers really failing in this. No wireless client should have any more wifi bandwidth than the next. It should be shared equally. Some of you might be thinking this is wrong in regards to the article where you are paying for more bandwidth. This pay for more bandwidth allocation is done at the router not at the AP. If airtime fairness at the AP is not done correctly, then one guest will be getting the majority of avail of wifi bandwidth while you are left with very little. As Simon pointed out, wifi is SHARED, but sometimes not equally.

Then of course you have the actual guest equipment and the design flaws with in them. iPad2 come to mind here. With the ipad2 only having one vertical antenna, if your APs are sending the signal horizontally, those users are going to have some speed issues. Though this can be helped a bit by choosing AP's that have both horizontal and verticle antenna's. This signal polarization  goes to heck when the signal bounces off things like mirrors which every hotel room has at least one of them.

Bottom line is a good wifi system takes time to analyse and build and even then, you are not in total control of it's behavior as outside factors may degrade you. Do your homework and test various manufacturers if you can.

Using quotes from an Exec at iBahn (you may know iBahn as the company that's always charging you for internet in your Marriott Hotel room) Well look at who they say has the worst wifi... http://www.hotelchatter.com/special/Worst-WiFi-Hotels-2011