Hello,

I am designing a proposal for a Hotel with 16 Floors. The design and Hardware as attached below. Is it an ideal hardware selection and setup to have maximum performance for couple of hundred users ? . Each router will be load balanced between 4 WAN connections.


Thank you

Very confusing.. is "5G routers with 1G" refering to a 5G/LTE-modem or 5Ghz WiFi access points?

It looks like four 5G connections coming into each 5009, and each of the four 5009's is feeding a number of VLANs to which the WiFi AP's will be attached.

What throughput are the 16 routers going to give you that 4 couldn't? Does the service provider 1) throttle throughput to 100-500Mbps per 5G router, and, if so, will they allow 16 on one account to max out the sector on the tower?

Or are you getting routers through multiple providers to help spread the load?

To figure out bandwidth requirements, estimate that you'll need 5-7Mbps per occupied hotel room at peak hours (usually 6pm-12am). For example, I have one section where 500 households at night use between 2200-2500Mbps.

RB5009's can push around 5Gbps, but that's with minimal firewall rules and little-to-no shaping. If you're adding load-balancing and queueing to the mix, those things are probably capped at 2Gbps each. (My CCR2004, which has a similar CPU, when it was a border router with simple firewall rules and no NAT, had a hard time getting over 3Gbps.)

It might not be a bad idea to consider a CCR2116 with 16 cores and 12 x 1Gbps ports.

Oh my... Sure there must be some more economical way than 16 5G/LTE-routers with large data-plans?
In my country that would cost like $5000 up-front and $600 per month - when a 1G FTTH is about $30-70 a month.

Either way, no. You have to balance the traffic at one point only (e.g one main router) but the CRS326 is a bad router for this purpose.

The other option is to staticly balance the users/switches between the four RB5009 (that then will balance the connections between the four 5G-modems)

Either way, no. You have to balance the traffic at one point only (e.g one main router) but the CRS326 is a bad router for this purpose.

The other option is to staticly balance the users/switches between the four RB5009 (that then will balance the connections between the four 5G-modems)

From the design, I'm pretty sure the CRS326 is only used as a switch and that each router would handle a number of customers across different VLANs. That's not how I would do it, but it could work.

Thank you all for the suggestions, and I apologize for the confusion. Let me clarify things:

Very confusing.. is "5G routers with 1G" referring to a 5G/LTE-modem or 5Ghz WiFi access points?

It is 5G/LTE Routers with 1G Ethernet ports connecting to ISPs, WiFi is not used there. The bandwidth will vary between 100-700Mbps depending on the coverage.

It looks like four 5G connections coming into each 5009, and each of the four 5009's is feeding a number of VLANs to which the WiFi AP's will be attached.

Correct. Each 5009 will serve respective VLANs. Since we have 16 floors, each set of 4 floors will be under a single VLAN. Total 4 VLANs.

Or are you getting routers through multiple providers to help spread the load?

Yes, we are getting multiple ISPs to spread the load.

To figure out bandwidth requirements, estimate that you'll need 5-7Mbps per occupied hotel room at peak hours (usually 6pm-12am). For example, I have one section where 500 households at night use between 2200-2500Mbps.

We have 22 rooms per floor. Assuming 2 devices per room, that means 44 devices per floor. And that is 176 devices per VLAN in peak hours. 1250Mbps bandwidth requirement approximately for each 5009 router. Am I correct?

It might not be a bad idea to consider a CCR2116 with 16 cores and 12 x 1Gbps ports.

Do you mean instead of using 4 of 5009 use single CCR2116? if we use 4 of CCR2116, then the cost will be high.

Oh my... Surely there must be some more economical way than 16 5G/LTE-routers with large data-plans?

The location cannot be served with other facilities like FTTH, MPLS. Only 5G/LTE is available which has an unlimited data package. The cost will be around $100 monthly without upfront for each connection.

From the design, I'm pretty sure the CRS326 is only used as a switch and that each router would handle a number of customers across different VLANs. That's not how I would do it, but it could work.

Correct, CRS326 is only used as a switch. How would you do it? What is the best practice? I am not an expert though.

This is for seasonal usage. The peak time is around 10 days in a year where near to 2 million people gather in the city. The ISPs are capable and ready to handle such bandwidth (still, it is totally dependent on coverage. That's why we chose different ISPs).

Thanks again for your valuable time spent on these suggestions.

Well then. My proposal:

1 Management VLAN, of course
4 "Guest-VLANs"

Each RB5009 serves one Guest-VLAN with it's unique subnet (e.g 192.168.10.0/24, 192.168.20.0/24, 192.168.30.0/24, 192.168.40.0/24)
The CRS326 provides a VLAN-trunks to all connected switches (and RB5009).

The you can freely re-configure actual rooms to the different "Guest-VLANs" depending on the situation.

What about 1 VLAN per room ? It is only 22 rooms/floor x 16 floors......
You can make a couple of nice interface-lists and group some stuff together at that level.

Thank you for the suggesions

Each RB5009 serves one Guest-VLAN with it's unique subnet (e.g 192.168.10.0/24, 192.168.20.0/24, 192.168.30.0/24, 192.168.40.0/24)
The CRS326 provides a VLAN-trunks to all connected switches (and RB5009).

Yes, This is my Plan. I even thinking about a VLAN for each floor that is 16 VLAN's in total.

What about 1 VLAN per room ? It is only 22 rooms/floor x 16 floors......

This isn't overkill ? total of 352 VLAN's

What overkill ? VLAN is just label.
Only 350 VLAN's out of 4K standard available.
It DOES keep things very separated (if you want) and identifiable across the whole setup.

Depending on how the wireless is organized (authentication-wise) their devices can be mapped easily in the VLAN of the room.