1) Standalone for each school This is perhaps the simpler approach, just put a one strong setup at every school. I would need a splash login page where the student would log in with their student ID and password. The average enrollment at the schools is about 1k, and the area of each school is about a 500 meter radius.
2) Citywide approach With this one, the major difference is that the students will be able to login at any school in the city, similar to the edu network in the US
What sort of infrastructure would i need for one school with reliable strength? Any recommendations for actual equipment? What is the price estimate/range for one school in the first approach? Are there any companies that already exist that offer this solution including the login stuff as well?
What would be the extra requirements to go from standalone setups to the citywide approach?
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A lot of people think schools are kind of "naive" and "under-resourced" but you will quickly find at least in au/nz that even primary/intermediate schools are quite a lot more regulated / bureaucratic than you might expect. I'm guessing the US could be even worse.
Schools already have Internet. So, why do they need yours?
Why should they trust you? What kind of organisation are you? How many of you are there? I noticed you mentioned "student ID and password" for auth. Are you expecting the school to provide you with this information?
Do you like paperwork? Even if it's free, if you have equipment on their grounds and are providing a service to students you'll need a contract with the school. What's your privacy policy? What kind of SLA are you providing? Is the support free as well? You'll probably have to go through their supplier/vendor assessment process and there may be heavy restrictions around authorised suppliers. Are you going to have staff or contractors visiting the school grounds on a regular basis? Understand they'll need various background checks etc and you'll have to keep this stuff up to date.
Be prepared to learn a lot about the various standards and regulations schools and their suppliers have to comply with.
A key question is, are you going to do traffic filtering yourself or use a commercial service? You cannot provide a "raw" feed to students.
The kind of traffic filtering and monitoring available to schools is now far more advanced than what people used to do for free with netfilter/squid. For sure, when little Timmy sees a disturbing _news article_ while hooked up to your feed eventually you will get complaints about this which will go from child -> parent -> school -> you. The kind of filtering schools need now costs money, how are you providing this service for free again?
> eduroam is based on 802.1X* and a linked hierarchy of RADIUS servers containing users’ data (usernames and passwords). Participating institutions must have operating RADIUS infrastructure and agree to the terms of use. eduroam can be set up in three easy steps:
https://www.serverwatch.com/networking/radius-server/
> RADIUS works based on a client/server model. Users connect to a RADIUS client, which is a network access server (NAS). The NAS then verifies the user’s information through the RADIUS authentication server. The connection information can include details such as a username, a password, and an IP address.
If you feel that compelled to help your local school(s), a donation would be much easier logistically.
Besides the wild amounts of red tape in the US that the other commenters mention, don't you think what you're doing is creepy? If I had kids, I 100% would NOT want some random guy to be using his own money to build a WiFi network in my kid's school. The optics of that are terrible. How do I know you're not going to be creeping on the network traffic? There's no obvious reason for you to 1) want to do this project and 2) not just give the money to the schools' existing IT staff to do it (and I'm sure most districts would gladly accept a gift like that). Seriously, why do YOU need to be the one doing it?
The Federal Government has programs like E-Rate that reimbursee districts for up to 90% of the cost of getting internet access for students, but like other commenters have said, paperwork. Unless you can get full support from the superintendent/board, bureaucracy will 100% be your biggest obstacle.
In Germany we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk who put up network in open places and under-served areas like refugee shelters. But government also added wifi to all schools I know of (and the refugee shelters).
Presumably you mean Eduroam? It's global, the Americans were actually (as with so many things) late to adopt, but it works just as well for a student from Edinburgh to use WiFi in Waikato (New Zealand) as for a student from Tokyo to use WiFi in Harvard (Mass).
If you're feeling inclined to help in better equipping kids with tech, donating to Kids Teach Tech or Black Girls Code etc might be a better use of your resources.
You need multiple APs and then an authentication/authorisation system that allows navigation for users once you know who they are and that they should have access to the network.
The difference between both systems relies mainly on the authentication, and in both cases, most equipment vendors provide options to set a Guest Portal up. The other option would be to host a RADIUS server (also referred to as WPA Enterprise) that does the authentication.
The regional administration where I live maintains some sort of student network for schools too, and they use RADIUS. They maintain a public website where user credentials are managed (you identify with a username/password they give you and you can change those credentials) and then connect to the wifi using those credentials
Again, how you deploy this, depends in many cases on the vendor you choose and what they support.
(This is why I love Libertarians.)
as always: imho…
idk, but at first this is an organizational problem: what do you try to solve with this?
from what i understand:
you have a problem: your solution: put free wifi in schools or even "citywide" ... again: whats the problem you are trying to solve with this!? why i'm asking this: its 2024 ... 1. why isn't that infrastructure already available in those schools? lack of money? lack of ...? 2. where / in which country are you? every school in every at least "somewhat" developed ("western") or generally somewhat "industrialized" country should have wlan for their students by now ... why isn't that already present in yours!? the technical approach: you need: * controller * access-points * connection-links between controller/aps/... (which would be parts of the LAN of a school for example ... but city-wide you'll need some kind of fixed lines) * uplink(s) to "the internet" authentification ... there are multiple possibilities, but the tried and true approach would be: * RADIUS (which can be used by the controller(s)) * LDAP (as the backend for the RADIUS server) equipment: do you want it to work or do you want to work on it!? expensive, but "works" - out of my head * cisco * aruba * ... they are expensive, but they are "enterprise ready" and stable ... costs ... depending on which company you choose, what conditions you are getting from the distributor etc. - i remember the price for schools/universities are sometimes only 2/3rds or even half of the "official" customer-prices advertised if you buy them via an "official institution" - university/school/... so this is more an "estimate": * access-points: a few 100 € to over 1000 € * controller: multiple 1000 € to 10+ k € a piece - for a somewhat "larger" installation you need 2 for redundancy/availability of the network depending on the size of the area and the size of the buildings themselves you are trying to cover, you need for example 20, 30 ... 50 or even more access-points + 2 controllers => which quickly adds up to something like 50 k or 100k € for a medium sized areal + buildings. you have to distribute the access-points in a meaningful manner - idk. for example avoid interference from aps within your building from the floor above or beyond the one you are in, you have to "interleave" them ... not just put the aps to the same place in every floor etc. (this enhances the operational distance for an ap and therefore reduces the number of aps needed for the building) you want to take into account the possible number of clients in certain rooms/places etc. ... the controllers need to have enough aps to be able to "balance" the number of clients on to multiple aps ... for example within a larger area or hall etc. just my 0.02€