July 1, 2024
This blog post is part of a multi-part case study series on how we at Metro Wireless upgraded a marina WiFi network to help it provide a great internet experience for its members and staff. We now manage that outdoor WiFi network, and support the marina in monetizing its WiFi connectivity, allowing them to recuperate their investment.
We’ve broken this blog series into a few parts:
The fastest way to get started on your new marina or other outdoor WiFi and wireless network is to email us at sales@metrowireless.com or call us at (888) 203-5826. It’s helpful if you also provide:
Our design and technical engineering team will assist you every step of the way, and we provide FREE remote surveys, which will give you a predictive picture of what your project will look like once completed, as well as a budgetary estimate to install and maintain your network.
Once the preliminary design is completed, we’ll schedule an on-site survey to finalize the network design. After our business clients accept the proposal and pay the deposit, we can order, provision, and install most WiFi networks within eight weeks.
Located about 30 minutes north of Detroit, Michigan, MacRay Marina is situated on Lake St. Clair, which connects to Michigan’s Great Lakes. Operating on a large plot of land next to Selfridge National Air Base, MacRay Marina covers 49 acres (or 2.1M Sq Ft), offering more than 200 dock slips, and various buildings for boater and administrative usage.
MacRay offers plenty of amenities to its HOA member owners, seasonal members, and short term boater guests, including an on-site restaurant, pool, general store, office, and bathrooms with showers. It also has an on-site boat yard and trailer storage facility, and boat condominiums that HOA members can purchase. A gas dock and around the clock security is also offered.
After installing its first outdoor Managed WiFi network almost a decade ago, MacRay Marina’s ‘wifi as an amenity’ was falling short of its member’s demands and needs. Users were complaining that the WiFi was slow, or worse, not working at all.
Some boaters in fact had deployed their own internet and WiFi solutions, with some yachts having their own Starlink connections. By the way, we offer and manage 5G, Starlink and WiFi solutions for boats and yachts, just contact us!
The existing WiFi network hardware had once been state of the art, but due to obsolescence and poor network management, the Marina WiFi network was crippling.
MacRay’s marina staff and management had no way of knowing whether the network or any particular WiFi access point was working - and had to rely on members complaining about the WiFi and internet connectivity in order to fix anything. This is obviously a very reactive, versus proactive approach in managing a network.
Further, the existing WiFi network and cloud-management controller did not offer a feature set/capability that would allow the Marina to monetize the connection, and recoup the cost of deploying and managing a WiFi network.
Even when the existing network worked as intended, the speeds supported by the WiFi access points and the wireless, fixed wireless (line-of-sight) based PtP backhaul system didn’t offer enough bandwidth throughput to power modern internet use cases like TV streaming, video conferencing, etc. Laptops, phones, iPads and tablets couldn’t get fast enough download and upload speed connections.
During our on-site survey testing, we found most access points around the marina’s campus were testing below 10Mbps, which is typically not enough for HD streaming or video conferencing for one user, let alone multiple.
Further, the structured cabling and underlying infrastructure wasn’t set up securely, so boating members would routinely unplug the WiFi and wireless network infrastructure in order to power their tools – eek! Obviously a WiFi network needs electricity to work, but the existing NEMA enclosures were either broken or unsecured.
During our consultation and design phase, we learned the Marina was paying over $1,000 per month for a 1Gbps symmetrical dedicated (DIA) internet connection, but they weren’t utilizing even a tenth of it (100Mbps) during their peak usage season in the summer. What good is a 1Gbps DIA circuit if they’re not using it?!
Offering WiFi as an amenity, whether that’s a marina, RV park, campground, or other outdoor spaces (e.g., parks) is considered a fundamental amenity to most modern users. Even if access to the network is segmented between a free, limited slow tier and a faster, premium paid tier, WiFi and internet connectivity is expected at most destinations.
There are a few more specific reasons to consider deploying an outdoor WiFi network as well:
Offering free Wi-Fi at marinas and other outdoor spaces can be a value-added offering that enhances the user experience, boosts revenue, and streamlines management and day to day operations. It can also enable better safety and security features that benefit both customers and marina staff.
Given our deep expertise in wireless networking, our team at Metro Wireless was selected to design, provision, deploy, and manage a new WiFi and fixed wireless backhaul network for MacRay Marina.
During our consultation phase, we explained to the marina’s leadership that any reliable outdoor WiFi network is a three legged stool:
It’s not just about comparing WiFi speeds at the yacht or boat level, it's about considering the total network capacity across their outdoor property, and optimizing the experience and bandwidth across all boating members and staff.
Our first step was to upgrade all the underlying infrastructure supporting the outdoor WiFi network. We upgraded the failing NEMA enclosures to be waterproof and secured such that no one could unplug the power to the WiFi access points. We worked with the marina staff to repair any installation sites (mostly light poles for this project) that were missing power.
The NEMA enclosures were installed in such a fashion that landscapers and other maintenance staff wouldn’t happen to cut into the conduit or other cabling, hopefully extending the longevity of the infrastructure. We wouldn’t want a weed wacker or lawnmower to cut through our conduit or cabling! As you can see, we care about the little things here at Metro Wireless.
Our team at Metro Wireless selected Cambium as the hardware manufacturer for MacRay’s new WiFi deployment, given it offers single-pane-of-glass cloud management of:
We also find that Cambium falls into the sweet spot for most enterprise and ‘middleprise’ (of the SMB market) given that it offers an enterprise level feature set and capability across its portfolio, while also being price competitive compared to its peers.
In short, it’s more powerful and better supported than Ubiquiti, but much more affordable than Ruckus. We’ll of course deploy wireless networks with those manufacturers, but we found Cambium to fit well for outdoor wireless networks typically found at RV parks, campgrounds, outdoor campuses, etc.
Powering the new wireless network in this case is the Cambium XV2-23T outdoor WiFi 6 access points. Feeding internet connectivity to the Cambium WiFi access points is Cambium’s 1.8Gbps capable wireless point-to-point backhaul system, the cnWave series. We used one V5000 distribution node, or DN (hub), and the V2000 client nodes, or CNs (spokes).
These WiFi access points and line-of-sight (and mesh) hardware will serve the marina for many years to come as they carry greatly increased throughput and bandwidth capacity, and allow for proactive management and monitoring.
Behind the wireless network hardware is the Cambium NSE, a firewall and router that supports all internet traffic routing and security for the new WiFi network. This hardware appliance, installed indoors near the marina’s ISP connection, is also managed by the cloud-based portal, Cambium’s CnMaestro X.
We can also set up this hardware for ePSK, as well as monetization to help the marina recuperate their investment. See our more detailed post on ePSK and monetizing the Marina’s WiFi network.
The newly installed network is managed by Metro Wireless via the Cambium cloud-based portal, allowing for email outage alerts, monetization to offset costs, and root cause analysis for troubleshooting. In addition, we can do things like:
We don’t leave clients hanging after we install their new outdoor WiFi network, we co-manage it with them, ensuring their long term success, and also removing any headaches!
With the midwestern boating season being pitifully short, our client wanted to move fast, with a desire to deploy their new WiFi network by Memorial Day, and our initial discovery call was in March. Talk about a fast turnaround!
We met the need, and our final installation was completed in under three months from our initial consultation meeting. Once the deposit was received to order the hardware, our team provisioned and deployed the new network in under eight weeks.
We now manage the entire end-to-end network for MacRay marina, including proactive email alerts for any outages (e.g., WiFi APs going offline), monitoring usage for any ‘bandwidth hogs’ that could degrade the experience for other users, and mundane items like resetting usernames and passwords.
Designed and deployed in under three months from our initial consultation call with our client, it’s evident Metro Wireless can move quickly to upgrade poor performing or non-existent WiFi and wireless networks.
This case study can be applied for many different use cases, such as outdoor campground WiFi, RV parks, and more (we’re working on a Zoo’s outdoor WiFi design right now!).
To learn more about our Managed WiFi offering, check out our managed WiFi solutions page here. Of course, Metro Wireless deploys a lot of indoor (e.g., office, warehouse) type focused solutions, in addition to outdoor WiFi networks.
We run a robust, yet streamlined and fast process to consult, design, deploy, and manage outdoor WiFi networks like this Marina’s.
In order to start the process, send an email to sales@metrowireless.com with:
Our design and technical engineering team will assist you every step of the way, and we provide FREE remote surveys, which will give you a predictive picture of what your project will look like once completed, as well as a budgetary estimate to install and maintain your network.
Once the preliminary design is completed, we’ll schedule an on-site survey to finalize the network design. After our business clients accept the proposal and pay the deposit, we can order, provision, and install most WiFi networks within eight weeks.
Tyler Hoffman
