Enhancing public Wi-Fi by researching low cost, easy to install exterior Wi-Fi access points that can be deployed on a variety of street lighting poles
Project Description:
Not everyone in the city of Hamilton has access to the internet. However, most folks have a Wi-Fi device that can be used to access the internet if it is available in the surrounding area of interest. The city of Hamilton would like to provide internet access to such areas. It is proposed to evaluate several off the shelf Wi-Fi Cellular Routers, such as model EZR23 series from
https:// EZR23.outdoorRouter.com, selected models from https://www.digi.com/products/networking/cellular-routers , and others.
Solution Required:
A low cost, easy to install exterior Wi-Fi access point that can be deployed on a variety of street lighting poles and would utilized cellular/data SIM card for backhaul and connect to power via existing NEMA plug on top of street lighting or park lighting fixtures.
Current Challenges:
Deploying Wi-fi in public spaces is often cost prohibitive due to lack of existing connectivity options (electrical and wireline/wired internet).
Trenching and electrical installation to support access points is costly and time-consuming to install.
Cellular “data only” plans often for the City are on a shared data model which does present challenges versus “unlimited” corporate data plans specific for cell phones. The latter often have MAC address limits that carriers block them from being used for multiple connection access that would be required (1 to many connection) for a public use cellular-based public wi-fi access point.
Management, login/acceptable use landing pages and potential for content filtering would be a nice to have.
Remote management or Wi-Fi access point nice to have.
Ideally, solutions that do not have a significant licensing fee for hardware would help minimize monthly / yearly operating costs.
All-in-one solution that is easy to install, year-round weatherproof for Hamilton climate is a required.
Often exterior Wi-Fi access points are Power over Ethernet (POE, POE+ or POE++ etc) whereas street lighting is often 110V so solution would need to take into account power conversion and weatherproof nature of any power conversion equipment
Esthetics for a visually pleasing solution (within reason of how pretty can an access point get but not minimizes installed equipment) that can be adapted to fix various exterior fixture types would be ideal.
Need to consider the potential for vandalism (i.e. running junction boxes from base power plate and conduit up the pole has not been successful in the past and often leads to vandals trying to access / steel wiring for copper recycling).
Ideally, an existing commercially available product not a custom made hardware solution,
Cost management of cellular data and the ability to possibly time limit per mac address, daily usage time limit caps, and bandwidth slicing per user nice to have.
Filtering of high data streaming services would be ideal to allow “convenience” public wi-fi. Not intended to support Online streaming, video conferencing and high-bandwidth use applications.
Could involve narrowing down to 2 or 3 potential solutions, procuring and piloting (both bench testing and in-situ real word testing could be part of scope)
Four locations of priority interest (in order) with 1 and 2 being the primary initial focus.
Eastgate Mall Bus Terminal (Ward 5)
Limeridge Mall Bus Terminal (Ward 7)
Promenade Park (Ward 2)
Pier 4 Park / Bayfront Park (Ward 2)
City Staff: Jasleen Arora, Senior Project Manager, Digital Innovation and Strategic Partnerships
Additional City Staff: Cyrus Tehrani, Chief Digital Officer and Director of Innovation
Instructor: Dr. Pedro Tondo
Course: Booth School of Engineering
Students: Hasani Miller