UAP Improves Streaming and Wi-Fi Coverage for Hotel Guests
Introduction Staypineapple is a hospitality company striving to redefine their guests’ expectations of a typical hotel experience. With nine hotels in six major US cities–Boston, Chicago, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle–Staypineapple designed each hotel to be as unique as its host city. These hotels boast amenities such as beach cruisers, European-style bedding, high-speed Wi-Fi, dog-friendly rooms, and the ability to stream your favorite shows or movies (known as streampineapple). In order to provide reliable Wi-Fi and lag-free streaming for their guests, Staypineapple depends on Ubiquiti products to power their high-performance network.
MEETING THE DEMAND The numerous Staypineapple hotels vary in size; for example, the San Diego location’s Hotel Z is comprised of 96 rooms while the Portland location’s Hotel Rose is comprised of 142 rooms. The bandwidth requirements, however, are fairly demanding at each location to support media streaming by guests who may also have multiple devices that require internet connectivity.
All locations required dual-band Wi-Fi with 100 Mbps of peak bandwidth. To meet the high bandwidth demands of their guests, Staypineapple installed Ubiquiti PoE switches and deployed Ubiquiti APs for wireless coverage throughout the hotels’ guest rooms and hallways. They also utilized products in their public spaces, creating reliable connectivity for their guest lobbies, in-hotel restaurants, and meeting rooms.
WIRED DEPLOYMENT The backbone of each hotel is fiber, which feeds into a server room. A combination of Ubiquiti PoE switches then supply power and data to the Ubiquiti AC Lite, Pro, and HD APs. Ubiquiti offers a variety of PoE switches to fit every application need. The Ubiquiti PoE switch models are available with 8, 16, 24, or 48 PoE Gigabit Ethernet ports delivering 802.3at/af PoE.
WIRELESS UPGRADE Each of the nine Staypineapple hotels originally deployed the first generation of Ubiquiti Access Points to provide their wireless coverage. They have since upgraded and standardized with the Ubiquiti AC Lite, Pro, and HD AP product lines. The upgrade is quick and simple due to the intuitive mounting system of the APs.
The UAP-AC-PRO and UAP-AC-LITE models are deployed in guest rooms and hallways for maximum performance. To further optimize wireless performance, they relied on a higher number of APs, resulting in fewer devices per AP and therefore a more positive user experience for guests. In order to handle the high-density spaces such as guest lobbies, hotel restaurants, and various meeting rooms, Staypineapple integrated Ubiquiti HD APs into their network as well. The Ubiquiti HD AP is an 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Point using 4×4 MU-MIMO technology. These features allow the Ubiquiti HD AP to support more users than earlier generation APs, making it ideal for deployments where there are numerous clients in a relatively small space.
HIGH-BANDWIDTH STREAMING One of the main amenities offered to Staypineapple guests is streaming. Each hotel provides access to streaming media devices through a hidden SSID. Guests are allowed access to this network through room number and name, confirmed by the hotel management system, which interfaces with the Ubiquiti Controller software. This provides guests with the high throughput needed–30/30 Mbps minimum–for uninterrupted streaming.
NETWORK MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT Designed for simplified management, the Ubiquiti Controller allows admins to configure and monitor Ubiquiti devices using a graphical user interface. Staypineapple utilizes the Ubiquiti Controller for network monitoring and device configuration, including VLANS on the switches. The Ubiquiti Controller offers additional features such as AP provisioning, network mapping, and multi-site management. Staypineapple uses a standard install for their hotels. The admins access the Ubiquiti APs via SSH and run a set-inform URL command. This tells the Ubiquiti APs where to look for the Ubiquiti Controller.