Looking for advice re temporary wifi for the expo at an hotel

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chrisc

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Good morning

An expo was held recently at the hotel in Newlands.

The hotel provided a dedicated wi-fi signal throughout the hotel for the 3-day event

Exhibitors found that it was unuseable for their purpose which was streaming music. A dedicated streamer uses a phone or iPad for control

Like most guest WiFi networks, the hotel's routers are configured to disallow inter-device traffic between non-corporate-owned devices. This is blocked at the MAC address level. So, if you connect your laptop and a streamer to the hotel WiFi, they will have Internet access, but the routers won't forward packets between them and you can't set EQ on the streamer via the LAN, even though both devices are on the same network.

One way to overcome this to get the devices' MAC addresses whitelisted (laptop, phone & streamer) for inter-device traffic (the physical device address as opposed to assigned IP addresses). Or, you bring your own access point (Wi-Fi transmitter), but then you won't have Internet access unless you plug into one of their switches

The hotel made it awkward to whitelist MAC addresses and disallowed any LAN connection to their switch citing company policy. This is cumbersome anyway

I was wondering whether to have 2 x LTE or 5G routers and access point, APs that can communicate wirelessly. We cannot run LAN cables about

The ground floor is easy, one LTE or 5G router will suffice

For the first floor, the area is 45m long and 8m wide and there are 7 hotel rooms some 15m distance. Would a LTE (or 5G router) and 2 access points work? Am thinking of Ubiquiti APs

Expert advice is welcomed
 
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