Posted on 06/13/2016 5:59:30 PM PDT by The Louiswu
Greetings - My young business is being given an opportunity to set up new interior wireless access for two small restaurants along with point of sale access and I could use some advice and pointers on the best equipment to use and the best way to set up that equipment.
Thanks in advance, I always get good advice from the folks here on FR.
That’s a very complicated question and all the answers are
“it depends”
When all else fails though, consult the Hindmost.
...”consult the Hindmost”, I went there first, he said I should come to FR : )
Short answer: Cisco commercial wireless gear and Micros POS.
Make certain of the separation of your public and private networks. Really, really certain.
You are talking about “functional allocation” of assets.
You must do a “requirements analysis” first, or else you will be doing a redo when what you build is not what they want.
Lots of questions to answer about “what you want” before you get to “here’s how you do it”.
Need lots of information about “it”
I was looking at the
Cisco Aironet 802.11ac Wave 1 Access Point
To echo the above posts, while “home grade” access points will work, they’re not very manageable nor robust. You have to buy commercial grade and Cisco makes good APs.
As far as a POS systems, I’ve designed and installed them in the past and how they are built and configured depends entirely on the business and how it works.
I will say this, don’t try to computerize everything. Some things just work better as a paper system. For example, in a small restaurant, it’s easier for the wait staff to write a ticket and hand it to the cook than it is for them “re-enter” it on a terminal that prints in the kitchen.
Once you get 30+ tops, digital order entry is the only way to go.
There are a million ways to go about it, you’d be best served to find a local company that can service you and provide service during your operating hours. It’s more expensive, but if it breaks, they have to fix it.
Dont use the default username and password.
Ping.
Thank you
Save your money and look at Ubiquiti Networks. Far easier to set up and manage, easy to segment into guest and private access and blowtorch WiFi performance at a fraction of the cost of Cisco.
And remember, “Cisco” is Spanish for “bend over”
Wait a sec...you have a business that sets up little Wifi spots for other businesses and you don’t know what to purchase for the install? I find this very weird and in need of more details.
Those saying to use cisco don’t realize they we’re purchased by the Chinese and are the most frequently counterfeited systems.
That said as restaurants, they will need inventory management, sales management with predictive analytics, some form of marketing platform and accounting/tax systems. Realize payment is moving away from cash/card to Near field systems like apple pay. Nothing you can provided will last very long, unless you cloud almost all of the requirements. ( Think SAS or software as a service)
Not to be a big debby downer but an actual service as a small biz that you can provide (in house) is real time data backup, off site, with the ability to bring them back up quickly. Think disaster recovery. Say you place them on the amazon cloud platform and it crashes. (its happened) If you can step in and provide the basic functions to keep the company going, that’s an insurance product with a high value.
Smallnetbuilder.com
Bump for later reading.
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