Wi-Fi the neighborhood

[John_in_NC]

My mother in law just moved in to the neighborhood two blocks away. We are going to share my business internet account with her.

I did some preliminary testing with a 15dbm AP into a cantenna and put that up about 35' on my ham radio tower pointed at her house.

Then hopped in the car and fired up the laptop. Sitting on her front porch using the internal card on the laptop I got about 2 bars, forget the actual signal numbers but SNR was about 20. But kept dropping out, very unreliable due to congestion, she is in the center of the neighborhood and up higher than the surrounding homes. So from her house I pick up about 15 AP's.

I can easily see that if I bump the power and put an antenna at her place it would work but with all the interference I decided to go with a dual radio unit and backhaul to her on 802.11a with a pr of 21 db grid arrays. I want to concentrate on a good SNR and an adequate signal but run the lowest output power possible. Then at her place the G radio will broadcast the SSID for local user access. ( I may solicit more users).

I better get started on configuring the DMZ on my Cisco ASA.


Anyway, just for grins we are going to do a range test just to play with the radios and the antennas shortly after I get them at a large lake on the NC/VA border. I think a pr of aps with 21db antennas should be quite impressive.

I will video of our test, it should be pretty cool.

Anyone have any suggestions of what I should try besides the obvious?

[Alan87i]

My only thought is if your purchasing new 21 dbi antennas I'd stick with yagis or grids for the back haul link and stay away from panels. And try and mount as high as possible at the inlaws. A narrow beam width helps cut out interference more than power.

I have a pair of the older model 5800 tranzeo's sitting around here waiting to be tested on a 4KM shot. They are built in 21dbi panels. My test will give me an idea of what might work and if not I have use for them on a short link.

[John_in_NC]

Yep, I'm with ya there Alan. The antennas are GD5W-21P 21dBi 4.9-5.8GHz Wideband Parabolic Grids and I only need to go about 1050'.
This backhaul link will run on 5.8 gig.
Equipment should be here tomorrow, can't wait.

[Eezy]

Keep us posted John...can't wait for your video.

[John_in_NC]

7/11/09 Update

I mounted the the Engenius 7550's dual radio units on tripods and connected up the 21dbi parabolic to the 5.8gig 600mw radio and did some link tests

The connected up very fast and the directivity of the arrays is very tight.
At 40' apart the signal was -29db and the noise floor was -102!


So I wanted to do some more field tests but did not have a battery for the inverter or an extension cord that was long enough so I simply took one unit over to my mother-in-laws to try it there under a worst case scenario which was with my unit on my porch and hers on her front porch.
This meant a lot of foliage in between us.

I got a signal right after powering it up! Not that strong though but at 48mb/s link. I forgot the db reading but this unit also gives you a signal % based on noise and db. The signal was 28%

I turned on my wifi card in my laptop to check the 2.4 gig radio and picked up the panel at my house as well as the one just next to me!

Still, I am glad we are doing the link on 5.8, the 2.4 band is so darn crowded with Dlinks, 2-wires and Linksys everywhere. Still today, many people leave their AP's open. If it were legal I would consider just leaching off the neighbors!

So, I left the other unit over her house but think I may want to do some more field tests after I get a battery for my inverter. Everyone, including myself wants to know exactly how bad do tree's affect wifi.

Since I got dual radios and dual bands I could compare the loss on both but after reading this article I am not sure if it is worth the trouble, this guy seems to sum it up quite well
http://www.solwiseforum.co.uk/downloads/files/intheuk5ghz.pdf

Well, I will add to this later, wife said she will video some of the stuff when I am ready.

It's kind of ironic that I am setting up Wifi here and just yesterday my boss handed me 3 new A/B/G/N AP's that he wants me to evaluate for our company to see if we should carry them in our product offerings.

Anyway, next step is to set up a new vlan on my Cisco ASA firewall. This will give that wifi cluster internet access/dhcp etc but no access to my internal network.

Here is the antenna I am using for the 5.8gig backhaul but I am using horizontal polarization.

http://www.streakwave.com/mmSWAVE1/Images/GD5W-21P.jpg

More later...

[FMW]

John -

Where in NC are you doing this? Near the beach or are you inland?

[Alan87i]

Thanks for the Update John.
I also enjoyed the article.
I haven't taking my 5800's out of the box yet. LOL Hope to soon. Picked up a restoration project , a fiberglass boat that needs a bit more work before I hit the lake on vacation in August. And I have never fiber glassed before. Should be fun.

[John_in_NC]

I did some playing around in the back yard to see how bad 2.4 and 5.8 is afected by trees. I video'd the test. I realized that I wont have time to do a range test up at the lake with these units as I need to get them mounted and installed asap.

I am rendering part 1 and part 2 of the videos now.

[John_in_NC]

Here are video parts one and two
Part one
http://www.vimeo.com/5561950

Part two
http://www.vimeo.com/5562318

[Alan87i]

Nice job on the video. Hows the link working?

I was not all that impressed with the GUI of those radios. I'm use to having a real time signal and noise display. But as long as they work.

If I ever go with 5.8 I might try those dual band radios as well. I Like dual Ethernet ports the Tranzeos have. 1 POE 1 wire 2 radios .

[Planet]

Great demonstration!

[John_in_NC]

Both of the tripods you saw are just sitting in my kitchen right now. Got way too hot to do it last weekend. Going to try and get at least my end of the link up on my tower this weekend.
Still waiting on my POE Ethernet Surge protector which was back ordered but I think it will be here before the weekend.
:-)

[Alan87i]

Please send some of that heat. 11 C here right now and about to rain again.
I just swapped out a POE surge box the other day, Darn thing dropped one of the network lines. Still had power to the radio but no traffic. This one was grounded to the electrical system. The other one I had not got around to grounding is fine. It quit after a storm.
I think I will be grounding both to the common ground I have at the tower. Usually when A storm hits all of them get unplugged from service till the lightening passes by.

2 years ago a strike down the road road in on the cable company's service line and took out the router and pc. I didn't have AP's hooked up at the time. Didn't hurt the modem ! we rent that.

[John_in_NC]

Greeting Alan and the gang.
I just finished the install today. Phew, was a bit more than I expected.
Didn't plan on a wasps nest in my old dish network antenna that was on my tower. Oh they are gone now, I only got stung once.

Anyhow, I finally got my end up on the tower and was kinda bummed out that I have to beam through the top of a small pine tree. (he will be gone soon).

I tested the range of my 2.4 gig band side with the embedded panel antenna and it was just ok. I mean, I got signal about 1 1/2 blocks but kind of expected a bit more from the 150mw on b/g band.

So, we packed the car up and drove to my mother in laws. The direct TV guy put up a satellite dish on her roof. I was hoping he would put it on the other side of her roof where I would have a clean shot back to my house but he didn't.. So, if I share his mount I will have to beam through 2 pine trees and a few other unknown type trees to get back to my station.
When I walked to the other side of her roof I could see my tower, clean shot! It was hot as hell and the Directv antenna is right above her office so I figured lets see what I get beaming though all that mess. After all I am running a pair of 21db antennas and 600mw.
Results? not bad I ended up with a 40% signal getting 48 mbs on the 5.8gig link! Her local 2.4 panel AP covers her whole street.

Hot Dog, I think I got almost half my neighborhood under my wifi signal. :-)
Now my wife wants me to bring her an IP phone so she can do VoIP over it. LOL. I was planning for that so Yes, I do have QOS running.

(Video in the works)

[Alan87i]

Glad to see it's working out fine.
The next time it's raining do some tests with the trees all wet. I have 1 link to set up and I have tested it with a poor signal working but poor. When it rained it died. I'm waiting for the fellow to have a pruning gang in to attack 2 maple trees 40' from his tower.

[John_in_NC]

It poured today, the trees got soaked and my signal dropped to the point where the speed went all the way down to 12 MB/s

Tomorrow two pine trees are gonna fall!! :P

BTW, the VoIP is working great. I let her borrow an IP phone and it sounds good but she wants to put phones on all the wall jacks so going to swap it out for an ATA and run the analog patch into her wall then disconnect it from the telco at the NID. That will supply dialtone to all her wall jacks.

[Alan87i]

Ya wet trees actually 1 wet branch will do it. In my area it's mostly hardwood when the maples get wet the leaves drop down dripping and act just like a mirror to microwave. I can't deploy in the winter unless I'm 100% sure there's no trees close enough to impair the signal from May to October.

The other bomb is a wet spell followed by a quick freeze. Last fall it poured for days then froze hard . I had 3 radios act weird for days from what I figure was condensation froze to ice particles in the connectors and or the radios them selves.

[John_in_NC]

As I post this I am listening to the sound of the chain saw as he cuts up the remains of the 3 pine trees that were partially blocking my signal.

Was fun to refresh the screen as the tree was falling and see another 3-4 db of signal as it moved out of the way.

Strange thing about it, although not a big difference in signal (there are lots of other trees in the path) but it did show a significant speed increase.
We went from 36 MBS to 54 but of course still fluctuates a bit.

[Alan87i]

What I do in that case is drop the max speed to 1 or 2 speeds lower than the best you see on the link if they let you set them that way.

[John_in_NC]

Anyone know how to do a heat map? I heard it is is pretty easy. I have seen how it is done with Cisco but would like an El' Cheapo solution for my little "network neighborhood".

Any suggestions?