kennybain
07-22-2003, 08:23 AM
Hi group,
I wanted to post a "testimonial" to this forum, because I know it gets a good number of readers, and I know that I've found something that truly can turn the 802.11b world upside down!
First of all... I'm not selling anything here. I just want to share with you how well this solution is working for my WISP. I read so many posts where people are asking questions about how practical repeaters are to deploy, what to do in cases of wireless interference, how to work around obstacles that obstruct LOS, etc. This solution addresses all of those problems.
The town I provide wireless internet coverage to is realatively small, about 4,000 residents. And it is covered with trees. When I first started looking at wireless solutions, I realized that the traditional point to multipoint application would not work. Then I stumbled on the LocustWorld (http://www.locustworld.com) website and got to reading up on this. Since it's open source, you can download the software and freely use it/evaluate it. After a few days, I was impressed, so I decided to "roll the dice" and use this solution to cover our town.
Now, we're running "full steam ahead" with deploying the mesh across town. I can cover 2/3's of the town now, and as clients pop up in areas that have poor LOS to the tower we're using we simply place a "meshbox" near their location to boost coverage in that area. The meshboxes work in infrastructure mode (not ad-hoc) so clients access them as regular AP's. Since a mesh network is a routed solution, and doesn't repeat packets throughout the network (works like a switch instead of a hub), you don't see decreased throughput as I've seen before when experimenting with 802.11b "repeaters". Plus, it is highly secure from the end user to the internet backbone.
And for the naysayers that don't believe it works, my WISP, FastLine Wireless Internet (http://www.fastlineinternet.com) is using it and so far it has worked great for us. Right now, we are the only WISP in the US that is using it, but when others see how well this works and realizes how it has the potential to change the way we use 802.11b... I think this will catch on. We are now in the process of branching out into other towns using this system.
We deployed this for a lot less than any other solution we could find! A lot of people are afraid to use anything that is open source for commercial use. We gambled on it and we're happy of the results. We're using the mini-itx pc's with Linux + MeshAP software. Using a simple web interface, we can set users up on a RADIUS server, set the amount of up/down bandwidth they get, change parameters of the meshbox, etc... It's just a really nice system.
I'd like to encourage others to visit the LocustWorld site (link above) and try this out. It's truly amazing, and totally free. Like I stated earlier... I'm not selling anything here. Just want to open other's eyes to the potential this system has.
I wanted to post a "testimonial" to this forum, because I know it gets a good number of readers, and I know that I've found something that truly can turn the 802.11b world upside down!
First of all... I'm not selling anything here. I just want to share with you how well this solution is working for my WISP. I read so many posts where people are asking questions about how practical repeaters are to deploy, what to do in cases of wireless interference, how to work around obstacles that obstruct LOS, etc. This solution addresses all of those problems.
The town I provide wireless internet coverage to is realatively small, about 4,000 residents. And it is covered with trees. When I first started looking at wireless solutions, I realized that the traditional point to multipoint application would not work. Then I stumbled on the LocustWorld (http://www.locustworld.com) website and got to reading up on this. Since it's open source, you can download the software and freely use it/evaluate it. After a few days, I was impressed, so I decided to "roll the dice" and use this solution to cover our town.
Now, we're running "full steam ahead" with deploying the mesh across town. I can cover 2/3's of the town now, and as clients pop up in areas that have poor LOS to the tower we're using we simply place a "meshbox" near their location to boost coverage in that area. The meshboxes work in infrastructure mode (not ad-hoc) so clients access them as regular AP's. Since a mesh network is a routed solution, and doesn't repeat packets throughout the network (works like a switch instead of a hub), you don't see decreased throughput as I've seen before when experimenting with 802.11b "repeaters". Plus, it is highly secure from the end user to the internet backbone.
And for the naysayers that don't believe it works, my WISP, FastLine Wireless Internet (http://www.fastlineinternet.com) is using it and so far it has worked great for us. Right now, we are the only WISP in the US that is using it, but when others see how well this works and realizes how it has the potential to change the way we use 802.11b... I think this will catch on. We are now in the process of branching out into other towns using this system.
We deployed this for a lot less than any other solution we could find! A lot of people are afraid to use anything that is open source for commercial use. We gambled on it and we're happy of the results. We're using the mini-itx pc's with Linux + MeshAP software. Using a simple web interface, we can set users up on a RADIUS server, set the amount of up/down bandwidth they get, change parameters of the meshbox, etc... It's just a really nice system.
I'd like to encourage others to visit the LocustWorld site (link above) and try this out. It's truly amazing, and totally free. Like I stated earlier... I'm not selling anything here. Just want to open other's eyes to the potential this system has.