korym
Go Wisp's
ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-12-23
Richmond, VA
clubs:
|  Interesting project - any input?
Howdy all. I hope everyone's doing well. I'm out in Nebraska again doing an installation and try to update the sites when I can from the hotel. 
Here's what sounds like an interesting project. The submitter has put quite a bit of thought into it but I'm sure additional input would be appreciated.
BTW, I've modified Start a WISP so that each submission will simply offer commenting instead of linking to the discussion forum there. The latter was too cumbersome.
»www.startawisp.com/content/view/281/53/
Thx much, in advance.
Y'all have a good one!
Regards,
Kory
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WISP Directory : WISP News : Start a WISP : WISP Classifieds |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07 | I would definately appreciate any and all input. Thanks for the heads-up Kory |
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robbin
Premium,MVM
join:2000-09-21
Leander, TX
| I'm not going to copy your original post from Kory's site and post it here for copyright reasons. It would be to your benefit if you reposted your original question here in this thread in order to get the most complete answers from this forum! Many who would be willing to help are to busy to go to another site to read the original question. |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
| reply to korym
Fair enough
I am working with a developer who is soon to break ground on a 500 acre neo-traditional community. There will be 1000 homes built over 8-10 years on 250 acres, the remaining land will remain open parkland etc.
So I've been doing my homework looking for a commercial system that will allow me to turn the entire community into an 802.11a/b/g hotzone. I don't want to use a subscriber business model such as Firetide or Canopy. The selling point here is homeowners can roam the community and remain connected. I also want users to be able to leverage off-the-shelf wifi cards/adapters.
This has led me to basically one product, Strix System's OWS package. It's a self-healing mesh access point with data path switching, and up to 6 radios (with 2 reserved for backhaul ingress and egress) up to 1W each.
From what I've read on their site (»www.strixsystems.com) they just may have the magic bullet. It seems they've engineered around alot of the typical problems with mesh architecture (ie. latency and bandwidth loss across large networks).
Does anyone have experience with their OWS hardware, it just came out this quarter so I'm not holding my breath. How about suggestions for other hardware that would fit the bill?
Thanks in advance |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
2 edits | reply to korym
Does anyone have experience with access points in a mesh arrangement? I'm wondering what the penetration would be into homes if the AP's were mounted on street lights. The Strix OWS unit can have up to 6 1W radios, 4 for client access. So I would imagine the signal from the AP would flow nicely down the street a few blocks but I don't think the tiny antennas in laptops and other over-the-shelf gear like Linksys and Netgear would have enough juice to transmit back to those AP's a block or 2 away.
What would my options be for low-cost CPE gear that would be of a higher-power than your typical laptop antenna? Maybe a good solution would be to place AP's every 3 blocks or so broadcasting a nice strong signal and then rely on some stronger-than-normal gear inside each home to create a local bubble. This would allow the CPE antenna to be located outside possibly in LOS with the AP and act as a repeater of sorts. A customer would have fine reception inside their home and if they roamed outside then the AP's would pick them up.
Of course this assumes that the cost of the CPE's are less than just installing another AP on the block. Installing an AP every 3 blocks with CPE inbetween to create local hotspots around each home would require roughly 50 CPE's.. at a cost of $75 each (best case), that's a $3750 cost, when the AP might only cost $3000 and create far less interference than all the extra CPE's in the neighborhoods.
Any chance there are 802.11/a/b/g pcmcia and usb hardware that is stronger than your usual BestBuy equipment? This would greatly simplify my problem. |
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DejanCDN
join:2004-11-17
Kuwait
| Unless I am mistaken (we use metric here) 500 acres is approx. 2km by 1km..a fairly small area. Do you know what homes are going to be made of, how will they be constructed?
I would not look for more powerful pcmcia/USB cards, that would just create more interference all over, as signal will escape through windows and other spots.
To give you some idea, we use 200mW radios in our APs, and customers using notebooks can connect as far as 600-800m from inside their house, behind a concrete wall or next to a window. If these homes are made of wood, 4-6 APs might be all you need. |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
1 edit | Wow that's great to hear. 600m would be roughly 2000 feet. If standard 802.11 client hardware can work with AP's at that range, then I would only need 5 to completely blanket the entire community.
These homes will be made of wood, specifically 2x4 frames with standard plywood and then covered with a plastic house-wrap product and finally siding or brick facade. The nice thing about the community is that while it is 8000 feet long, it is only 2000 feet wide. So a pretty narrow stretch of land. I could put 5 AP's on the main street along the 8000' dimension and they should blanket the entire area.
Maybe I am just mistaken, I have been using my own Netgear 802.11g gear as a guide. My router is located in the middle of the house on the second floor. I can go anywhere in the house with good signal, but if I move about 10' away from the house, I lose signal. So I was under the impression that the tiny radios in thise consumer gear would be too weak to transmit back to an AP 3-4 blocks away, even though the AP itself is pretty strong.
What type of AP hardware are you using? |
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snowpro2000
join:2004-06-13
Canada
| reply to DejanCDN
DejanCND:
Could you please tell me what kind of ap and antenna (how high) you are using to get that range.
I get half of that If I mount to ap on the two storey house and try to pick it up with a 200mw card with mag mount antenna on my car, specially if some other houses block the signal.
I was using 2611's with 120 degree sector antenna.
thanks
Paul |
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to korym
Using your netgear router without a higher gain antenna on it is like basing the max load all trucks can carry on a pickup truck. Of course in reality a semi carries a lot more.
Wireless routers typically only have a low gain antenna on them which is not a valid test compared to a much higher gain antenna. For testing purposes, order a Deliberant outdoor unit, mount it and an omni on your chimmney, now try and get signal inside a neighbor's house. For less $500 you'll get alot of answers for your questions.
The other thing you will have to worry about in this situation is going to be self interferenc, you can't run more than 3 radios at a given location without creating this interference. Since the APs are located outside they will be able to see each other and thus will reduce the number of free channels each AP can use. Frequency reuse is a fairly complicated situation and you would have to manage that. |
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korym
Go Wisp's
ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-12-23
Richmond, VA
clubs:
| reply to robbin
said by robbin  :I'm not going to copy your original post from Kory's site and post it here for copyright reasons. It would be to your benefit if you reposted your original question here in this thread in order to get the most complete answers from this forum! Many who would be willing to help are to busy to go to another site to read the original question. I didn't realize there was a copyright issue. I'm not one to wave the "copyright wand" around. That's why I defer to you all. If it makes more sense to continue the conversation here, that's cool with me. As long as znelson32 is being helped out (which he obviously is, of course) that's all I care about. It makes no difference where he's being helped out.
I will say that the "other site" is devoted entirely to WISPs as much as this single forum is. I do what I do for WISPs because I never forgot how much I enjoyed working with them and for them.
Anyway, perhaps I said too much but when I read your message, robbin, I felt as if my efforts are simply being wasted because everyone's "too busy." Believe me, I know we're all busy. I could go on and on about that but I'll spare everyone. 
Thx much!
Regards,
Kory
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WISP Directory : WISP News : Start a WISP : WISP Classifieds |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
3 edits | reply to cmaenginsb
Makes total sense, I'll give the Deliberant AP a try for testing purposes. I think they're $140, much cheaper than a $5000 Strix AP.
The Strix system can house up to 6 radios, 3 for client access via 802.11a/b/g and 3 for backhaul via 802.11a. I could assign all AP's to use channels 1+2 for backhaul ingress/egress. Then with the 3 client access cards, use one for 802.11a which would serve homes closest to the AP, and the other 2 for 802.11b/g which would serve the farthest homes from the AP.
In this scenario I'd have 2 (a) channels in use for backhaul, 1 (a) channel for client access, and 2 (b/g) channels for client access. I could even use all 3 b/g channels because all backhaul would be on (a) channels. I'd imagine this scenario is a smart one for minimizing channel interference...?
All AP's would use the same (a) backhaul channels of course but since the range of (a) is considered limited, there's a good chance an AP would only see 1-2 other AP's. I could even use just 1 client access card instead of 3 in each AP, and pick one of the 3 (b/g) channels. That way each AP is talking to clients on a different channel, in this case if I've got 3 AP's across the neighborhood, none of them would interfere with each other's client traffic. But of course, I guess this would depend on the # of clients serviced by each AP. Because if there's a high density of clients on 1 AP then it would probably make sense to put 3 client access cards in, each one on a different (b/g) channel to minimize interference at the AP-level. This would probably be ok if all AP's were far enough apart so that they don't compete for the same client signal (which wouldn't be an issue if each AP used only 1 (b/g) channel instead). Phewww...
Am I making any sense?
Here is the whitepaper on the Strix OWS system, what do you guys think? »www.strixsystems.com/products/da···ihop.pdf |
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to korym
I wouldn't plan on getting very far at all in 802.11a NLOS connecting to a client card. I also don't understand why you want to do that. You don't really need 4 different radios to service the customers. If you go back to 3 802.11b radios with 5 AP/AP locations you're looking at approximately 66 customers a piece assuming everyone in the community decides to go for what you offer.
I do agree that using 802.11a for backhaul makes sense, As to the range of A if your putting them on light standards where most of the APs will see each other your range will be significant when combined with a slightly higher gain antenna.
As to Strix your deployment is small enough that you could get by with a Mikrotik solution using either WDS or some static routes. You'd be at less than $1000 for a fully populated box. In my mind Strix is more than a bit overpriced for the value. |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
| I was just brainstorming the possibilities, using (a) for client access would probably only work if the house was right in front of the light pole w/AP. Assuming I use 3 (b) radios in the AP's, each radio on a different channel, did you mean I'd get 66 customers per AP or per radio? If it's per AP I'd need double the AP count to handle at least 600 clients.
I am not completely familiar with alot of this technology (as you can tell / I'm a software guy) .. I thought performance of WDS would degrade significantly after a few hops. I also want to provide for roaming within the community so how would static routes work?
I really appreciate everyone's help! |
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korym
Go Wisp's
ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-12-23
Richmond, VA
clubs:
| said by znelson32 :I am not completely familiar with alot of this technology (as you can tell / I'm a software guy) .. I thought performance of WDS would degrade significantly after a few hops. Actually, (and anyone may correct me if I'm wrong, of course), I believe you'll find that performance of a mesh environment will suffer more after a few hops over WDS. WDS is simply retransmitting the signal using two cards within the AP; one to retransmit and one to provide local connection to the clients.
A mesh environment uses a single card to do both.
There's been numerous discussions on what technology is better over the other but it probably ultimately depends on your budget, deployment area, demographics, etc.
I don't think you'd have the performance problems of a WDS environment although a mesh network might be suitable for a smaller deployment (or for larger ones using WDS backhauls).
HtH!
Regards,
Kory
--
WISP Directory : WISP News : Start a WISP : WISP Classifieds |
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znelson32
join:2005-05-07
| reply to korym
Kory,
From my research, I think the hardware setup varies alot across manufacturers. I found some WDS systems that are single radio (which would eat bandwidth for lunch) and others that are dual radio (one for client/one for backhaul) which would perform better. But I also found the same single/dual configurations in some mesh systems too. The Strix system (I'm not a salesman I swear ) is mesh with multi-radio. Actually if you read their whitepaper it makes alot of sense.
It's all these different configurations that really complicate the issue and confuse newbies like myself. I just want the best money can buy, but without spending more money than is necessarily needed. And then of course, this all changes in 3 years with WiMAX *sigh*. |
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to korym
Dual radio WDS will actually allow for better throughput than dual radio mesh in a small network and possibly even a larger network. Why? Because you don't have the route discovery and routing related traffic that a mesh system has. WDS is a way of properly allowing 802.11 radios to bridge.
For example I am using Mikrotik WDS to create a repeater for a system I designed. By putting both radios in the same bridge group the traffic gets forwarded at the rate that the CPU allows forwarding. If I was to place a 2nd repeater inline then assuming it uses the same hardware it will forward at the same rate as the first one. Doing any kind of forwarding will increase latency as will the time spent over the air, so any multihop link will suffer higher latency as you get further from the primary radio but it won't suffer the throughput losses common with a single radio setup.
I was saying 66 customers per radio. I have my doubts as to the effectiveness of any system with more than 3 radios in it as the CPU demands would be pretty high. Ad the requirement for routing that a meshing system has and you're going to lose even more throughput.
My concern and the only reason that I would look into routing is that assuming 600 customers that's a look of broadcast traffic which you can't block since your network is all layer 2. |
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DejanCDN
join:2004-11-17
Kuwait
| reply to snowpro2000
Our APs are Acendance with Dual 200mW radios. In locations where tower is high (30m+) relative to surrounding area, we use SuperPass 120 Degree sectors, 11.2dBi, Hpol, 30 Degree Vertical Beam. In other locations where we are only 6-10m higher than clients, we use 120 Degree, Hpol, 16dBm ITElite antennas with 8 Degree Vertical Beam.
For backhaul, we use Osrbidge 5Gi at 5.4Ghz. That way we can 'overlay' another 3 sectors at 5.8 if we need more capacity. |
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