Wireless Community Broadband – A how to – The Ultimate Guide

Big Lar · 17-10-2011 4:56pm #1

Well to be honest it’s not quite the ultimate guide at the moment, but over the coming months I hope that this will thread do what it says on the tin.

Going to try and get Wireless Community Broadband for Clashmore, Co Waterford. Owned by, Run by and for the people of Clashmore and the surrounding areas. Hopefully some folks may be able to lend a helping hand to this thread by giving advice and others may be able to learn from the success and hopefully few mistakes we make along the way, It is my hope that we can make a template here for other communities who would like to do the same.

Clashmore in West Waterford is a very nice place to live, Nice People, Schools, Drink etc etc...… but what it not so nice is the Internet Service that is provided, there have been a few wireless Internet service providers but my experience of them has been poor and of course we have dongles which offer basic access, but nothing like what DSL or Fibre users experience.

I can get a dedicated line(Node) from Eircom in any of the local exchanges: Ardmore, Youghal or Aglish to be installed within 500m of the exchange and this line can take up to 150mbs which will lead to a Data Centre located in Dublin then I will be able to access the internet, and as you may have guessed tis a tad expensive.

Node costs = €2,000.00 Per year
Traffic of 50mbs bandwidth on that line = €1,527.00 Per year
50mbd through the Data centre costs = €3,000.00 Per year

Total costs of €6527.00 plus vat per year, which comes to €7897.00, monthly that’s about €658.00, Plus initial setup costs: Like I am going to have to rent a location within 500m from the telephone exchange and install some equipment. Course we could go with a 30mbs connection which would cost about €400.00 per month, a 20mbs connection would be around €300.00 odd, divide any of the packages up between 20+ customers and its an easy bill to pay.

I have a family and work myself and am unable to run the project full time so I need help for this, I intend to organize a public meeting to see if there is an interest in the community, and then go if there is an interest organize a bit of a committee and please god go forward from there.

I will also stick a thread in the Waterford Country forum in an effort to rally support.

bigpaddy2004 · 17-10-2011 11:10pm

Big Lar wrote: »

Well to be honest it’s not quite the ultimate guide at the moment, but over the coming months I hope that this will thread do what it says on the tin.

Going to try and get Wireless Community Broadband for Clashmore, Co Waterford. Owned by, Run by and for the people of Clashmore and the surrounding areas. Hopefully some folks may be able to lend a helping hand to this thread by giving advice and others may be able to learn from the success and hopefully few mistakes we make along the way, It is my hope that we can make a template here for other communities who would like to do the same.

Clashmore in West Waterford is a very nice place to live, Nice People, Schools, Drink etc etc...… but what it not so nice is the Internet Service that is provided, there have been a few wireless Internet service providers but my experience of them has been poor and of course we have dongles which offer basic access, but nothing like what DSL or Fibre users experience.

I can get a dedicated line(Node) from Eircom in any of the local exchanges: Ardmore, Youghal or Aglish to be installed within 500m of the exchange and this line can take up to 150mbs which will lead to a Data Centre located in Dublin then I will be able to access the internet, and as you may have guessed tis a tad expensive.
Node costs = €2,000.00 Per year

Traffic of 50mbs bandwidth on that line = €1,527.00 Per year

50mbd through the Data centre costs = €3,000.00 Per year

Total costs of €6527.00 plus vat per year, which comes to €7897.00, monthly that’s about €658.00, Plus initial setup costs: Like I am going to have to rent a location within 500m from the telephone exchange and install some equipment. Course we could go with a 30mbs connection which would cost about €400.00 per month, a 20mbs connection would be around €300.00 odd, divide any of the packages up between 20+ customers and its an easy bill to pay.

I have a family and work myself and am unable to run the project full time so I need help for this, I intend to organize a public meeting to see if there is an interest in the community, and then go if there is an interest organize a bit of a committee and please god go forward from there.

I will also stick a thread in the Waterford Country forum in an effort to rally support.

Does your quotes include IP Transit? If so thats not too bad a price. Start off small first with about 10Mb. Can not see you needing anymore for a small community.

Big Lar · 18-10-2011 7:35am

I am just a bit of a nerd myself and am running with the idea however I have roped in an IT guy down the road and these are his costings, so I would assume that its all included.

As for the 10Mb, one could say its a lot with contention ratio of what Eircom has of 48:1 and all that but if the largest package we could offer customers was 5Mb and only two customers started downloading at the one time then we are in trouble. We have a public meet scheduled for November 1st and we will see how many customers we have interested and then this should dictate out bandwidth.

Thanks for the input thou, that's what this post is all about.

bigpaddy2004 · 18-10-2011 9:06am

Big Lar wrote: »

I am just a bit of a nerd myself and am running with the idea however I have roped in an IT guy down the road and these are his costings, so I would assume that its all included.

As for the 10Mb, one could say its a lot with contention ratio of what Eircom has of 48:1 and all that but if the largest package we could offer customers was 5Mb and only two customers started downloading at the one time then we are in trouble. We have a public meet scheduled for November 1st and we will see how many customers we have interested and then this should dictate out bandwidth.

Thanks for the input thou, that's what this post is all about.

It is a small community, do not get your hopes up. In reality you will only get about 30 subscribers who will not pay anymore than €30 per month. The odd one alright will want a larger package and willing to pay for it. If you have any local businesses in the area, try to get them on board and charge more. At the end of the day they will require top support and they will also be the most beneficial from your community wisp. Businesses will be a welcome financial boost to your network.
Do not be worried about 2 guys downloading constant at the same time, it rarely ever happens on a single segment, and if it does happen, there is ways of dealing with it.

yuloni · 18-10-2011 9:52pm

This post has been deleted.

Big Lar · 19-10-2011 8:10am

There has been little development since my last post except we have scheduled a public meeting for the 1st of November, We hope to have all our pricing done and a location sorted for our main transmitter for that stage.

To get a bit of public notice for the meeting, We have a Facebook event setup, We have placed a notice of the meeting on the local papers in the local notes sections, We will pamphlet about 4 local schools and stick up a few posters around at public venues, Also I am going email the local radio to see if they will give us a plug.

We have a map at the minute with a bout 14 potential customers on it, so that's a good start in just a few days.

yuloni · 16-11-2011 3:42pm

This post has been deleted.

Big Lar · 18-11-2011 8:35am

Soz been kinda busy with the project and all, We are up and running and have a few guinea pigs on the system.

I will try and explain a bit better over the weekend when I have time.

Sponge Bob · 18-11-2011 2:22pm

Jeez Lar, it is only a month since you started off.

I look forward to hearing this one.

Big Lar · 18-11-2011 10:10pm

A month and 4 days to be exact Sponge Bob

, I am kinda impressed with myself that we have achieved so much I a short space of time
Well in fairness we have come a long way in that short space of time, we have transmitters installed at one location and we have 5 customers/guinea pigs on the network for the last week or so.

Well to start the story off
We have had two wireless internet providers in this area before and none of them have worked out for various reasons that I am not going to go into because its forward that we are going, but suffice to say it was more their fault that the locals fault. I decided to get going and see if it would be feasible to try and get m,y own wireless service going, from the get-go it was not or could not be a money making project due to the fact that if wages were to be taken into account then that was going to be a €4,000.00 bill a month to start which equates to about 130 customers (Avg €30.00 pm) alone just to pay my own wages, this had to be a community project.

I had not one clue where to start so I contacted/pestered a few members on boards that were regular posters in the broadband forums from there I met my future partner in the project Zenith, turned out there was a like minded individual like myself living not too far away from me.

Now I thought that this project was going to be a breeze but only for the knowledge that Zenith brought to the project we would never have gotten as far as we have.
Zenith works in IT and through his contacts we were able to get prices like as in the first post, all we needed was 50 or 60 customers to share the cost and that didn’t happen at our meeting.

The Meeting
At the meeting we had about 10 or so turn up that were mostly neighbours of both of us, I personally found it a bit disheartening but perhaps we didn’t advertise or publicise it as much as we should have.

The backup plan
Although we did not hit the magic figure of 50 or 60 customers, once again through Zenith’ s contacts we contacted a crowd of lads in East Cork who had setup a Community Scheme a few years earlier and they turned out to be our best asset, I am just going to sidetrack for a bit: One thing that I have noticed about this project is everyone in IT has a common goal and that is to help others out in sharing the knowledge that they have, Perhaps its different for us being a community group but the amount of offers of support we have gotten so far has been just nothing short of unbelievable, everywhere we go and almost everyone that we have approached has been eager to help or give advice.
Back to the story at hand, The lads in East Cork agreed to give us a link and sell us a 10Mb connection and we approached a local farmer that had a shed on high ground that had line of sight to Cork and overlooked our area, and in fairness to him he offered the use of his shed to us to place a couple of sectors on.
So that’s more or less it, Like I said in the first sentence we are up and running with a few on the network where we are ironing out the kinks and let me tell ye there has been a few kinks, but in another week or so we should be up and running on a proper basis.

Money wise
I am not going to go into our overheads as that would not be fair on our suppliers and others in the group but we have invested around €1,400.00 in equipment so far which we hope to get back in the next 6 to 12 months from there on in we can reinvest in the network. We have also invested another €1,000.00 in equipment to be placed at user premises but I am not going to include that as we are charging €100.00 for the install so that should be coming back fairly fast.

Ubitiqui 5GHz equipment is what we are using for anyone that’s interested.

That’s it……….. I’m fed up of typing, if I get a chance I will post up more.

Oh yes we have a website up and running also http://www.wwcbb.net/

Thanks for the interest.

Sponge Bob · 18-11-2011 10:38pm

Does your backhaul do one wireless hop from the shed west into Cork Lar , is that also Ubiquiti gear or is the Ubiquiti gear for base station and households only???

I take it you use different frequencies for backhaul and local service , have you expansion room on your chosen frequencies. ??

Big Lar · 19-11-2011 11:35am

Ubiquiti all the way Sponge Bob, although we did get some local advice not to use Ubiquiti on the backhaul as others had problems with it but it was too late as we were about to put up the backhaul link the next day, After reading the Ubiquiti forums I didn’t see much complaints about using Ubiquiti for the backhaul, so we will see how it goes. We just have one hop to our provider in east cork so that’s about 16Km.
About the available channels, there are only about 16 5GHz channels that can be used in Ireland but we can change the bandwidth of each channel to 40, 20, 10 or 5 MHz so this gives us a wide variety of channels to mess around with although the lower the bandwidth the lower the throughput I thing that the 5MHz bandwidth only allows max of 15Mbs throughput so that’s not an option for a main link.

Sponge Bob · 19-11-2011 1:09pm

You are generally safe at 5ghz but make sure your customers do not get Wifi N routers that could interfere with the links..keep them in the 2.4ghz band if possible by disabling the key channels on their routers...by consent.

Big Lar · 15-12-2011 8:39am

bigpaddy2004 wrote: »

Start off small first with about 10Mb. Can not see you needing anymore for a small community.

You were not far wrong bigpaddy, we have a 10Mb connection and currently have 15 users on the system, our traffic has only once peaked at 6Mb.

Usage Graph Here

PogMoThoin · 15-12-2011 9:50am

Big Lar wrote: »

You were not far wrong bigpaddy, we have a 10Mb connection and currently have 15 users on the system, our traffic has only once peaked at 6Mb.

Usage Graph Here

Until a customers teenage child installs the amazing Frostwire they heard about in school, they then tell their neighbours teenager..............................:D

bigpaddy2004 · 15-12-2011 10:46am

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Until a customers teenage child installs the amazing Frostwire they heard about in school, they then tell their neighbours teenager..............................:D

There is ways of dealing with that.....

)

Lar what are you using for routing?

roast · 15-12-2011 1:46pm

That's impressive stuff. Kudos to you sir!

godskitchen · 15-12-2011 6:51pm

This is really impressive. Congratulations on getting this far, please keep us updated.

Big Lar · 17-12-2011 9:48pm

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Until a customers teenage child installs the amazing Frostwire they heard about in school, they then tell their neighbours teenager..............................:D

Our users wouldnt be doing anything like that, Nothing but inoccents round here PogMoThoin

bigpaddy2004 wrote: »

Lar what are you using for routing?

Mikrotik RB750GL

roast wrote: »

That's impressive stuff. Kudos to you sir!

godskitchen wrote: »

This is really impressive. Congratulations on getting this far, please keep us updated.

Thanks

PogMoThoin · 17-12-2011 10:14pm

Big Lar wrote: »

Our users wouldnt be doing anything like that, Nothing but inoccents round here PogMoThoin

It's not the customers, it's their children, they hear about Frostwire, Vuze, iMesh and other peer to peer in school from their friends. I've often come across 10-12 year olds who have installed it without their parents knowledge. The bill payer then only finds out when the Isp get pissed with all the uploading.

And it's not the bandwidth that causes problems, the massive amount of connections peer to peer opens. It will lag any wireless network, the router and the ubiquiti gear just won't cope.

Nice choice on the RB750, it's very decent router at a nice price, I have a gigabit one here for my own house. It didn't break the bank and you can always upgrade to something more powerful from Mikrotik when/if it's needed.

Sponge Bob · 17-12-2011 11:59pm

You notice a large spike then you lock down the number of concurrent tcp connections per client till you get it sorted. You forget Lar knows all his 'customers' personally not like most ISPs.

Big Lar · 19-12-2011 8:17pm

PogMoThoin wrote: »

And it's not the bandwidth that causes problems, the massive amount of connections peer to peer opens. It will lag any wireless network, the router and the ubiquiti gear just won't cope.

Its one of the reasons why we do not offer symeterical uploads.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

then you lock down the number of concurrent tcp connections per client till you get it sorted

Having read up on a number of other forums, that seems to be how other providers are handling the problem.

Sponge Bob · 20-12-2011 1:13am

If you limit per client at say 25-30 concurrents (when you get hit by a P2P hog) you will avoid the core routers getting overloaded and slow from routing tables as much as data requirements. Your worst nightmare is dopey young Zoe seeding the Xfactor christmas single or some high demand item like that.

BigPaddy might PM you something schnakier but it is for the good of all.

Big Lar · 20-12-2011 10:21am

I was also reading to leave port 80 alone as that is the one used for web browsing.
What ya think of that ?

Sponge Bob · 20-12-2011 10:44am

Yep.

bigpaddy2004 · 20-12-2011 4:34pm

Big Lar wrote: »

I was also reading to leave port 80 alone as that is the one used for web browsing.
What ya think of that ?

Do a Google search on "Butch Evans Script".

zenith · 23-12-2011 11:18pm

@bigpaddy2004 - thanks for that re script, looks like just what we will need to restore some manners if things get heavy. Saves us a huge headache.

Though, calling their mammies is also an option. ("Do you want us to tell her what DNS requests you've been making, DO YOU?!!!") :P

With regard to how far we've gotten with this - the credit is actually due to Big Lar; he's pretty much plucked the core set of punters out of thin air, done the negotiations for the high sites, installed the radios - and made sure that once you reach a certain number of committed people, the economics start to work. He's also a gtalk plague, which keeps it on the road.

Interesting things we've learned:
1. People mostly find it hard to imagine how a community group operates. They just don't grok that we like them adjusting their own alignments and running their own cables. They're suspicious. But the lights do go on eventually.

2. Our upstream providers advised us to provide a static IP for each CPE, and make the rules of the game that we're not going to hide identities. This has created blissful order in general.

3. You end up supporting a lot of kit that isn't yours in the first phase. Because 'the internet' is also internal wiring, spyware-infected laptops, a hedge that needs to be trimmed, and lots of other bits and pieces that need to work. However, over time, you get to empower people, and the problems go away. You still have to do favours, but the requirements ebb.

4. Speedtest.net is bollox. It can be gamed, and it tells lies too.

5. I echo the "everybody's helpful" thing. We have had offers of help with marketing, routing, installs; we've had more than we can use. It's not just the IT guys; I think that the co-op experience in rural areas really works to our advantage. Maybe it's a "we're not spoon fed out here" thing; but it helps, a lot.

6. Word of mouth is much more important than meetings, marketing, branding, etc. We've only had two non-connected-to-us enquiries.

More as we go, but that's my 2c for the moment.

WhosAlice · 05-01-2012 10:49pm

Just been reading this thread,

I must commend you Big Lar, its great to see someone being as proactive as this. Just goes to show people living in more rural areas are not always at the mercy of what can be "stop-gap" service measures.

Link below may be of interest, another proactive effort in their struggle for decent service in rural UK.

https://sites.google.com/site/b4rnftthbroadbandruralnorth/about-b4rn

Big Lar · 05-01-2012 11:57pm

WhosAlice wrote: »

Just been reading this thread,

I must commend you Big Lar, its great to see someone being as proactive as this. Just goes to show people living in more rural areas are not always at the mercy of what can be "stop-gap" service measures.
Link below may be of interest, another proactive effort in their struggle for decent service in rural UK.
https://sites.google.com/site/b4rnftthbroadbandruralnorth/about-b4rn

Thanks for your kind words WhosAlice but there there is a lot more than me involved, I just came up with the idea

.

Zenith above you there is the brains behind the networking on the whole project.
The good folks at www.ccbisp.net for their continued support and efforts in giving us bandwidth.
There are two local farmers that gave us a chance and allowed us to put a bit of gear up on their sheds.
From next Saturday they should be 21 users on the network who are putting their money (Via installation fee's & subscriptions) & trust in us to keep them up and running.
Volunteers, we have had a good few people volunteer their time and equipment to the project.
The folks here on Boards for throwing in their advice and pointing us in the right direction.

The B4RN project.... Now there's a crowd that should be commended.

Sponge Bob · 06-01-2012 2:37am

Single most important thing is to get 10 people who will sign up in principle at a price point of €x for equipment and €x per month for xxmbits and then post in here with a general idea of where in Ireland you are.

Big Lar is in a very rural part of the South and funny enough the backhaul could be got because he asked around.

The local network is not that complicated...one uses outdoor wifi from a high site which can go a good few km. The backhaul is the killer.

But it can be got!

WhosAlice · 17-01-2012 12:30am

No Problem Big Lar,
Good luck to you and all those involved.

Wireless Community Broadband – A how to – The Ultimate Guide

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