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Wireless Community Broadband – A how to – The Ultimate Guide

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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,735 ✭✭✭funnyname


    Great work Lar,

    Looks like I'll be dependent on FWA for the many years to come unless we win the lotto. So just a quick question you might know the answer to. When fibre optic infrastructure hits more of the country will it come within range (how close does it need to come within) so that it will be of benefit to schemes like yours and the smaller FWA companies?


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,630 ✭✭✭Oracle


    This is really a great idea, not just for rural residents, also for urban areas, such as estates and apartment blocks. When I opened my laptop recently, there where 12 separate wifi networks broadcasting, and they where just the networks I could pick up in my kitchen, I estimate I could multiply that by at least 4 for the amount of private wifis in my area alone. The minimum cost of DSL broadband is about €40 per month. If instead everyone connected using just one neighbourhood network, the cost per household, should be less.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    funnyname wrote: »
    Looks like I'll be dependent on FWA for the many years to come unless we win the lotto. So just a quick question you might know the answer to. When fibre optic infrastructure hits more of the country will it come within range (how close does it need to come within)

    It does not need to come that close at all, With the correct gear wireless links can do 50 - 60 miles at ease, 10GHz gear is being perfected at them moment which can reach up to 450 Mbit throughput.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Oracle wrote: »
    This is really a great idea, not just for rural residents, also for urban areas, such as estates and apartment blocks. When I opened my laptop recently, there where 12 separate wifi networks broadcasting, and they where just the networks I could pick up in my kitchen, I estimate I could multiply that by at least 4 for the amount of private wifis in my area alone. The minimum cost of DSL broadband is about €40 per month. If instead everyone connected using just one neighbourhood network, the cost per household, should be less.

    I dunno about that Oracle, all your neighbours would be sharing the same IP address, lotza problems down that road, on our system we allocate each user a separate IP address which can be traced back to them.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Been a while but we have been busy.

    At this current time we have 32 users on our network and we are steadily growing, we have 20 users on a 1Mbs connection 10 on 2Mbs and 2 users on 4Mbs so thats a total of 48Mbs in total of bandwidth sold, that gives us a contention ratio of 5:1 and with that contention we seem to have no problems with our 10Mbs backhaul supporting that many customers.

    We have had a bit of downtime here and there along the way due to various issues so we have another small connection with another operator that we can fall back on should we have any down time, although our records show that we have 99.96% of uptime over the month of April it is a inconvenience for a lot of people when we do go down so it is for this reason that we have the backup, our stats are available @ http://www.wwcbb.net/?page_id=214 for anyone thats interested.

    Without going into the whole money thing we hope to have all our initial investment paid back at the end of August and from there we will use the funds to further upgrade our infrastructure, UPS's Servers and the like and possible purchase more bandwidth, perhaps 15Mbs at that stage.

    Over and out.
    Big Lar


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  • Registered Users Posts: 7,265 ✭✭✭RangeR


    I'm well impressed. Well done and good luck with your community project.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 35,514 ✭✭✭✭efb


    Just read this- sounds great- well done to all!


  • Registered Users Posts: 77 ✭✭jumpin jack


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    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!

    Hi Big Lar,
    Great to see determination paying off, how much backhaul have you available to you now?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Still on the original 10Meg, we will be debt free in sept/Oct and are hoping to purchase more bandwidth then.
    at the moment we have no contention issues, if you click the link on the above post you will see our usage but down the road we will need to provide our users with more bandwidth for Netflix and the likes.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Going to expand a bit on our group.

    Our reason for being:

    Most houses in our area cannot avail of DSL, we had a few fixed wireless providers in the area, One of them moved from the area due to operational reasons and the other went into liquidation, in fairness to both of the providers the terrain here in West Waterford is nothing but humps and hollows and getting into all the nooks and cranny's here for them is a costly business so we were left with dongle power then a couple of got together and had a go.

    It should be noted that our purpose is to enhance the broadband experience in rural Ireland and by providing service for pennies we would be only choking other operators which does not benefit the wider community so for that purpose we provide our started package of 1Mbs of bandwidth for €20.00, this is well below the quoted 6Mb for around €20.00pm that mobile operators offer. Upgrading our speed over time will still leave plenty of room for other providers to operate profitably in our area.

    Wireless links:

    All our gear is Ubitiquiti, there are other manufactures out there like Mikrotik but the reason that we went with it is because I had a small bit of experience with it over the past years and its priced very competitively, we have three access points at the moment comprising of two 120deg Sectors and 1 omni directional antenna, we run all 5ghz as it is unlicensed which offers less complications for us.
    For the householder we have either use Nanostation M5's or the cheaper Nanostation Loco M5 for shorter and less noisy links, we also have a few point to point links for back haul where we use Nanobridges and 30dbi dishes.
    Ubitiquiti boast a throughput of 150bs through their kit but thats in a perfect scenario with no noise(unwanted interference), we use a half beamwith on our kit as it doubles our signal strength but on the other side it hald the throughput which theoretically gives us 75mbs but the most I have seen acrosss or networks in speed tests is around 30 - 40Mbs.

    Our Access Points:

    As I have mentioned in earlier posts we have been lucky enough to be able to place equipment on a couple of farmers sheds which are located on high ground and for their use we offer the farmers a free connection, apart from them no one else gets a free connection, everyone else on the group pays including myself.
    Originally we wanted to get on a mast and transmit from there but mast space is expensive and we have gotten quotes up as far as €7,000.00 per year for a bit of space so that option is ruled out, actually while I am on it: The norm for mast space seems to be between €150.00 to €300.00 per month.

    We have had a bit of downtime over the last 7 months for so may reasons so we have invested in a secondary small link from another operator to provide backup, people do depend on our service so we do do our best to serve them as best we can.

    Time and effort:

    It took a nice bit of time at the start to get everything up and running but after that it pretty much runs itself, we do get the odd call out here and there which takes up a few hours a week but nothing major as yet.

    Our project will have surplus funds from Oct/Nov onwards but we need to continue to reinvest in our links making them better and more reliable, we need UPS's on all our Access points and a proper server.

    So whats in it for me I hear you ask:

    Well I now have fast reliable internet, I have gotten rid of my two eircom lines and now use Voip for all my calls which is saving way more than the €40.00 per month that my Internet costs :).

    Then there is the sense of achievement, I look around and say "I did that"

    and of course Gemeinschaftsgefuhl

    "The German word Gemeinschaftsgefuhl means feeling of community, of belonging. It means having to work at something that transcends not only one's own person, but also the small group to which one belongs. It transcends the family, one's church affiliation, one's race. It has to do with melting into or relating oneself to the community of man, or as people often name it more poetically, the brotherhood of man." (From "The Collected Works of Lydia Sicher: An Adlerian Perspective,")


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    One of the units on our point 2 point links burned out yesterday leaving 10 users stranded for 24 hours, finally after a good few hours of head scratching and a few spares we got it all up and running again this morning. We have put it down to a lightning strike.

    Texted the few punters on the AP to keep them up to speed on the works and they were understandable enough. Public relations seems to be the key in this game :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 723 ✭✭✭Dero


    Big Lar wrote: »
    Texted the few punters on the AP to keep them up to speed on the works and they were understandable enough. Public relations seems to be the key in this game :)

    This, this, and a million times this!

    Outages are inevitable; all people want is to be kept informed.

    From my own experience (Callidus/Omitel/Ripplecom) and from reading here, PR and communications seems to be the biggest bug bear of Irish broadbad customers.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,735 ✭✭✭funnyname


    Dero wrote: »
    This, this, and a million times this!

    Outages are inevitable; all people want is to be kept informed.

    From my own experience (Callidus/Omitel/Ripplecom) and from reading here, PR and communications seems to be the biggest bug bear of Irish broadbad customers.

    Indeed, my provider puts updates on their twitter account however when you don't have a smartphone (or no mobile coverage if you do) to access then whatchagonnado?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    So I says to myself that i will part with a bit of knowledge.

    As I have already mentioned we use 5.8Ghz equipment, as can be seen in the screen shot below it has about 19 channels that can be used in Ireland.
    We have 3 access points which we have users connected to and two point to point links, one which connects us to our back haul and the other that provides a link between our two access points.

    20_06_2012_21_33_55.jpg

    We live in a area with masts surrounding us on two sides and this provides us with a lot of noise (Unwanted Signals), so before we setup an access point we do a scan and select the frequency with the lowest noise, this is grand at the Access Point but the user may be at a way higher altitude and they may have interference from antenna's close to them transmitting on the same frequency, so it took us a while to cop on to that one.

    20_06_2012_21_13_13.jpg

    We use Nanostations on all the houses try to connect our users with a signal level of under -80Dbi as that is the real minimum signal where data can be sent without packet loss, but sometimes noise levels can be around -85dbi at the users house so this poses a big problem for us, with high noise levels it really shags up the data rate of the users device an also results in packet loss, so then we have to go higher with the gear or use equipment with a stronger signal like a Nanobridge to overcome the noise, at the moment we have one such client that is in a massively high noise are and we are trying hard to get him sorted, a Nanobridge will catch a lot of wind and we are afraid that the existing pole will not be able for it so we have aluminum shields specially designed for reducing noise coming from the US which will encase the users device and hopefully protect it from background noise.

    There is a nice little vid here of how it works http://www.rfarmor.com/unsk235.avi

    So hopefully that should sort out that fella when it comes.


    Should look something like this when tis up

    20_06_2012_21_51_41.jpg


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Even in a very rural area one would be surprised at the amount of 'noise' in unlicenced bands which is what Lar is using. ( You do not need a wireless licence to use them)

    The most common user of these frequencies is Wifi. People with Wifi may remember that the Wifi equipment was called 802.11B in the 00's then 802.11B/G later on and now 802.11B/G/N . 802.11B used frequencies aroudn 2400mhz and G added frequencies around 5300mhz to those while the N standard, around 2008, added the capability to use 2 or more channels. N is state of the art for now. WiGig 801.11AC will be the next version rolling out this year on the exact same frequencies. More noise is guaranteed. :)

    The simple way to get more Wifi speed was to take on more channels, or larger channels and then 2 or more channels at the same time.

    Consequently an operator, even in a rural area, has to carefully ask people to use certain WiFi channels inside their houses and NOT to use certain others.

    This handy table > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels when compared to Lars graphic above shows Lar is using kit with a frequency of 5180 to 5700 Mhz.

    Therefore domestic wifi should not use channels 36 upwards and should stick to channels 1-11 which will not interfere with the outdoor gear.

    If a specific channel is not selected in the Wifi Router/Hub settings in the home the device could hop from channel to channel trying to avoid interference but randomly causing interference while it does so.

    A bit of order and everybody will find a happy co existence. It probably means that the Community WISP should configure the domestic wifi router as well as install the ISP gear on their installation visit.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 71 ✭✭Wireless net


    great work there big lar. how do you find your bandwidth usage now with all the users on there? also how do you restrict indivudual users internet speeds? is it just by setting the link speed on the hardware itself at the user end

    i assume with the ubiquiti antennas you can create a point to point link
    with a pair of antennas, and no other gear is required, ( ie no indoor unit needed eg like a ceragon install ?)


    thanks


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    great work there big liar
    Why does every one call me a liar :-(

    Anyhow's, yes there is a traffic shaping setting on the ubiquiti gear ether you can limit the upload and the download, there is also a setting where you can allow the first X amount of Mb to be downloaded uncontended, we find that setting this to 2 or 3 Mb allows for faster page loading and buffering.

    As for the point to point links, yes any gear can be used for those although after reading into this myself over the last few months or so I think myself that gear like a power bridge M should be used for p2p Iinks as the narrow been width and so creates less interference.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 71 ✭✭Wireless net


    Big Lar wrote: »
    Why does every one call me a liar :-(

    Anyhow's, yes there is a traffic shaping setting on the ubiquiti gear ether you can limit the upload and the download, there is also a setting where you can allow the first X amount of Mb to be downloaded uncontended, we find that setting this to 2 or 3 Mb allows for faster page loading and buffering.

    As for the point to point links, yes any gear can be used for those although after reading into this myself over the last few months or so I think myself that gear like a power bridge M should be used for p2p Iinks as the narrow been width and so creates less interference.

    woops, just noticed this now,

    sorry big lar

    i assume then that you lock down the CPE equipment, so that the user cannot get onto the device and make any changes or up the speed?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Yep username and password


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    We had a problem with a Point to Point link over the weekend, the noise seemed to have dramatically increased over the last while and this seemed to be reducing the amount of bandwidth we could put through the link, on the ubiquity gear there is an option to run a spectrum analyzer which scans a set frequency range and allows the user to select the frequency with the lowest noise.
    There is a simpler scan a bit like smart phones but it only scans the channel width that the device is on, as can be seen below from 5.650 to 6.000Ghz is fairly noisy and we were on 5.660, they are mostly 20Mhz channel width channels showing up on the scan but at 5.520 the channel width is 10Mhz which we would not have picked up but for the scan, from 5.530 to 5.560 looks clear on that side of the point to point link but when we scanned from the other end of the link those frequencies were being picked up so we settled on 5.500 Ghz. By doing this we ended up with the signal gaining 12dbi in total on the signal as the noise was reduced by 5dbi and the signal strength increased by 7dbi.

    dot_10_3.jpg


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    Change your region to USA, problem solved ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,620 ✭✭✭greenpilot


    Hi, is this new broadband available in mayo, I live on a hill between Newport, Westport and castlebar with a great big empty field beside me....plus I'm sick of my current provider. Very slow at times. Vids keep buffering etc.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    greenpilot wrote: »
    Hi, is this new broadband available in mayo, I live on a hill between Newport, Westport and castlebar with a great big empty field beside me....plus I'm sick of my current provider. Very slow at times. Vids keep buffering etc.

    If you even read the thread, the second line of the opening post says they are in Co. Waterford, so No.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Just a quick note to let everyone know how we are going,

    The summer was relativity quite and we had a few installs, no big outages thanks be to god. Currently have 39 users on our little network, We are quite capable of expanding into other areas in West Waterford but we just need people to come in under our umbrella and take ownership of those areas. Given that its a not for profit scheme it would be unfair to ask only a few to share the load, the more that can share the burden the easier the scheme gets to run.

    Last week we installed another Access Point (90Deg Sector) on high ground to cover about 20 or 30 more houses within our existing area and we hope this will bring in more customers so our monthly income is fast approaching the €1k mark. As well as that with this new access point we will be creating a wireless mesh which will provide redundancy for our internal back haul should any node go down.

    Money wise in about another month the scheme will be debt free and will start making a few bucks for itself over the coming months, with this monies we do a few upgrades to our network like UPS's and the like and then we can start thinking about getting more bandwidth.

    Going forward personally I would like to get 30mbs upwards bandwidth to our little rural community, but its not going to happen overnight however if we keep going as good as we are we should easily be there in the next six months or so.

    All in all looking back from the conceptual stage to the break even stage will be about 11 months so the scheme could be seen as a resounding success and well worth the effort.
    :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,502 ✭✭✭zg3409


    Hi Lars,

    Just reading this thread for the first time. I see you have interference and channel problems. I would recommend reading this:
    http://www.comreg.ie/licensing_and_services/5_8_ghz_registration.683.ghzlic.html

    This says you can use:
    Operating Frequency Band: 5725 – 5875MHz;
    Maximum permitted radiated power: 100mW/MHz eirp (to a maximum of 2W eirp);
    Registration of operational base stations.

    However there is no cost as it's still basically licence exempt. You need to set the "country" in the ubiquity software to "regulatory compliance" and you get all frequencies. If this setting is not there then use the latest firmware.

    The aim of the base station registration is so you can work with other providers to reduce interference.

    The good thing is home wifi and laptops etc do not use these channels so ideal for outdoor links. They should be relatively quiet.

    Hope this helps. I was involved in a similar community wireless a few years ago and I know there is similar system on the Aaran Island etc.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Thanks for the info zg3409, that'll come in very handy :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Well, it’s been a while so a little update.
    Were still alive down here and tipping away nicely, we now have 51 users on our little network and despite my last post back in September its only now we are the break even stage, we decided to upgrade a few of our links and installed UPS’s at all our AP’s just to have the little bit of redundancy.

    Over the last three months we have had around 0.22% of downtime so we are pretty chuffed with that, despite having installed UPS’s the high winds there about a week ago knocked out power to two of our AP’s and they were out for 18 -24 hours but there was nothing we could do about that. We were able to text the few users on the AP’s and they were understanding enough.

    We do get a few enquiries for service in the local village and surrounding areas but we have full time jobs ourselves and cannot commit the time and effort to get them and keep them up and running so we are waiting for those communities to get up of their arse's motivated and organise a few volunteers themselves.

    We have been able to do a few nice things for the community with our network, the local school was on a satellite link for internet that peaked at around 100kb which was just pure sad in this day and age, so we installed a link and have decided not to charge the school at all for the service as they are using the bandwidth at off peak times so it’s no additional load on our network. Also we have sponsored a set of running kit for the school They better win something now with the new gear or we will be taking them back :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,104 ✭✭✭iPhone.


    Just read through all this thread from start to finish and don't know how I missed it before.

    But I have to say I am mightily impressed by Big Lar and his community in what they have achieved. Totally inspiring lads, fair fekin play to the lot of ye!

    Hope it doesn't bug anyone that I have pulled the thread back up to the main page as it has been a while since the last post but I just had to congratulate them on their achievements, and in any case this is the kind of story that should be on every community forum front page, keep us up to date now and then Big Lar when you can spare the time.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Thanks Iphone,

    Nothing much has changed since the last post, Zenith and I have connected another two users to bring us up to 53. We had a bad enough month in June with nearly 36 hours of downtime, some of it on our network with equipment issues and some of it outside our network, but all seems to be up and running again with the last three weeks so we are back to condition green.

    We finally bought the Butch Evans script that Big Paddy told us about in his post in Dec 2011 (We work pretty fast round here) and Zenith is working on that as we speak, so we should be ready to deploy that shortly.

    Our network was built to suit our budget so now that we have a few bucks in the kitty we intend to upgrade a few back haul links over the summer to make room for more traffic on the network as we hope upping our speeds on the network.

    We have a Facebook page since the last two weeks with a whooping 18 likes :eek:


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  • Registered Users Posts: 36,161 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Cracking stuff Big Lar. You're a champ.


    Out of interest, any known plans for a VDSL cab anywhere near the area? If you could negotiate with Eircom to get a feed on from one the potential for increased bandwidth could be huge.


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