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Wireless Community Broadband – A how to – The Ultimate Guide

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    #62
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,463 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    I was thinking the same, plus it would help improve reliability of the backhaul greatly (going from long distance wireless backhaul) to a fibre link.

    Reading their facebook page, they seem to understandably suffer a lot of issues with their wireless backhaul going down due to all the storms down to Cork.

    I think this is one area where I think the government mandate that Eircom and the ESB give reasonable fibre access to wireless schemes like this.


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    #63
    Nonoperational
    Registered Users Posts: 7,401 ✭✭✭Nonoperational


    Great read. Getting fibre or even VDSL backhaul to these community WISPS would appear to be a no brainer. Hope it continues to work out.


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    #64
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    ED E wrote: »
    Cracking stuff Big Lar. You're a champ.

    Thanks Ed but there is more than me involved.

    Yes we have been suffering with the wind a bit these days but we seem to be struggling on, only but for the storms everything would be going swimmingly, February has been our worst month ever as we are only up 90% of the time but that's one 22hr outage yesterday and an 8 hour outage last week so considering that we are well ahead of a lot of other broadband providers out there.

    Money is the solution to all our problems, with money we can get a more reliable network infrastructure, we have connected a good few folk over the past couple of months and the balance is starting to grow, with this we can invest in a more reliable network infrastructure.

    With regards to the fibre its a good bit away time wise and I don't know if we would be prepared to move providers at this stage as we have a nice relationship built up.


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    #65
    trompele
    Closed Accounts Posts: 129 ✭✭trompele


    Hi Big Lar,
    Im impressed by you achievment, im looking to work on simillar project. Can you tell me where are you getting you bandwidth from?


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    #66
    Nonoperational
    Registered Users Posts: 7,401 ✭✭✭Nonoperational


    In the first few pages he says he gets it from a local WISP.


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    #67
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    trompele wrote: »
    Hi Big Lar,
    Im impressed by you achievment, im looking to work on simillar project. Can you tell me where are you getting you bandwidth from?
    Drop me a pm and I'll help you if I can


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    #68
    Some_Person
    Closed Accounts Posts: 491 ✭✭Some_Person


    trompele wrote: »
    Hi Big Lar,
    Im impressed by you achievment, im looking to work on simillar project. Can you tell me where are you getting you bandwidth from?

    Unless outside their coverage areas, you're going to have a very hard time competing with Carnsore Broadband and SkyTel/Rocket Broadband, they do very high speeds and are already on the premier high sites like Forth Mountain, Whitemountain and Mayglass WT.


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    #69
    trompele
    Closed Accounts Posts: 129 ✭✭trompele


    hi,
    Carnsore is not available here, skytel has terrible support and packages offered are not reflecting what you get (18 mbit package give you 8mbit).
    I will probably do this on much smaller scale.
    PLanning to sign up 20-30 people that are living in my estate. I'm currently checking where i could get good deal on bandwidth.


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    #70
    Black People
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭Black People


    How many customers do you have now and do you have any Speedtest results you could should us?


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    #71
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Black People wrote: »
    How many customers do you have now and do you have any Speedtest results you could should us?
    1. Around 70 subscribers
    2. With regards to the speed tests, you can have a peep at our daily usage here http://www.wwcbb.net/?page_id=166


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    #72
    Black People
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭Black People


    What's the speed limit with fixed wireless? There's a guy on the ESB thread advocating that the government should subsidise fiber optic broadband for farmers because fixed wireless isn't enough. I also see in Australia, a company offers 25/5 - which is above average by Ireland's standards, although, the upload speed is below average for here.


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    #73
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    NO straight answer to that one I'm afraid, depends on how much money you spend. Ubiquiti the crowd we buy the gear from boast a piece of kit that can push 1.4Gbs over a link of 13km but that's a perfect scenario with no noise and perfect weather conditions and the cost would be about €3k just for one link.

    We use domestic gear and the max theoretical speed is 150Mbs in perfect conditions once again. We use narrow channels on our system as there is a lot of traffic in the area so this reduces the amount of noise (unwanted signal interference) but by halving our channel width we also half the theoretical speed to a max of 75Mbs if you follow.

    Distance to access points are also to be taken into consideration so in saying all that and if we had the bandwidth available to us we could probably guarantee all our subscribers a minimum of 8Mbs with the ones closest to the access points perhaps 50ish Mbs, don't know for definite as we have never pushed that much across our network.


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    #74
    Black People
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭Black People


    What's your current maximum upload speed?


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    #75
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Black People wrote: »
    What's your current maximum upload speed?

    I have been wanting to ask this question since your first post, what's you interest in this ?


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    #76
    Black People
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭Black People


    Big Lar wrote: »
    I have been wanting to ask this question since your first post, what's you interest in this ?

    I'm just asking as a broadband/internet enthusiast. I dying to get faster upload speeds myself but I'm stuck on ADSL.2+, which only gives me 0.56Mb.


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    #77
    Villain
    Registered Users Posts: 15,944 ✭✭✭✭Villain


    The upload and download speeds can be the same, the ratio of upload to download is something that only really affects DSL, with connectivity to any major provider a WISP can provide synchronous links e.g. I have 7mb/7mb, there are limits and if the antenna strengths are different you won't always get synchronous speeds on clients.

    Bir Lar have you used any PowerBridges over links of 20km ? If so what kind of results were you seeing?


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    #78
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Black People wrote: »
    I'm just asking as a broadband/internet enthusiast. I dying to get faster upload speeds myself but I'm stuck on ADSL.2+, which only gives me 0.56Mb.

    As Villian says we have a symmetrical link so its the same up as down but dependant on a lot of things, we offer our subscribers .5 & 1Mb upload and the reason that we limit the upload is so that we have room for download, while all links are symmetrical large uploading would restrict the downloads over time.


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    #79
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Villain wrote: »
    Bir Lar have you used any PowerBridges over links of 20km ? If so what kind of results were you seeing?

    The longest link we have is 16Km which had a 30Dbi rocket on one side and a 25Dbi Nanobridge on the other, we have one Powerbridge and the only reason that its there is for aesthetic purposes, a 25Dbi Nanobridge should do the same thing. Them feckin Nanobridges are over €200.00 versus a nanobridge for around €85.00.


    I wouldn't mind trying one of those 25Dbi Nanobeam's to be honest, perhaps have a look at two of those for your 20km link, or you could check out the 30Dbi rocket dish.


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    #80
    edanto
    Registered Users Posts: 2,809 ✭✭✭edanto


    Just wanted to add my 2c to congratulate you all on the project, it's an impressive achievement to have started so quickly and be running well for the past 2 1/2 years.

    How are you finding the challenges of customer support and co-ordinating volunteers?

    Technically, how are you providing the failover link into the mesh, if you don't mind talking about it? I've used a router with failover WAN, but in an office scenario where you have the two WAN links arriving to the same place!

    I guess it might be different in your setup, can you feed another WAN into the Ubiquiti gear at a different point to the main link and have them use it for seamless failover if the main link goes down? Or is it set up with a standard WAN failover router at the point of entry of the 2 WANs?

    Just trying to riddle out how you might have set it up! No bother if you'd rather keep those discussions in-house.


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    #81
    Big Lar
    Registered Users Posts: 1,421 ✭✭✭Big Lar


    Soz for the late reply Edanto, was on holidays.
    Before you ask, I had a nice time thanks.
    How are you finding the challenges of customer support and co-ordinating volunteers?

    Ah we don't get much grief from the customers, perhaps a phone call a month or so. Its good actually to get the calls as then you are aware of a problem on the network.

    Volunteers, we have had a few offers but one does need a bit of technical know how and those folks are few and far between, we have roped in a local electrician and we pay him a few bucks to install the equipment so we have added a few bucks onto the install fee to cover this.
    how are you providing the failover link into the mesh
    We use a mikrotik router for failover with two outgoing routes where we manually have to throw the switch (Disable a route) but we has a few folks in area that would normally be at home trained how to change over, we know if the link is down by using a service like pingdom.com so as we have all the ubiquiti gear gateways pointed at the router then the router is the only thing that needs changing. There is probably a more fancier way of doing it but this seems to work for us.
    Routing is not my thing so I cannot give a more precise answer, its something like this thou http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=71752


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    #82
    AlanS181824
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭AlanS181824


    Been following this from the start and wow, amazing!

    Kudos to you and all those involved.

    You were fed up of the broadband in your area so you done something about it!

    I have 100/20 Fibre broadband but if I lived in a rural area I'd like to think that there'd be something like what you offer around.

    Kudos :)


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    #83
    Fatal Except1on
    Registered Users Posts: 167 ✭✭Fatal Except1on


    Just read the thread, impressive stuff and well done!


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    #84
    JabbaTheHut
    Registered Users Posts: 1,211 ✭✭✭JabbaTheHut


    Nice going there, Big Lar. Sounds like a lot of work , but well worth it.

    Are far as the 5ghz frequency in your links, you had to register with Comreg, right? Was it just a case of filling up the form online, or did you have to wait for Comreg to get back to you allowing you use the 5ghz?


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    #85
    ED E
    Registered Users Posts: 36,164 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    cdWZA8Ol.jpg
    Ophelia made a right job of our transmitter in Grange, not to worry thou folks we have the Deaglan Moloney and his crack team lined up for first thing tomorrow to put things right. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

    Great work from Big Lar in keeping his flock on their social media taps.


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