[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.

[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

[Big Lar]

Originally Posted by Wireless net

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.

[Wireless net]

Originally Posted by Big Lar

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?

[Big Lar]

Yep username and password

[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.

[PogMoThoin]

Change your region to USA, problem solved

[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.

[PogMoThoin]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

[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.

[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_s...83.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.

[Big Lar]

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

[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