Slashdot Mirror
Temporary Wireless Service For An Outdoors Event?
SBECK writes "I've been asked to come up with an estimate of how much it would cost to provide wireless internet service for a small convention being held at a campground. That would entail renting or buying enough wireless access points to give coverage to the area and getting temporary satellite Internet service. Unfortunately, I've never done any of this, so I'm floundering. I'd love to get some pointers from anyone who has any experience setting up something like this. What ISP services provide temporary satellite service for something like this?"
The first thing you need to find out is if the campground has power available. If it doesn't, then the cost of this project will go way up.
Even for satellite providers, you will need some sort of uplink like an ISDN or analog line. Probably this is not available where you would like to have your net access.
Homepage
I would recommend using cheap AP's designed for home use and a third party firmware that allows them to link up and form a mesh.
The Linksys WRT54G is about $70 or less on Amazon and with third party firmware it can be linked into a mesh using something called WDS.
You can also add PoE and larger antennas quite reasonably.
See the Sveasoft site for more information.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Get the WiFi cyclist to park his bike and shout him a few beers.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
you should check out psand(http://wireless.psand.net/) who have been doing this at various outside events and festivals in the UK using satelite to get conectivity. They are a very frendly bunch (I met one of them in Bristol, UK) and I am sure they would love to talk to you. I think they were involved with C4's Big Brother House Reality TV thing also. They even had a tricicly with wierless access. "To visit our general Internet and network services web site click here. Internet connectivity has become an integral addition to the majority of outdoor events, both as a service for public and professionals, and as an essential part of the event organisation. As many outdoor events take place in rural areas, establishing the set-up for Internet connectivity often requires installation of a cabled network, which can be both expensive and time-consuming. Psand.net specialises in satellite and wireless communication networks. As a fully self-contained mobile unit, we are able to arrive on site before or during your event, and establish a fast, reliable and cost-effective Internet connectivity network in a matter of hours, without the need for cabling or any other installations. In the summer of 2002, we provided Internet connectivity at a number of large-scale weekend festivals in the UK. Using our innovative technology, we provided an Internet café, as well as the facilities for media streaming and live radio broadcast to web."
Grab a DW6000 from Direcway. Bi-directional satellite (no analog or isdn uplink needed) and provides you and ethernet port. Put either a router on preferably a transparent proxy server on it and connect up your access points on the other side. Make sure you have an UPS for each access point in addition to the one for your server/satellite.
-Pascal
Camp Area... Wireless Access... what you really need is this.
Here in Pasadena, many people who live the in the homes surrounding the Rose Bowl will sell your wireless connections during an event that are easily available near the parking lots. The connections go anywhere from $100 to as low as $10 for an IP. It can be very handy!
Personally, I use my cell/Palm-PDA to surf when I'm away from home/work. I love my Samsung i500!!!!
I don't know much about this kind of technology, but I know that there are similar setups going on at the Burning Man festival every year. Maybe it's worth looking around the site to see if you can find anecdotes and contact info for people who've done the same.
Also, the Mars Society uses satellite hookups to keep in touch with its field stations. Perhaps they can give you some pointers?
Depending on where the event is held and how well cellphone signals can be received, you might also want to try a mobile phone carrier. A lot of the larger UK events like Glastonbury are, I believe, getting support in this area from larger telcos. It may be more complex, and will probably involve getting everyone a new PCMCIA card, but it could be an option.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help; sadly IANA techie, but I hope these couple of snippets I've seen around the net are of use to you.
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
Have you thought of checking the hills in and around the campground to see if any of them have line of sight into a town?
You may only need 2 directional antenas instead of a satilite uplink.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
for a small convention being held at a campground
Use their Trekie Communicators.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
- how big is the camping ground you are holding the event?
- what speed would you like to give? AP's should be 802.11b/g compliant (more expensive) for compatibility
try to team up with a provider of some sorts, and get some sponsored stuff. They provide the internet connectivity (and get free PR), you just deal with the local problem (in your case the WiFi stuff).I've organised a few LAN-parties (up to ~250 attendants) and providers are more than willing to help you out. Also talk to one of your local IT shops, they usually don't mind you using their stock for this kind of event for a small rental fee. As an example: for a LAN-party for 100 participants we paid about 200,-- in fees for the whole network infrastructure & server park. We got to use 3 3com superstack switches and 5 dual xeon servers. The internet router (cisco 2600 series) was provided by the ISP. We just hooked the stuff up & had a great party. The help provided by both the ISP & the IT-shop was tremendous. All the help we got was from volunteers of those companies... they only asked free entrance in the gaming contest in return. Oh, and some beers :).
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
One thing to consider is whether the radio client dewvices are going to be sttic (like laptops left setup on a desk) or mobile (like handheld PDA's for example)
If you are having static devices that get setup, connected then left in place for the duration then you can get away with using cheaper network switches. However, if youa re using mainly mobile devices then you can get disconnections as the user roams between access points on different cheaper switches.
This has happened to some of our customers using handheld barcode scanners as they network equuipment could not perform the handoff between access pints quick enough, logging the radio user off.
Not really directly answering your question but its something to consider.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
How about I temporarily wire my foot up your ass!
Oh you mean Rectaltronics? They support the AnusBus and ButtStream RS-66 interfaces but not 802.11x.
Even for satellite providers, you will need some sort of uplink like an ISDN or analog line
Sorry, this is wrong. Check out DirecWay for at least one provider for 2 way sat comms.
It depends on the country that you are in..but most of the small sercice providers will be able to help sort something like that out for you.. try talking to them..if they can not help directly they most likey know a company that can.
Even if you offer them a stand at the event to allow them to show off their services, you can probley get them to help out!!!
I know the manager, but not sure if they have what you need.
http://www.eurorent.ie
Also, try to stick with as few different vendors as possible. That way, you won't introduce unnecessary incompatibilities and you won't have to deal with different setups and configurations (that may not be such a big problem as long as you stick to using SoHo equipment, as it's usually fairly standard-compliant and easily configured through a web interface).
If your conference is really out in the middle of nowhere though consider turning to the pros. I have worked with T-Mobile techs on providing Internet access at an outdoor sports event in a fairly secluded area and have nothing but good things to say about them. Since there were no landlines and no WiFi coverage available we basically had to rely on cell transmissions. So we setup a IEEE 802.11 network and they provided the cell-phone backend. We had to put in a few restrictions (bandwidth throttling, etc) to ensure that the network was reasonably secure and to keep costs in check but it did work like a charm. Of course, that might not be an option depending on your choice of locale and your budget.
Hey, as long as you have an access road you can have bandwidth!
I would be extremely surprised if it didn't have power available; all campgrounds will have power to at least a central point (e.g. campground office). Many/most will also be able to supply power to caravans and possibly even larger tents (never used that myself, as our two-person tent has to be small enough to carry on a bicycle.) The only places that I've camped which didn't have power somewhere were places that we shouldn't have been camping to begin with (field, side of road, picnic area, etc.)
This is my experience camping in Spain and France, anyway. If it's the sort of campground that is holding some sort of convention I think it's a fair guess they have power.
What kind of gathering is it? I dunno about the satellite link, but perhaps you could get your WiFi base stations to be sponsored by some manufacturer or ISP...
"WiFi hotspot courtesy of Apple|Linksys|Lucent" blah blah blah... I know in France, Apple sponsors big events organized by the municipality and lends quite a lot of equipment. Maybe you should try.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
There are plenty of open source solutions for setting up a mesh network, some of which are covered here.
Thomas Krag & Co. also maintain a wiki that you may find useful.
Mobile Mesh runs in user-land and is covered by the GPL. It seems to get the best reviews.
-- Douglas
I know that Direct-Way has a self aligning rental unit available on a daily basis. (Shipped to and from via Fedex) Power is going to be a challenge Please let us know how you pull this off! ay
if you have enough clients the network will create itself.
Last year at the Mid Atlantic Star Party, directway was gatewayed into a field near Robbins, NC for a large group of amateur astronomers. www.masp.org now has the plans for 2004 and the 'internet' activity links to an invalid page. It worked quite well. They used an MS box for the gw, you could use the dw6000, I suppose, to better advantage. They also had multiple linux boxes running local web servering and the like. Not sure if they used squid or what but if so, it was a transparent proxy method. Cheers, Russ
yeah, but I hear the the latency is a bitch.
=]
Why bother going to a campground if you are just going to be online? Why not "camp" in a hotel suite?
Because they did that last year, and the hotel manager hasn't forgiven them for setting off the fire-alarms after they tried to have a traditional barbecue in the conference hall.
Hell are we that much of a slave to the internet???
My first thought would be that would be fun to leave the electronic tech at home, and enjoy the time away from it. I probably would take a bike and look around. Maybe go for a hike, when I don't have to do the meeting shit. maybe a few books, how often does your boss send you out to a camp, enjoy it!!! have fun.
Tech was made for man, not man for tech.
Not all camp grounds have electricity. Sure, the nice little parks with all the slotted out areas have them. But, there are many camping areas back in the woods that don't have power. And they are areas for camping. I know, I have gone there. I first went with the boy scouts as a kid.
Evolution or ID?
Find the closest area with the bandwidth you need and hire a few bums to bolt directional access points to their heads, pointing at each other.
I've heard of people getting 25 miles with a clear line of sight.
You might want to put the bums up someplace high and provide them with their drink of choice for the duration of the event.
I thought you go camping to get away from all the technology and husle and bustle of modern life. I mean, that's the only logical conclusion unless lack of climate control, mosquitos, spiders, bears and scorpions are considered "worth-while" to experience first-hand.
;-) I dunno if you can find a HAM ISP though.
Maybe you mean RVing?
I'd look at a simple WiFi router and some HAM radio equiment to do it on the cheap. Remember, Linux kernels can do that kind of thing
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
slashdot user wants slashdot users to do his work for him!
do what I do when consulting: say anything is possible, but estimate something that can't possibily be affordable.
PS - Most campgrounds have one residential unit on the lot; its usually where the owners live and it usually can get cable. Contact the local cable company to see if they can provide high speed internet service to the residence, then base your wireless out of the residency (something on the roof, then repeaters)
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
magicbike
I am aware of some work done at Ohio State University on the connectivity needs from the ISP point of view (campground to the internet). The solution involves a satellite uplink, a pickup truck and a portable gas generator. The project is called Transportable Satellite Internet System (TSIS) (project page, press release, photographs)
The folks at OSU might be willing to share information. I know they have used the trailer system to provide 11b wireless to events held "out in a field" as well.
I think it's pretty obvious that cheap WAPs and either a DirecWay or line-of-site to the nearest local broadband link is the way to go, but there are also a couple other things to consider. First, find out what they're going to be doing. If it's a conference for one company, make sure you find out what sites they'll be surfing the most, and use a proxy server that supports a web cache. If you have a few dozen people viewing a 50Mb PDF file, you'll want that to be local. There's plenty of free proxy servers available for all platforms. It would be best if you could find a way to do it with a setup disk, so that people wouldn't have and difficulty setting up their connection. And if you forced everyone through a Proxy, you could presumably block all the ports you don't need, which in this day and age is almost crucial. Another issue is liability. I don't know how hotels with free WiFi access handle it, but most have no security turned on in order to make it easy for people to use it. Unfortunately, if you get a bunch of people on this wireless lan with Windows laptops that haven't been updated in a while, one infected user could cause you some serious problems. It might be best (even if impractical) to require everyone to sign a waiver saying you and the event sponsor aren't responsible if they get infected or hacked. If possible, you might want to set up an SMTP server and make everyone use that. You'll never get anyone to change their settings and use it, but if you could, that would save a lot of bandwidth too. All of this has to be adapted to who the users are and where they are on a skill level scale. If this is a conference for systems administrators, then you could do all of this and enable WEP too, because setup wouldn't be an issue for them. If it's a conference for graphic designers, good luck. No offence to graphic designers, but in my experience a majority of them are infinitely more skilled at design than they are at configuring network settings. I agree with some other posters that buying the equipment is the way to go. If all goes well, it might be something you want to do again for other clients. Even if not, you could sell everything on eBay when you're done and still probably come out way ahead over renting. Good luck!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
... if you're having a convention outside, you don't NEED computers. Enjoy the outside world, have a barbeque, play frisbee (I dare not say any other sport in fear for my karma, I already got it too low giving honest answers like this), and forget about computers, if at least for ONE DAY.
...
God, I wanna do that so bad
I provided wifi for 500 people for a week at a
scout camp site in North Carolina by a satellite link last year.
For a bit of a write up see http://www.austintek.com/wifi/wifi.html#masp_2003
(disclaimer - page advertises my services).
The gear was all standard commodity WAPs. Except
for one linux laptop, all users were windows.
Laptops connected via dhcp. My gear was all linux, except for the satellite link which required M$.
I provided outbound e-mail, websurfing with a local squid, samba file shares for people to upload images from digital cameras. I wrote a local webpage with menu at the chuck wagon, schedules for speakers and events, exhibits.
Since the gear was basically my home
setup (except for the satellite link), the cost
was minimal. The real cost was the time to setup
and run the show. In the field I found that
the WAPs would freeze up every couple of hours
and would need to be power cycled.
I spent a lot of time helping
fix deranged Windows machines so that users could
connect by wifi. The range of skills of users was
large. Some people managed to connect without
coming to see me, while other people required
several hours of work on their machines before
the wifi client would fire up. Chasing people to
get info for the local webpage and writing it up
also took a lot of time.
There's a Virginia company called Linkspot (http://www.linkspot.com) that is in the business of providing wireless access at campgrounds. Although they don't do satellite comm (that I know of), and they're geared toward long-term service with the campground, they might be able to work a deal with the campground you're using, assuming it's a private campground.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Used the hughes starband / direcway stuff that
was mentioned already... make sure you use
the 6xxx earthstations and NOT the 4020, the
4020 has really idiotic problems with DNS that
will probably never be fixed and is a PITA.
Then I got 1 access point... a SmartBridges
AIRPoint Pro outdoor with a N-type antenna lead,
hooked that up to a YDI 500mw amplifier and hooker
the amp up to a omni antenna. This was
enough to cover the entire festival area, which
was about 0.75 miles square... amplifiers do
wonders. I got the wireless gear from
electrocomm
(http://www.electro-comm.com).
In order to get my single antenna system to
work right, I needed some height. So I
got something from aluma that was sort
of portable and relatively affordable... they're in
Vero Beach, FL which is pretty cool.
(http://www.alumatower.com)
Oh, one thing about the satellite stuff is that
you have to really do something about the latency
due to satellite round trip times (~ 1 second !!!).
I used a backend appliance for authentication
that happened to have a web cache called
AIRlok (http://www.air-lok.com)
but I could've just gone the squid route if I wanted to
spend the time to do it all myself.
Hooking it all up was pretty easy... the earthstation
has an ethernet out, I just cross over cabled that
into the AIRlok (which has two ethernet outs, one
for WAN, one for LAN), and then cross overed the
AIRlok's LAN to the smartbridge AIRPoint Pro.
Power was relatively straightforward... just got an DC to AC
converter that hooked up to a car 12V output (well
the one I got was super heavy duty and also hooked up
directly to the car battery) and then pluged a UPS into
the converter. One thing you should be careful about
is getting a real online UPS and not a regular UPS that
will switch over to battery when the power cuts out...
this will clean up your power signal nicely. The one I
used was by Liebert but I've heard good things about
some others. Do not use the regular old APC UPS things
that go for $200.00 if you do it this way... they do
not properly condition the line, at least, in my experience.
Good luck.
The Soapbox company specializes in portable connectivity. They mainly do political events, but from their info page it looks like they could set up pretty much anywhere.
ask some of those guys, so have experience. In the wiki you might even be able to find the info you were looking for. You'll find a lot of people to ask, anyway.
The CCC Camp 2003 was a really cool event, and i really hope there are going to be more camps like this in the future (thanks, guys!).
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
if you have 2000$ in cash get two of these:
5
p ?pid=35& rid=179
...
DWL-1750 AirPremier Outdoor 2.4GHz (802.11b) Wireless Bridge/Router
overview:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=3
product spec.:
http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.as
it's 5.6 km with the "normal" antenna, but a
"add on" directional antenna can get you 20 km
at a lowely 1 mbps
Depending on where you are, you might be able to hook up with a long range WiFi company. I currently use a company called PrairieINet here in Central Illinois and get my 802.11b signal from their tower 8 miles away. I then distribute it within the house with my own 802.11b router. I'd look into those providers around your area.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
If you're going to use Direcway, you should be aware of their Fair Access Policy ("FAP"). Basically, if your users download too much, the connection is throttled back to dial-up speeds for 8-12 hours. The definition of "too much" varies by the class of service that you buy, but the rule applies to all account types.
You never stated where the event is or how much bandwidth is needed..
.. use external antennas on the AP's not the duckies that are standard.. oh and you would be suprised at the distance the signal will travel in an open area with no interferance from other singles.
Some cases you can have the phone company provision a line to the site (though you generally need a few weeks to make this happen). It is possible that the site already has phone/dsl service (unless it's out in the middle of nowhere).
One of the best options is to see if there is a wireless provider in the area and back haul a connection from them, in some cases there are many free/opensource type communities that run their own wireless core network. Look at settle wireless or the BAWUG (Bay area wireless user group) as they have done point to point backhauls to a park so everyone could surf while they were there... backhaul with some good equipment then use some dlinks or linksys units for the WLAN
Make sure AP's and backhaul are on seperate channels too..seen some people doing backhaul with 802.11a equipment (modifed) which is sometimes cheap to buy, and less bleedover signal in the spectrum. Oh.. lastly.. Trees are not your friend! they will kill your signal, don't bother trying to do this in a forest.
-b
Our company did this for some golf tournaments we were running. We found that we definitely needed some access points that could hop from access point to another so that we could really extend the range.
One problem with "hopping" is that occasionally if one of the access points in the middle of the link goes down, you may need to reset each of the other AP's down the line to get them back up and running.
We also ran into some interesting problems such as the time that around 8am in the morning our coverage started dropping when all the houses around the course started turning on their microwaves. You can never guarantee that the coverage you have at one time will be consistent throughout the day.
Along with a power supply and an access point, we also bought these special antennas that could be attached to camera tripods to give us a mini cell tower like setup. Oh yeah, and lesson learned, don't take those down during a thunderstorm.
Adventure City Tours
As long as you have cell phone coverage, you can get (although slow and expensive) internet acces. EDGE nowadays gets really close to ADSL, and you can have two cell phone and split the net in two, to double speed.
You can locate Yagi antenna in the location that has Internet connection and shoot the signal to the campground.
http://www.isolvesystems.com - Technology Marketplace
You can even try setting up a SSB Packet Radio station , with the other part in the closest location with broadband Internet access, and you won't have any fixed fee, except for the broadband acces.
Transfer rates have tipically been very low, but might be Ok for email and low-bandwith use.
Are you planning on charging for the service or giving it away? Other than the basics of laying out a AP network with non conflicting channels there is a lot more you would need to do to charge for the service.
You should really look into hiring someone that has past experience with this as an amature you could really get into some interesting issues.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
http://www.skycasters.com/emergency-rentals.html
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
I get unlimited internet for $20 a month on t-mobile, yes it is slow only 56K but not expensive.
I was under the impression that you use satelite fo rdownload, but were still locked into an analog phone modem for upload.
Though it was awhile back that I was looking at getting satelite, and I probably misinterpreted the explanaition.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You're getting consulting money to come up with a way to make this project work without a hitch. The fee paid is presumably for your ability and knowledge to succeed. Yet you turn around and gain that knowledge from /. readers. So what will be ther readers' cut in your compensation?
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=7121/sam0205a/sam 0205a.htm
While the article may be a bit old, the concept and execution is still valid. Get a few of donor boxen, some wirelss cards, and get them together. Figure out the coverage the APs cover by testing them out at a park (with some AC provided by car), then you can figure out how many you need.
Sounds like fun really!
CVb
free ipod and free gmail!
Forget the sharks. If you have line of sight between your site and another site that has the bandwidth, consider using lasers to bridge the last few miles. You can get over a 100Mbit that way. This article is a summary of what's possible right now with "free space optics":s /19_2/emer ging-tech/23327-1.html
_ canobeam/ canobeam/
e _Optics_T erabeam.html
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/new
Here are Cannon's frickin' lasers:
http://www.usa.canon.com/html/industrial
Terabeam Elliptica, plus links to other free fpace optics:
http://www.freespaceoptics.com/Free_Spac
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
... to India. They can do anything, and do it much cheaper too.
To avoid running cable at all between all your access points, you might want to take a look at AP mesh technologies from FireTide, Strix, Tropos or Nortel.
1. set up a proxy server (or local cache) with a large hd. :(
2. set up a local repository for any linux distros that you expect people to install from, or other big projects
3. get a web enabled blue tooth telephone
4. have a script crawl the web for updates (new slashdot stories/etc) whenever the cell phone bandwidth isn't being utilized fully
5. it might be possible to "combine" multiple cell phones bandwidths together
6. you and somebody on your crew should already have all this stuff... but they will be without cell phone
***
also, call the telephone company in that area, a good 56k modem is plenty for many people and text + image compression (like aol and earthlink's accelerated internet)
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
A buddy of mine who travels a lot has a Sprint card in his laptop for wireless Internet via the cell phone network. For $80/month he gets unlimited amount of data transfer (all-you-can-eat he calls it) and around most major metropolitan areas, and even around most isolated towns of at least ~100K population that have a Sprint network coverage, he gets around 700-800kbps. With this connected to a laptop running Win XP (sorry, the Sprint card and service seem to only support MS Windows o/s) and Internet Connection Sharing (Windows' NAT) and a Linksys WAP connected a good "outdoor" omni antenna (see http://www.fab-corp.com and look at the 12.5db omni with 3 degree down-tilt omni) on a ~20-30 foot antenna pole, you could probably cover the whole campground.
I recently purchased an agere mini pci wireless card for my Sony NVR23 laptop. I can't find any antenna wires or jacks inside the laptop though. Is there any way to get ahold of a pair of antennas to put into the laptop? The computer recognizes the card and is searching for a wireless lan, but can't find one even when it's right next to a WAP. thanks
We have a 7 node mesh with up to three deep on any single linear chain using WDS. It works great. Our longes link is 6 kilometers through forest, islands, and over water.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Check out the Transportable Satellite Internet System. It looks like exactly what you are looking for.
I have no affiliation with either company but the netgear products I've used were far better in quality and functionality than linksys.
The linksys WAP11s and WMP54g wireless PCI card were just plain terrible. Did not work as advertised. Doing WEP across two WAP11s in AP/Repeater mode causes instant lockup of the repeater. I spent an entire month on the phone with their Indian tech support until one of them finally admitted that it was a known problem that they've duplicated in their lab. Unfortunately after a month the vendors don't take products back and linksys refuses to refund my money so I'm stuck with the crap. On that note... if you DO want to use linksys stuff, let me know... hehe.
The netgears do it just fine. After I put the netgear APs in place everything worked well but randomly the linksys would just drop signal and nothing short of disable/enable on the card (from windows) or a reboot would bring it back up.
I finally replaced it with a netgear card and the problem is solved.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Take a look at locustworld. Mesh routing that just works. Get at least one node with a real connection, then the rest route to it automatically.
I've seen the output from a rental Honda generator on an oscilloscope and it's pretty clean too. I use two of these generators to power sound (about 3kW of amplifier output) and computer equipment for five hours on a parade float in the summer with no problems.
Add a double-conversion UPS (probably you already have one in your office) between the generator and your equipment and that will let you refuel the generator without shutting all your equipment down.
Putting moderation advice in your
Eg.: www.zcomax.com look for the CPE252H. Cheap and rugged, about $300 a pop. ONE of them will cover the whole camp ground, but you may want to use two or three if there will be a lot of users.
Perhaps there is an ISP in your area (wherever that is) who operates a wireless network already?
For instance, this is a local company who provides wireless TV and internet (competing head-to-head with the local cable companies). Something like that would take care if the internet feed for relatively cheap, if it's available wherever you are. (My parents are using this service for TV and internet on their farm, which as about 30Km from the main tower.)
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Well depending on your budget and how quick you want this over with you can call the cell carriers in your area and as an employee of one myself I know that they would love to talk to you. Call around and see what solutions they have it could be having cell phones connected to a router for service but i am pretty sure you could squeeze out a couple Mb/s. I'm not sure what youre intentions are (ie bandwidth required) but if you want happy campers a caching proxy mite be worth reading up on ;)
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
don't know where the even is being located but if you are in europe there is a good chance RBGAN service coverage is available. we used these when i was working in iraq last year and they are pretty daggone handy little units. they're about the size of a laptop and can run off an internal battery or they can be plugged into the cigarette lighter of a vehicle. the BGAN unit itself is the satellite up/down link and it has an ethernet out which you would connect to a hub/switch/whatever COTS wireless local access delivery system you choose. doesn't look like they have service in the states though, which is a bummer if thats where you are.
one warning though - its quite costly. you pay per megabyte (and through the teeth).
If the link isn't much faster than dialup, the guy trying to setup the link may find he has enough electricity to drive all his access points but the pipe to the sky is so skinny he may as well not have bothered.
Motosat is a company in Utah that provides steerable Directway dishes for installation on RV's. I have one. My unit works in any campground where we can get a clear view of the sky. Even the most lovely forested places generaly have one or two sites that work. In my unit, I run the system to a Apple Airport base station which provides wifi connection for the immediate vacinity. Depending on how much bandwidth you need, something like this, with Airport Extreme base stations or equivalent hardware to act as repeaters might do the job. The trick is finding one of the thousands of snowbirds who might be willing to rent the services to you. http://www.motosat.com/
Why do some people find it so upsetting to see someone using technology at an odd place or time that they feel the need to tell them they shouldn't? When you are away from your internet access do you so resent that others are not? Or, when you are near your internet access do you so resent that you are? It is as though you are threatened by technology, you want to hide from it now and then, and so you insist others should too? Is this a religious thing? Do you feel like you are trying to kick an addiction and so others must too?
It is like someone asking about cooking some kind of food and someone else saying "Don't cook that dish.", it is rude and off-topic. Except in the technology case there is an added layer of moral superiority, that the person asking the question is bad and the person saying "Don't do that." is good.
Why is it that an artist is admired for carting his/er paints up a mountain, but if I, a techie, carry any technology I invite condemnation?
"Why does that silly artist feel compelled to always be painting? Why not get away from it all and just enjoy nature? Why be a slave to the damn paint brushes?"
Jeeze, and these rants even get modded up on Slashdot. How insecure are we?
There are many firms out there that provide Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity services for continued remote network access services. The good news is that they are very well developed with bandwidth available at all ranges. These folks may also be available for sponsorship of your outing (i.e. provide connectivity for free). The bad news is that typically, these guys are NOT cheap. Nor are they generally inclined to do things for free (they're used to laying dormant until something huge hits the fan). I am not providing any URLs as you will need to do the research based upon your geographic area (it was not specified).
Does the area have digital cell signal? It should be possible to connect several cell phones to a pc or laptop and bond the connections to make a decent connection. Some phones where I live are capable of 128Kb. It would beat the hell out of the trouble of setting up satellite service. Plan on having a generator handy :) Depending on the length of event you can also power your access points via 12V car batterys and inverters.
If something exists that does not need a creator (god) then why must the cosmos need one?
With so many options and so many trade-offs, it'd be good to know what you need the connection for.
For instance, one thing I haven't seen brought up is iridium. If what you're doing is streaming audio of the conference you could use it's voice features to call up a voice modem in a box that could encode the stream and stream it on it's merry way. I've done ppp over iridium (slooowwww) too, so if you're streaming the audio during the day, you could call another number at night to get connectivity and maybe use some sort of proxying during the day so that the IP stuff gets routed while people sleep.
If you're going for laptop connectivity for antendees during the day you're going to need something heftier. Here's a suggestion in that case: Use google and yellow pages to discover the ISP's that serve that region. Go to ARIN (or your geographical equivalent) and discover the IP ranges they hold and the geographical location of their datacenter. Traceroute all those IP's and pay attention to the time it takes between hitting that box and the ISP. Do a rough calculation to find out if any of those hosts would be in range of souped up wifi. You might be able to find somebody in range and willing to let you hop on.
Also if you're just car camping there's probably a town in range of a superfly wifi antenna so you could either hop on an existing connection or create your own temporary one there.
There are also satellite net connections you can get/rent, but remember that in addition to the cost of the rental and it's energy source (some parks won't allow you to bring gasoline powered equipment) you have to get that gear to the site. So if you're REALLY camping you have to figure if you can bring all this stuff in on your back or on a mule.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
Using old machines as APs is all well and good, if you have plenty of power and a clean environment. PCs have cooling fans which suck in dust, moisture, and small critters. They also consume a good bit of power, which is an issue if you're running from generators or simply over a very long chain of extension cords.
You're reinventing the wheel here. Building your own kernel with all the features needed to become an AP is simply replicating all the effort expended by the AP vendors. There are also prebuilt configurations (third-party firmwares) for a lot of APs.
Purpose-built APs are smaller and lighter, which makes them easy to nail into trees or whatever for mounting. They're easy to stuff into ziplock bags for weather resistance, because they don't need much cooling. The software is already built.
If you're still interested in building your own equipment, look into hardware from Soekris Engineering and Mikrotik. Hardware that's designed for embedded operation has nice things like serial configuration (ComBIOS), onboard CF slots, simple power supply requirements, and low heat generation. Most such boards also have general purpose I/O lines that you can use for things like door sensors, thermal management, status lights, etc.
Go to www.wispa.org It is an association of professional wireless providers. They can help you set it up or do it for you if you prefer.
We just set up a van to do the sort of thing you're describing. We went with Skycasters for the mobile Direcway/Hughes dish mounted on a '66 Ford Econoline, and then added various goodies on the inside. Skycasters also sells a man-portable satellite unit originally designed for FEMA. That may be just the ticket for your application. One thing to keep in mind is that the satellite downlink is zippy, but the uplink is incredibly slow and the overall latency is terrible. So you'll want to set up on-site proxy servers for any service you plan to use a lot. You'll also need a clear view of the southern sky.
Last year was my first burn - of the many, many things that impressed me, the fact that I was able to email from such a remote place (ok, not that remote - not like Antarctica or something) is something I will never forget. I would say that if you want to find out how to do this - you might start here...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Depending on how "small" the convention really is, how much bandwidth you really need, and the cellular coverage of this campground, you might be able to load balance a handful of 3G-type cellphones through a NAT box to get adequate bandwidth to supply your 802.11 network's external traffic.
My sprint pcs phone gives me reliable 100-150 kbps up/down (yes I know the ToS issues with hooking up to a computer) and connects via USB. Load balance a couple of those, or maybe just one if it's really "small" and you're set, assuming you have coverage.
To be totally legit, sprint will sell you a pcmcia card designed to use their data network. They charge a lot for it and the service, but probably still less than a satellite provider.
And when you're done, sell the DirectWay on eBay!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Check this...
http://magicbike.net/about.html
Nethazile(at)Yahoodot(com)
From what I understand, Bonnaroo will have wireless net access over a 600 acre farm. That's a rather large undertaking if you ask me, but they're doing it :) Not too sure how, but I know linksys is a sponsor so... yeah :)
http://www.bonnaroo.com
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
Let me know if there's some magic third party firmware that I don't know about. I'd love to try it out.
I've seen some modifications for the early wap11s but the newer ones are just junk and that's what I would expect from the rest of their products too being that these are current products off the shelves.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Go to the campsite, wait for that annoying Verizon dude to come by, knock him in the head with a shovel ("Can you hear me now!?" [whack!] "Can you hear me now?!?! [Whack!] "I said, Can you hear me NOW???!!!" [WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!]) and slap a wireless modem on the phone - problem solved.
Since your email resolves to a florida university, my advice would be to check here. Someone on this list of Florida WISPs will probably be able to help, or point you to someone that can.
Forget satellite, find a wireless isp that will rent you the gear and handle the setup. The complexity of the project is too high to ebay and figure it out yourself, especially for a short-term event. In regards to cost, a minimum expectation is $2000, with a reasonable ceiling being $6000. Your results may vary.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
There is a new satellite internet provider who I am told will be rolling out service in June (they launched there bird a few weeks back) They will offer a fixed and a mobile version. It is a two way service and might work well for this kind of thing. I am not connected with these people.
You could talk to a rep from Vivato and see if there's any possibility of having them do an on-site demo of their big panel array. I've seen one hit a whole floor of a hotel even through walls so I'd think that it would do quite well out in the open at a campground. Their docs say that the panels will do 100 people simultaneously (with 3315 associated NIC's) and up to 2.6 miles at 11Mb and a whopping 4.47 miles at 1Mb. Pretty neat stuff.
And just in case anybody's wondering, no, I'm not associated with the company in any way.
DirecWay Two-way satellite access: $600 equipment, $99/mo. for service with no contract Outdoor 802.11b access points, average $150 each (Depends on your area, outdoors I would expect not more than 6, probably 3-4 would cover you) Category 5 cable, 2000 feet, ~$160 Bag full of cat5e modular plugs(unless you really need boxes) $10 12+ port switch or hub plus enclosure, ~80(bad guess) Somebody's labor(probably yours) however many hours at whatever rate. Could be done fairly easily aroung $1500, not counting labor.
Check out www.YDI.com
They do this stuff all the time. I've used their equipment as a happy customer. Not a shareholder, etc.
-Robert
I imagine that you are living the US...
but if you were living in Europe, I know several companies that provide DVB-RCS terminal with Wireless hotspot integration for remote communities. You can take a look at companies like Aramiska, Avanti, SES-Astra... On a DVB-RCS 2-way satellite terminal you can have 10Mbit/s download and 2Mbit/s upload, and you can even choose if you want the entire bandwidth for yourself or if you want to save some money and share it in a contention ratio of 1:5, 1:20 or 1:60.
Fear is the mind-killer.
1. Your pretty much stuck with finding a local service. National level companies are less than enthusiastic about a temporary customer, unless thay can turn it into a major advertising opportunity. 2. Satelite services are mostly download only, you would still need a major uplink ability. Multiple telephone lines, one per user, I assume is not an option 3. There are terra based WAN options. Point to Point (using directional antennas) from the nearest High Bandwidth access point to the campground would be in about 35 mile hops. Once they get the signal to the campground, it woulc be distributed via omni directional antenna to th individual users. The users would need a wireless NIC installed or you could use 802.11? calss WIFI routers to pass the signal around the venue. The real trick is finding a provider that can get you a trust for timely installations. As a start point, you could look at as one equiptment provider. As a reference for an existing implimentation provider, I formerly worked for, try contacting . They have Wireless Dedicated Circuit T1 (1.554Mb Up, 1.554Mb Down) priced at $509.96. The cost of getting the service from the nearest wired high bandwidth access point site to the camp grounds would be an additional cost. KC
Kevin M. Childers
Computer repair and networking tech.
Available over most messaging services as KC1111111111
There are two way satellite providers that do this. My company, SDN Global (www.sdnglobal.com) has customers that use our service to set up wireless hotspot services in campgrounds, provided electricity is available.
Getting a good, responsive satellite connection is not cheap however.
tim mckee
I use to do the more advanced stuff for the Direcways and Starband. I'd recommend Dway all the way. Also, I'd recommend the DW4020: its setup especially for multi-user environments, more bandwidth, bigger dish for rain fade prevention, and a higher FAP limit. FAP is fair access policy in which they throttle your bandwidth down to a 56k if you download to much of a given amount in a given time. The equipment will cost about $1200 and another $300 to install. The DW600, made for a residense, costs $400 for equipment and $125 for installation. At least, thats what it goes for with no markup. If you could get a sponsor from a dealer, youd be allright. Also be sure to check out www.groundcontrol.com for a more mobile or temp usage. They even have rentals available with automatic geosyncronization so you don't need a fcc licensed individual to set it up. They will even deliver. Definatly go with the DW4020 though. It will be more dependable. You might also want to consider two of them. We recently wired a local courthouse with 2 of those and no problems reported yet.