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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?"
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.
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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.
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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
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
- 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 :).
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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.
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.
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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
http://www.skycasters.com/portable-transportable.h tml
I personally tested a unit and it met my needs nicely. Takes very little power and meets FCC regs for installation without a technician. (Self aiming system.)
Best regards,
Al
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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)
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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!).
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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.
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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.
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You can locate Yagi antenna in the location that has Internet connection and shoot the signal to the campground.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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).
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/
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...
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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.
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