Hybrid Community Networks?

CaryMenage asks: "I live in Philadelphia where there is a chock full of row houses and MDU (Multiple Dwelling Units) buildings. I was wondering if other Slashdot readers have been involved with community networks and what methods they have used. I have been looking at several different ways to distribute a T1 circuit to multiple end users; WiFi, Powerline, HomePNA. Due to the physical and legal complexities of older buildings and crossing public streets, I feel that some type of hybrid mixture of different topologies would work well in many situations. Has anyone implemented any of this on a large scale installation?" "I currently let my neighbor access the Internet through a powerline device that works well through the power meters. It seems to me that in theory, one could repeat the Ethernet with a cheap switch and send it to the next neighbor with another pair of powerline devices. Then when you have to cross a public street one could use a pair of Wireless Access Points in bridge mode. I also found a "leaky coax" product called RADIAX that I was wondering if anyone has applied this to 802.11. Seems to me you could use this coax and amplifiers to expand wireless coverage within buildings. For apartment buildings with somewhat organized main phone closets I have been looking at HomePNA products like the Xterasys HSM-1402 14-port HomePNA Switch and the Xterasys VX-110B for the end users connection."

Comments

Go All Wireless

[max born]

Don't know how much of a Linux user you are but I built a couple of wireless access points/relays for my neighbors that hook up the to the sflan network.

I used a couple of old junker laptops running Linux. This should be completely scalable to your situation. Here's a link to how I did it. For a relay/access point the same principle applies, just use two cards, one with a directional antenna the links to you, the other with an omnidirectional that serves DHCP. I found that cheapo cards on old hardware works great.

There are plenty of sites that have intructions for building directional antennas. From my experience you don't need to spend a lot of money for this kind of thing.

I'm glad your sharing your bandwidth. More people need to do this. Hopefully, one day the Internet will be entirely wireless and free. Free meaning you don't have to pay an ISP, you just buy your equipment and you're online. Just like CB radio.

Feel free to use my email address at the above site if you have any questions.

Another Topology Method

[CaryMenage]

Since I didn't want to take up to many bytes, I left out an idea of taking over the coax cable from the cable company inside an apartment building (in most cases cable after the tap in a building is property of building owner) and create a cable modem network as well as an SMATV system, using cisco broadband equipment, multiple sat receivers and RF modulators, one per channel. The only problem their is the cost of the cisco equipment. So I wonder if anyone has succesfully used old cable modems, say one at a Linux box serving DHCP, DNS gateway etc.. and the end users with standard DOCSIS cable modems? Fiber is still to expensive to install.

Cat5 all the way baby.

[psergiu]

5 & 8 port switches are cheap. Shielded cat5 is cheap. Unshielded cat5 (for runs 70m inside buildings) is even cheaper. For jumps between buildings use some steel wire (the kind used for drying clothes is the best), secure-it and then wrap the cat5 around it. Ensure that the switches won't be rained on and that the power can't be disconnected accidentaly. If you have jumps between buildings larger than 10m use ProtectNet (or other eclators). If you want redundancy use switches that support spanning tree and create network loops. Is 100baseT, is cheap and it works.
See http://www.era.ro/ for an example.
There are almost 100 networks like this here in Bucharest.