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Ask Slashdot: Updating a Difficult Campground Wi-Fi Design?
MahlonS writes "I am a retired network hack wintering in my RV in a campground in southern GA. 3 years ago I reconfigured the Wi-Fi system to a marginal working ability; It's now ready for a serious upgrade, prompted by a new cable net connection replacing a weak DSL. 5 dual-radio HP Curve access points connect to a 6th via single or double radio hops (effectively a Wireless Distribution System) in heavily wooded space. Unidirectional antennas at the APs (the APs are in water resistant enclosures) are placed on poles above the RVs, about 15 feet above ground. Primary hops are about 300 feet to 3 of the APs, secondary hops about the same. Signal measurements indicate that there is adequate RF between the access points. In 2008, average user count averaged about 30 users; newer devices (smart phones, etc) will likely increase that number (winter population total is about 80 RVs). While the old design worked OK when lightly loaded, I suspect that the single DSL line generated so many packet resends that the APs were flooded. This is a quasi-State Park, so money is always an issue, but there is enough squawk from the user community that a modest budget might be approved. The main AP connects to an old Cisco router. Burying wire is frowned upon, due to shallow utilities, and campfire rings that float around the campsites — sometimes melting TV cables. Since I'm not up on current Wi-Fi tech, are there solutions out there that would make this system work much better?"
I'd look into some of the fairly inexpensive openmesh routers...they're great for extending networks (or running jasager).
http://www.open-mesh.com/
Lower your transmitters a little. Signals propagate horizontally (perpendicular from the antenna), this is why you need to have an AP on each floor in a house to get good signal. Not because you're on different floors so much as the signals just aren't going in the right directions.
I know you're trying to broadcast over the RVs, but going over them also means no signal is getting to them in this case.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
we've got 5 outdoor ruckus ap's spread across our park. (fairly cheap too)
http://www.ruckuswireless.com
they'll mesh with indoor wifi ap's if you don't want to run ethernet to each one individually.
the "smart antenna" design is actually pretty good. it supports dynamic beamforming, multiple signal paths etc. basically it just takes the path of least resistance, which helps a lot when dealing with a lot of walls/trees etc.
you can give them a call w/ any questions you might have.
I would run two networks, a backbone at say channel 6, and alternate APs at 1 and 11. Get highly directional antennas for the backbone, and either corner-directional antennas or omnidirectional antennas for the access points. Run the backbones up high, and the APs 12 feet or so.
Try to eliminate any double hops via short cable runs and/or smarter backbone placement.
Why fiber and not cooper?
Lightning. Za Pow!
Never run a piece of copper from one building to another if you can at all avoid it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Your opinion is valid. It's also subjective and irrelevant. And GP's post was rightly modded down for the same reason.
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This is a quasi-State Park, so money is always an issue, but there is enough squawk from the user community that a modest budget might be approved.
because they can pull money from the marketing budget first as a lure to get people to come as a checkbox feature, secondly because you can install $100 wifi webcams at the "cool places" (pool, lakeshore, whatever) so visitors from the UK feel comfortably spied upon and the promotional web page can have "click here to see the scenic lakeshore live!" buttons.
also they can pull a little money from the security budget, because the webcams can monitor boring yet important locations like the bar's cash register, the general store cash register, the service entrance, the equipment shed (the $20K nuclear propelled lawnmower, tanks of gas for the mower, etc)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Take a look at Engenius' access points, I think their multihop repeater solution might fit your needs http://www.engeniustech.com/index.php/networking/solutionsdatacom/
On the other hand, if you think the DSL router's doing crazy stuff, maybe you should focus on making it not do that crazy stuff.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Putting wi-fi in a campground is contrary to its purpose. I don't care if the asker and the editors failed to notice this. I don't care if that rains on someone's little parade. It's a dumb idea. Whatever you're doing there, it isn't camping. It's using the Internet outside. That's my genuine opinion, and not only is it as valid as the asker's, it's more valid because it's more consistent with what a campground is for. Some ball-less soul-less sack of shit will mod me down anyway because he hasn't the guts to argue against me, but that's okay.
Except that a lot of people in RVs full time. That means their RV is their primary, and only, home. As such, they need access to their bank accounts, friends, relatives, news. For most people who full time, a campground with wifi is essential, at least once in a while.
My sister lives aboard a sailboat. Full time, all over the world. Wifi is huge for her. Without wifi, we do't know if she's alive or not. We have an RV; we don't fulltime but after 9 days it's nice to do laundry and catch up on world news.
We also backpack and spend a lot of time in the wilderness, so I'll stack my "camping creds" against yours any day. When was the last time you were in the wilderness, with a 2 day hike-out to the nearest trailhead? Are you spending your thanksgiving next to your computer, or in the high desert 20 miles from the nearest town?
Gives you something to do when it rains. Been there, done that. Not just directly, but indirectly, now a days you internet search for the closest stir fry place or whatever. Oh look we ran out of propane and the onsite general store sells one pound cans for $10 a piece and walmart 2 miles away sells them for $2 and we could pick up some more food at the community grocery store.. road trip!
Much as its nice to momentarily disconnect and go on a walk in a park, sometimes on vacation its nice to momentarily reconnect.
My parents mostly used it to upload pictures. "see, he caught a fish" that type of thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I don't think one vendor will supply everything that you need, but you definitely need to take a look at uBiquity. We've used their NanoBridges in studio-to-transmitter links several times and have been pleasantly surprised. The stuff is ridiculously cheap -- so cheap that we honestly wondered what could be wrong with it until we tried it. (Less than $160 for a pair of NanoBridges!)
Ubiquity's Website
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
http://www.open-mesh.com/ .11G mesh, $60 for a router and another $20 for the outdoor enclosure.
The single band series is
The dual band does N, $100 for a router and $40 for the enclosure.
Either way you get mesh networking that's really damn simple to configure and has a public and a private network. Public can be open or encrypted, supports individual bandwidth limits, and has a splash page feature for logins or selling airtime. Private network is encrypted and unrestricted.
Love mesh networking. No cables, network topography isn't set in stone, you just toss another router into the mix wherever needed and you can cover wherever you want.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Ubiquiti has some very cool products and customer support, you might want to look into their gear.
If you can get line of site from the remote sites back to the central site you should use 5Ghz for the backhaul, and 2.4Ghz for the client side radio. This will reduce your interference. Also, the backhaul should use _very_ directional antennas since the two endpoints are known. This will also prevent interference. It doesn't sound like any of your distances are enough to require a multi-wireless hop, although your sight lines may require it. Avoiding a double hop will increase performance.
You'll also want some intelligent QoS on both the WiFi and cable modem side. You don't want one user to be able to make the experience really bad for all the other users. For instance, if you had a 20Mbps cable modem you might want to limit any one IP/MAC to 5Mbps, or so. WRED or similar can also be your friend. Make sure there is a good local DNS server, as well
I don't think "communing with nature" is the point. I think cheap accommodation is. People like to be able to travel around the country in a moving "house." I once met, for instance, a guy who drove around the US for a year with his wife, with a camper hitched to the back of a small pickup, in order to see the country and, among other things, decide where they'd want eventually to settle down. I get the impression that many retirees, likewise, buy campers and go touring. It seems like a reasonable enough thing to do. I'd be curious to know what would be cheaper: that, or traveling in a fuel-efficient sedan and staying at Motel 8s.
It sounds like you don't exactly know where your problems are, so how can you solve them?
My advice would be to do some serious analysis of what's going on in your network. Hook up an ethernet sniffer to your internet connection and see what's going wrong. You suspect it's a lot of retransmissions do to the DSL, well find out if that's true. Consider buying a cheap spectrum analyzer (wi-spy can be had for under $100). Track when you get problems, and where. Throwing money and equipment at the problem is more likely to waste money and equipment than solve the problem. Since you're retired, it sounds like you're more short on money and equipment than you are on time to analyse and diagnose the problem.
Once you actually know what the problem is, then you can go out to the wireless community and ask for a solution. K You're seeing a lot of very, very different solutions here because people are guessing what the underlying problem is, largely based on what's worked for them. Obviously you can't follow all of them, but which one should you try? Knowledge is power, and ignorance is folly.
AccountKiller
True, didn't think of that. Anyone know what the price diffference is between something like Cat. 6 and fiber?
Darn near zero. Seriously. $1 to $3 foot indoors for both, outdoors is usually strictly quote basis.
Again your experience may vary but the other difference is cat5/6 usually is terminated for "free" as part of the deal and fiber is usually terminated for like $25 per connector (in other words $50 flat fee added cost for one complete working cable). Also some CPE needs weird connectors, so many contractors will pull the fiber and let you figure out your bizarre escon-fiber or whatever, if you aren't using something standard that they can terminate.
Some fiber places want to charge extra to OTDR verify, some even try to charge extra to give the results to you.
Get a couple bids.
Stereotypes: Electricians do a great job of grounding aerial leader line and pull so hard they damage both fiber and cat5 (cat5 isn't exactly the 0000 gauge entrance facility they're used to). Also electricians have no comprehension of EMI/RFI and will run cat5 wrapped around the dirtiest industrial power line and light units. Electricians are also stereotypically poor at terminating. Geniuses at pulling cable and fishing and whats best described as "stupid conduit tricks", not so good at termination.. The "LAN/WAN/server" guys generally cannot waterproof outdoors to save their life, assume it'll leak if they get involved. The vertical market cable contractors who do one thing and one thing only are not terribly mentally flexible and freak out if you want to do anything other than bog standard cubicle wiring. All stereotypes have an element of truth and might be useful to recall when negotiating your contracts.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
With line of sight problems and lots of water-containing organic obstacles (aka "trees"), lower frequency means much much better signal quality. Use a 900MHz WDS and many of your problems will vanish. I know Ubiquiti offers 900MHz kit, can't say for HP.
Stop being lazy and run freaking wire between the locations. you already have power there so you can run wire. you can use phone wire which is cheap and use ADSL modems for the links, again cheap.
Honestly there is no magical wireless setup that will handle the load, you have to run wire if you want to avoid performance issues.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He's not there to get back to nature and disconnect. He's WINTERING there. - a place that he's already configured once for WiFi three years ago and now he wants to upgrade everything.
Fiber can be purchased rather cheaply. It's really worth it for outside runs. As someone else said, lightning strikes.. Even the extra equipment required (transceivers, fiber ready switches, etc) can be purchased fairly cheaply on eBay.
I did it to replace a mess of copper and wireless between offices in a complex once. If I remember right, it was something like 600' of fiber for about $200. I did it in segments, so if someone were to damage one segment, it could be easily replaced. For their end points, I picked up a lot of 6 Cisco Catalyst 2924's with 4-port 100baseFX cards. I think the total price on switches was $300, and that let me replace all kinds of consumer-grade crap switches.
His problem with fire pits and the like can be reduced by laying the fiber along the edge of the roads, and burying at a sufficient depth. Hell, they run power and water to each campsite already. Parallel runs to existing infrastructure would be fine. Fiber doesn't have that nasty tendency to pick up inductive signals.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What's a "quasi-State Park"? Obligatory "Georgia is a quasi-state" joke.
What is that area really? Does Georgia allow people to live on public lands, even allow/provide utilities (however shallowly buried the wires) including cable TV and now wireless Internet? Do they make you move somewhere else to summer, after you winter in S Georgia? How often do you have to move? Do they charge you anything, like property taxes? Do you receive US Mail to your local address?
The setup sounds wonderful. Or maybe we're talking about the (maybe not so) ex Communist country Georgia.
Snark aside, my questions are serious. And it does sound wonderful.
--
make install -not war
1982 GMC RTS-04.
I picked it for a few reasons. The biggest was the additional interior space. The cabin is larger than the MCI's. It doesn't have subfloor storage, as built at the factory, but it does have dead space in each section that measures about 5'x8'x2'. It just needs a floor and supports fabricated, and exterior doors built.
It's about 3' shorter vertically than the MCI's, which will help get down most streets without hitting tree limbs. Pretty much, if a school bus or UPS/FedEx truck can drive the road, so can I.
I also wanted a vehicle with a strong diesel motor. These come with a few options. Mine has a DD 6v92TA (552ci, turbocharged and supercharged), with an Allison 3 speed automatic transmission. Most of the city buses come with gearing that doesn't allow for a top sped over 60mph. It cost a few bucks, but I had it regeared for highway use.
Last time I moved it, I was driving down the interstate perfectly happily, with my car in tow on a flat trailer. (I had a trailer hitch welded on). I was perfectly happy cruising at 75mph in the right lane. Well, until one car decided the speed limit must be 45, and stayed parked in the right lane doing that. When I had a safe chance to pass, I did. The overall vehicle length was 65' because of the trailer, so I had to be very careful changing lanes. I passed 85mph when passing, and I could still accelerate. I only wanted to get around him, and back to my cruising at the speedlimit. Even with the car in tow, it felt like driving an average full size passenger van. Acceleration, braking, and handling were all there. Actually, I've driven full size vans that didn't handle as well. :)
Knowing I *can* do over 85 is nice. I don't really *want* to go fast in it though. It's pretty much an aerodynamic brick. Slightly sexier curves, but that doesn't help much.
At the moment, I have about $4,500 invested total. I bought it on eBay for cheap, did some mechanical things, and a bit of interior work. I have to finish the interior, and infrastructure work (power, water, sewer, LP). Some lifestyle things have changed, so I have to redraw the floorplan before continuing. I no longer have the wife, two kids, and two dogs. Now, I have a girlfriend, no kids, 4 cats, and the possibility of a half dozen or so friends wanting to go on weekend trips. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Look at ubiquiti's stuff. M5 Wireless bridges out to to the AP's and UniFi [normal or long-range] for the clients.
www.ubnt.com
Nanostation M5 [5Ghz]: http://ubnt.com/nanostationm
UniFi: http://ubnt.com/unifi
Not as slick as Ruckus or some other stuff, but incredibly cheap. [Bridges are about $200 for a pair - and super solid, massive through-put. UniFi is about $70 per AP.]
You also get the ability to help pay for the system via UniFi. [Paypal subs, no admin reqd. Vouchers for "free" use etc.] That's all included for "free" in their system.
Plus you can use Pico's for outdoor use. Already weather-proof.
[I've not run the Pico's - so check it out in the forum: http://www.ubnt.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=48 - you should be able to get your answers there.]
It's really some of the best bang-for-the-buck for non super-high-density WiFi use around, IMO>
-Greg
My parents (who live in the suburbs of Atlanta), had lightning hit a tree along the fence at the back of the yard. As far as we can tell, the electricity traveled along about 100ft of fence to the powered gate and blew its way into the control panel (on a wooden post 6in from the gate). The cover on the panel was literally blown off (it ended up about 15ft away from the control panel). From there we believe that it went through the power lines (for the gate) back to the detached garage. In the garage it went from a phone into the phone lines that went back to the main house and were terminated in the low voltage panel. Somehow from there it got into the ethernet network and fried 2 hubs and an ethernet port on their desktop computer.
There is no way for me to know conclusively that this is what happened, but a lightning strike on a neighbors tree (it was on their side of the fence) 30 feet from the detached garage, and 50 feet from the house fried the controls for the gate, a phone in the garage, and 2 hubs and an ethernet port in the house (I think we discovered later that some old caller ID units also got fried, and we think it was probably that strike). No one died. There were no fires. CPR was also not necessary. Probably about $500 - $600 worth of damage.
I think he should worry about lightning strikes.
You also need to factor in the fact that if you're staying in Motels, you're going to be pretty much eating at a restaurant every night. With a camper you have a full kitchen. Having spent 53 days traveling around the country not this last summer, but the previous, I can say with out a doubt I would not have wanted to do it living out of motel rooms. Having to pack and unpack the car every night, living out of a suitcase, and sleeping in a different bed every night would have gotten old real quick. With a camper, you have all your stuff stored in the camper, closets for your clothes, and a bed you can get used to. We got pretty good at hooking and unhooking the camper, we had it down to under 5 mins. The best part though, if you really need to use the bathroom, there's no searching for one, you're hauling one around with you. Just pull over and use it. If you think they're easy to find, your coming from a coasters perspective. There are still vast stretches of this country that have nothing in them but a road, running straight and true for miles and miles and miles and miles and...
I live in Florida. Actually, the greater Tampa area. The area is known as the lightning capital of the US. Some say world, but apparently NASA found that Rwanda currently beats us. In either case, we have to be very aware of lightning, and its dangers. Even in areas with less frequent lightning strikes, they should still be a concern.
I don't know of any homes or structures, mobile or otherwise, that have burned down because of a lightning strike. The only people that I've known of who have suffered health issues due to lightning were standing outside. You know, folks playing golf in a thunderstorm.
Over the years, I've had to repair and diagnose lightning strikes. I know electricity wants to go to ground, and if it were a chain link fence with steel posts, it should have gone to ground immediately. But after some of the things I've seen, it doesn't always.
The most convoluted trail I followed was an overhead coax cable, that lead to a video digitizer. The lightning jumped to the network card, over the ethernet cable, through the switch, out another cable, and to its victim. You could see the burn marks on the network card, video card, and motherboard. There were two network ports damaged. The overheard cable, and the first machine it passed through were fine. The people on the other end of the overhead cable stated they heard an explosion, and saw a shower of sparks from the camera it was attached to. Oddly enough, the camera was fine.
Pretty much, don't give more ways than necessary for lightning to get to anything else. Surge suppressors are nice, but for as many as I've seen destroyed, I know that they're just a nice decoration.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
All wire has resistance and inductance. A high current nearby lightning strike will induce voltage and current in nearby conductors. This is why you never stand near a metal fence in an electrical storm. The fence may be grounded at both ends, but in relation to the nearby ground the fence can be lethal. One of the biggest strikes I had to clean up was a radio station transmitter. The antenna was properly grounded. The local utilities were properly grounded. A nearby lightning strike blew out diodes in the power suppy and there was obvious arc marks between the utility ground and the utility neutral. On the other end of the wire at the AC panel, the neutral is bonded to ground and connected to the building ground. The final in the transmitter was fine. The power suppy took the hit with the high voltage differential between ground and ground due to the high current. On the wall, there was arc marks between the coax to the antenna and the upper ground ring in the room. There were several points of arcing between ground and ground. Two panels on the wall showed explosive discharge between the frame of the panel and the conduit between them, even with the ground wire in the conduit in the panels tying them together. Transformer action into the conduit created high current in the conduit. Conduit joints and box to conduit joints showed arc marks. A semiconductor anything in that area would have taken the hit. Just tying it to ground doesn't work for high energy pulse discharges.
The truth shall set you free!
Having pulled cable for a number of years I can tell you that you can pull on both fiber and copper until your eyes bulge from your skull, you aren't going to hurt it. I've seen 24-strand SMFO pulled taught by a truck driving at 10MPH with no damage to the cable (OTDR verified).
I know outside plant is infinitely tougher than inside. 20 years ago I shattered some escon by exceeding the min bend radius under a raised floor, got a talking to from the bosses boss, and this was literally dropping it in place and lightly one hand tugging for slack control. The OTDR showed the shatter right at the under floor turn so it was all me... Supposedly even just whipping escon could shatter it, donno about that.
Pull straight on single mode and you are correct you could probably hang from it quite easily. At least in the olden days, min bend radius was like 2 feet so take the same fiber and wrap it around your hand and try to hang from it and it'll shatter instantly.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger