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Ask Slashdot: 4G Networking Advice For Large Outdoor Festival?
New submitter xanadu113 writes "I help out with a large outdoor festival each year (Seattle Hempfest), and we use 4G hotspots on-site for our internet needs. Due to being at the bottom of the hill (in Myrtle Edwards park in downtown Seattle, WA right on the sound), we have problems with loss of signal, bandwidth switching (going between 4G/3G/2G, etc.). As wireless internet is our only option on site, we need to do something about improving the signals. What would be the best way to do a site survey of the 4G signals to select the best locations for hotspots, as well as the best carrier to use? We need potentially up to 10 devices per hotspot, and up to 10 hotspots or so. Also, would putting up a 4G repeater be a good option to solve this problem?"
WiFi is going to be cheaper.
If you are near sprint coverage you can get and rent a tower on a truck that may solve the 4g issue for the entire area. Then your hot spots could be anywhere. I don't know the cost on this though, just know they have it.
even if you land up having %carrier% signs all around the place and %carrier% logo lighters and such you might land up having your carrier setup a portable tower or something Commercial Grade.
what are the maths involved? (most important you need to cover which bits of ground??)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Couldn't you find a local ISP that would run some cables out to your festival, and then use Wifi repeaters to get the signal over the entire area? It seems like if you have a large festival and you're depending on 4g, then you're going to run into issues when every person with a smartphone tries to connect to twitter/facebook/instagram/whatever the hell people use now-a-days, and you need the internet signal the most, but it's just going to collapse due to the infrastructure strain.
Talk to the major cell providers, get some Celltowers On Wheels. They loves them some COW events, every COW is a dozen overage charges waiting to happen.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Presumably, this is for planning next year's Hempfest or the year after. If he's even considering 4G as a possibility that's going to take some time to arrange. Seeing as that spectrum has already been licensed out.
T-Mobile's based out of Belleview; talking to them may prove advantageous.
With so many people at the festival, they will easily eat up the cellular connection with their cell phones, so you really shouldn't rely on 4g or any cellular broadband source.
I would recommend finding a wireless carrier that can send you internet via 5.8ghz or 3.65ghz (wimax). Once you have a source at the fest, you would want to redistribute it yourself to various locations for your hotspots at different venues by using an Access Point at each location. You should use a 5.8ghz bridge to redistribute it through the site but you would want to site survey first. Look into Ubiquiti products - easy to use.
Alternatively, instead of going to an expensive wireless carrier to send you bandwidth to the site, you could find somebody that owns a house or business with a good cable internet connection and redistribute down to the fest yourself using 5.8ghz bridging.
Good luck. And P.S. don't waste your time trying to fix the 4g issue - its a lost cause when too many people are in the area taking up the signal.
For the MS-150 from Houston to Austin, one of the wireless carriers set up a mobile 4G tower for the overnight stay at the half way point.
Have you checked with your local carriers?
2013 Schedule (August 16-August 18)
The problem with most terminal equipment is not so much location, but the quality of the antenna used. Most phones these days have absolutely pitiful antennas which is alleviated somewhat by the use of a flat copper helix stuck on the back of the battery. Or, in the case of such phones as the iPhone, which do not come with removable covers never mind removable batteries, stuck to the back of the case.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
For survey purposes i would suggest finding an old nokia (3310 or similar) or some other phone that can have monitor mode enabled (or service menu). It is best if you would be able to slurp the data out of the phone via a cable but spot checks every 5-10 m would be OK (repeat at a minimum of 3 times).
Probably there is a better way but this is the cheapest and fastest way. For more ideas i'd suggest contacting OpenBTS/OpenBSC (as projects for ideas) or Harawd Welte / Dieter Spaar (as persons).
I would not suggest using 4G though (it seems a little bit too spotty and ureliable) if you can get your hands on some MiFi devices it would be better.
Next best option (or even better) would be WiMax (though it depends on availability).
In fire we trust http://www.getoto.net
Just ask the NSA for assistance; I'm sure they'd be more than happy to provide all the IT assistance you could possibly need. :)
It sounds like OP has some kind of 4G hotspot, as in, it connects to a 4G network and shares that connection out via wifi. So...I would follow the suggestion of someone up there a couple of posts - Find good coverage spots and spread out the access via repeaters of some kind.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Why would a bunch of stoners need high speed internet? I can imagine maybe one user typing 'hey' and another user typing 'dude' a half hour later, but if there is any more activity than that, then the fest is a dud...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The OP is organizing a HEMP fest. Meaning they are a major pot head. It's a safe bet that it was a year ago that they headed toward the computer to post this.
On the way, they stopped at the kitchen for some pop tarts. Then they smoked another doobie. A few hours later, they sat down at the computer. They had to see what the email about Ron Paul said. Then they smoked another bowl. A few months later, they logged into Slashdot. There was a article on Slashdot about Occupy, so they had to read it. It said some Occupy folks would be only 60 miles away, so they had to go join. Of course, for an Occupy event they needed to pick up a QP on the way. When they got there, they smoked a bowl and when they finished smoking three weeks had gone by.
This event is an excellent candidate for a temporary cellular deployment, engineered and operated by a carrier. Typically, they will not charge for the service because of the extra call revenue and to avoid bad publicity from poor coverage or capacity. Unfortunately, you would need to engage both Verizon and AT&T to provide service for their own customers.
I recommend not deploying a cellular repeater in this case because there is likely insufficient isolation between the surrounding macro network and your event site. Without sufficient isolation, the repeater will impair the operation of the host base station and not even provide significant coverage improvement due to massive multipath problems. If you're interested in a survey, you could use an Android phone with RF Signal Tracker and record the RSCP and Ec/Io of UMTS ("3G") service.
If the carriers are not interested, I recommend deploying your own Wi-Fi network. I cannot offer advice on how many access points you would need, but it will be many. Because Wi-Fi was never meant to be infrastructure and lacks features like uplink scheduling and handover, controlling the footprint of each access point is very important.
You're correct, only that carrier's customers (and supported MVNOs) would be able to use that tower on a truck.
Also check out WIDI. CLEAR is in the area. The local ISP's can provide a drop for a fee to feed a few WIFI hotspots. Cell capacity has limits for large festivals. Use alternatives when possible.
FYI, check the local thrift shops for used CLEAR modems. Monthly service is possible. Combined with a 2nd hand wireless router, the modem and router can often be operated just fine on a 12 volt battery.
The truth shall set you free!
Correction WiMax
The truth shall set you free!
Wifi is great to first get your internet connection. Simplest if you have an accomplice in a near-by building with line of sight, preferably with a fiber, non crippled internet access on that side. Set a wireless link between your festival and the building with something like a pair of Ubiquity Nanostation. As it's wifi 5.5GHz, it's unlicensed and has a broad, not much used spectrum. Doesn't go through walls as easily as 2.4GHz, too. You have to respect some emission power limit of course but you get a stable and easy connection.
I used such a thing and would have 3 to 5 megabits symetrical, 100 meters or maybe more, and I guess that faster is doable (or just longer range and get that speed)
If line of sight or range is an issue I guess you can use a repeater (just a bridge with two wifi 5.5GHz interfaces)
On the festival end you could distribute it with wifi 2.4GHz, with maybe cat5 cables (up to 100 meters) to access points (or can they use wifi 5.5GHz to network with other APs?). And you can use wired ethernet for your own stuff.
You probably need to set up a proxy with a captive portal, that's useful : you get caching, so lots of bandwith saved when ten people are hitting the same web page or watch the same video ("check this out"). Ads filtering too! and if you're nasty (but reasonabe) people are given only web access through the proxy, no internet access.
Do you need QoS and is it easy I don't know.
If there's a small local wireless ISP (a non profit one why not), the better.
I've used this method to find celltowers closest to a house in a forest. On your cellphone, turn off GPS and google location services, and go into airplane mode.
Then turn off airplane mode and as soon as it connects try to get a fix on your position in google maps using only celltower information. Basically, it'll place you a certain distance within range of a celltower. The center of the circle is where the tower is. If you can get LOS on that tower, that will help your signal a lot. Sometimes they're even marked in google maps. You can move around the perimeter, and it may switch to a different cell indicating another tower you can use. Not all carriers use the same celltowers, either, so this has to be the same provider you have for your hotspots.
If you really want to play around to increase signal, try mounting an old satellite dish up high aiming directly at the celltower, and place the hotspot at the focal point.
A 4G repeater won't help since you'd have to place it in LOS to the tower anyway, so you might as well just place your hotspot and a wifi repeater there with a directional antenna. Wifi equipment should be cheaper and faster, too, for the infrastructure.
True, but I'm getting a head start on the 2014 (August 15-17, always the third weekend in August) Hempfest... ;)
-Myke
We do have generators on-site...
-Myke
OP was completely sober when posting the question. Trust me, I know him. ;)
-Myke
It's funny how the "non potheads" can't think outside the box enough to realize this is for the 2014 Hempfest, not the 2013 one which ended last weekend on the 18th... ;)
-Myke
(replying to myself)
Seattle being a major town with a known tech history, there's indeed a community wireless ISP, called "Seattle Wireless" and I'm sure they can be helpful. Or even have some people there quite interested
I live just a few blocks from the park (and staffed a table on Sunday of the event), the 4G problems are not due to coverage but due to network congestion. You can easily get 10-15 Mbps via both Clear and Verizon 4G when there aren't 50k people there. You really should be looking at point to point microwave for your backhall. I'm sure Spectrum Networks can provide you with a 1Gbps link on at least the south half of the park. Digital Fortress has a datacenter in the big black round building that overlooks the park. I suspect they could get you roof access and a 1Gbps feed too. Most of the buildings along the park belong to tech companies (F5 networks, Big Fish Games). If you can talk one of them into sponsoring you, they could likely get you bandwidth on their roofs too. Bandwidth isn't a problem, you just need to bring your own. Obviously that requires money and forward planning.
The person asking the question thinks the solution to needing to provide Wifi Hotspots is to use cellular based devices and maybe try to find a way to get better 4G coverage.
You're trying to solve the wrong problem. Using 4G to provide wifi has several drawbacks, first is cost. Second, you can't get the bandwidth you really need, and third, you have to compete with every device there trying to connect to thier cellular provider. Provide hotspots with Wifi Routers getting their connections from a wired source instead. Ideally, you'd run wires to your wifi access points but if you can't do that very well in some places, use wifi repeaters.
If putting wires to the places you need access points is really a serious problem that you can't solve with wifi repeaters, then use microwave. It's not too expensive to set up and it can give you a no-wires high bandwidth internet connection for long distances.
Since the wrong question was asked, it is hard to provide the right answer, but here are some tips:
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
So after the 2013 Hempfest, they organizers said "well what were some of our problems, and how do we solve them for NEXT year?"
Obviously, at last week's event they came to the conclusion that this is something they need to address.
The story doesn't begin: "We ran into some problems at this year's HempFest , and we need to do better."
Do that and answers become more focused. Lead times. Costs. Technologies. Staffing. As it stands, we're left wondering how long this post lay moldering at the bottom of the pile before the editors got around to reading it.
Don't tell me you've never seen an "Ask Slashdot" that reads like a weirdly delayed SOS call from "Titanic."
Repeaters are for boosting individual signals. They often promise extended range and coverage, but do nothing for added capacity. If you're in a bit of a low coverage area chances are your repeater will lock onto a handful of towers. Suddenly presenting the network infrastructure with 100 new devices at one node will result in very poor quality of service. Only a handful of devices will work at any given time and they will likely chop and change where one device suddenly has massive bandwidth and a second later no signal. We just did something similar at a local event out west. We had roughly 100 people there, and one of them was a network engineer at one of our telcos. Basically he put it up for emergency use only. If more than 5 people tried to use it at a time the system went splat and would take a while to come good again.
What you need is proper infrastructure with portable cell towers backhauling the data to the network, not repeaters which suddenly present a load onto a cell tower which was never in their design case. I would suggest contact the telcos and see if they can provide something like this. For a big enough event and some free advertising you may be in luck.
The funny thing is, they're all true. My post was basically a description of me, age 16-20. I started college when I was sixteen. A aced everything the first semester. Then I got stoned. 20 years later, I'm starting my second semester.
No idea about open mesh or any of that crap, but I can tell you that on those western facing slopes Verizon has the best coverage. Yes, they are ass-hats to deal with, but their coverage is pretty good if you go that route.
Definitely interesting imho. I'm a hobbyist, 1st time at festival this year, and would have defaulted to using hotspots as wifi backhaul but maybe that's not the way to go.
then again I'm used to bringing in stuff from home to work (pc components mainly) but enterprise hardware is like a superset of home hardware. SAS, fibrechannel and the like.
Oh and microwave, wimax and COWs strike me as the most promising/practical so far. Even here in seattle it might be hard to get the tech companies to sponsor (though maybe 429 branded beers and the like might?)
Damn sorry to hear that! Jkjkjk :)
Nice, good linkage.
First, why not engage the community like Seattle Wireless to see if they're willing to setup a mesh in the park. They're a non-profit, your a non-profit...
I don't think your end goal was to provide coverage for everyone. If you have a bunch of people watching netflix while at the park, then why have live entertainment? Having a bunch of people all wired in would harsh my buzz instead of it being a social event.
Understandably for concessions, you'll need wifi or connectivity of somekind to keep capitalism alive. For that you can set up a small wifi-mesh across the concessions which are at the south end of the park and link it to one of the buildings up the hill via point-to-point mesh. That way you're not having to cover the entire length of the park (where there is still minimal coverage for 911/sms/etc. services) and still have something a little quicker than dialup for the vendors who paid money to setup stands for the event.
I doubt you want the event donation fees being swallowed up by trying to setup something elaborate when business functional will do.
boom goes the dynamite....
Going on right now (well, starting soon) is the greatest wild party in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours from the closes cell signal, and they have internet access. Ask some of the Burning Man guys to help with such a setup. They don't use 4G, but they have T1s in nearby towns and they microwave it out to the festival site. It works very well, even in the worst dust storms, and is not nearly as reliant on the whims of cellular carriers.
True, but I'm getting a head start on the 2014 (August 15-17, always the third weekend in August) Hempfest... ;)
You do know that by Aug 2014 no one will be attending the festival in person. They'll be strapping on Oculus III's and attending in VR.
Dude, hempfest was last week!
Dude... Hempfest is next year.
Dude... Hempfest is ALL YEAR ROUND!
(Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough...)
I can confirm that the post appeared by the next day after posting it, and it was definitely posted after the 2013 event, in preparation for the 2014 event.
-Myke
Yeah, that's EXACTLY how we run things. Funny how people can make judgements on people they've never met and events they've most likely never attended...
It's amazing how the "non-stoners" can come out sounding less intelligent than those who partake, isn't it...? That's why you posted under "Anonymous Coward."
-Myke
Get ahold of me outside of Slashdot... myke at hempfest.org...
SlashDot is just one avenue of researching this...
-Myke
You prolly won't need them, COWs are self-contained, with their own generators and everything. They're really designed to get cell service restored ASAP when a tower goes down, so have no time to worry about power or other crud, just find a high point, park the truck and get it lit.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
May have grabbed the wrong end of the proverbial stick here, and I'm by no means experienced in the mobile telecomms field... But isn't the OP intending to set up wifi hotspots which connect to the internet via 4G? That's how I interpreted it anyway, the assumption being that it would be impractical to have Ethernet running everywhere.
I get mod status sometimes and it was just /.'s natural submission bin churn rate. Question could have been asked a week in advance and not made it through the bin. Especially if it's his first submission.
Yes, this part of your comment elicited my response:
Marijuana does not cause 'laziness'...Indica-dominant strains can cause lethargy. Sativa-dominant strains have the opposite effect! They cause high alterness and physical activity.
Indica strains grow faster, yield more sellable plant matter, and smells less while growing...all factors that make them much better for bootleg growers. That's one big reason why most weed smoked in the USA is Indica-dominant.
So, no the idea that 'weed smokers are lazy' is an urban legend somewhat grounded in the production bottleneck caused by Marijuana prohibition.
Here in Oregon, we enjoy the ability to medicate with strains such as Jack Herer, specifically formulated to be smoked during the daytime to get physical or mental work done and be more alert.
Let's talk about users of Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor and other pharmaceutical drugs, though...that's an area where drug abuse certainly will lead to lethargy.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Clear is good for this kind of stuff, but they can't help you carry the cell phone call load.
At Occupy Portland camp they were passing around CLEAR usb antennas and getting really good speeds....good enough for lots of video livestreaming.
As I've seen above, calling your local provider to get temporary 3G towers is the way to go...it might take some paperwork and bullshit but for Hempfest you need to tackle the problem at that scale.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Have you thought about using a range booster or cantenna? Hackaday has several builds and might provide better signal over greater distances. http://hackaday.com/2009/07/07/various-cantenna-builds/
I don't know, but I smoked a lot of different kinds of weed, and none of stimulated me do anything but smoke more weed and eat whatever was within reach, without need to hassle with a fork.
I wouldn't say LAZY, but certainly mellow or lethargic.