Cape Town WIFI mesh nets

Hey guys calm down, I've still gotta source all the equipment I need to get this set up (saturday mornings are not my strong suite :P). That's why I gave myself until the end of the year to get it done.
 
Spam, we have all the confidence in the world in you abilities, hehehe.

what type of configuration are you going for, omni direction, or direction, what type of distance, assuming you will be designing for the g (54MB) protocol...

G

You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the risk, And As a Person
You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!
Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk,
Every Fool Has the Right to Kill or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!
 
Hey Spam, remember seeing yur nick around from megawan days, drop me a line if you need hosting, sounds like an interesting project.
 
Well I've run into a slight snag in my project, seems *nix doesn't have a lot of support for USB 802.11b adapters let alone 802.11g. I'm keen to use USB adapters for a couple of reasons.

1. They are dirt cheap, found a 802.11g adapter for under R200.
2. USB cables carry a digital signal as opposed to the analogue one carried by antenna cables and pigtails. This meens that there would be no signal degradation due to the cabling used, allowing more marginal connections to be made.

So it looks like the connection will be between windows boxes because of driver support. On a positive note though it looks like I may be able to do the connections at 54mbit for under R400 per side.

wamatt, yeah Megawan was actually where I got the nick Spam, because I had to send out so many notifications about the network being down :). I'll take you up on the offer of hosting once I've documented everything (need to work that digital camera).
 
cant wait to see your tutorial.

I want to connect to my business adsl account and my shop is 5km away so long range wireless would be ideal

thanks in advance
 
what type of aerial and booster are you gonna use for this setup ?

Something homemade? :)
 
Spam - why not try an Apple box with OS X? Its foundation is FreeBSD. Of course pricing is an issue, but there're more and more G4's coming on the market second-hand.

Looking forward to the developments of mesh networks in Cpt.

Ciao
Simon
 
*cough* apple *cough* the whole point of the exercise is to do it cheaply. I can buy an ancient box for R600 and install freebsd.
 
Ok the distance i want is less than 5km , there might be some power lines and low trees along the way. How would i calculate the DBI needed.

Will 2 X 22dbi parabolic dishes + 2 X 9dbi feed be enuf ??
I have 2 PCI 802.11G cards , i think the idea of the usb adaptor is better for less loss due to cableing

What do you guys think?
 
Hi,

I'm in Durbanville Hills - have a nice view over parts of Bellville.
Very interested.

How are things coming along?
 
Hahahahaha, nice one guys, the more ppl that do this the better ;)
BTW for increasing range with USB adapters check out this link that RhinoDBN posted on IRC called 'The Poor Man's Wi-Fi':

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/



<font color="navy"><font size="1"><b>Where others have progress, we have Telkom.</b>
Hellkom website - www.hellkom.co.za</font id="size1"></font id="navy">
 
It was mentioned in one of the other threads but that's basically what I'm doing. The site is a bit ****ty though so I'm going to do a step by step guide with pictures for each step. I'll also post a few handy links on where to get hold of the stuff. BTW does anyone know the best spot to get hold of Chinese cookware?
 
Don't tell me ure gonna be doing the chinese fryer thing?
Those things don't improve your signal that much, i'd rather stick to a professional omni or yagi than a fryer drainer.

Proud South african rip offs.
 
Armitage, how much work have you done with wireless equipment? I have previously set up an 8.3 km connection with a 24 dB grid antenna connecting to a 180 degree flat panel. The reason I'm doing a connection in this fashion is that I need to get a signal 1.3 km as cheaply as possible, I thought a few people might also be interested in learning how.
 
spam, how are you planning on amplifying the signal of the USB adapters in order to get 1km+ links?
To my knowledge no USB adapters come with the ability to attach an external antenna...

The only thing I can think of doing is strapping the USB adapter to a high pole above one's roof, and then running a long USB cable down to the PC...even then you are stuck with the crappy builtin antenna of the USB adapter, so you couldn't hope for more than 200m coverage at best...

Could you clarify how you plan to use the USB adapters exactly?

<font color="blue">Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the </font id="blue"><font color="red">SA consumer</font id="red"><font color="blue"> needs to make it happen</font id="blue">
 
Lews, read up a bit more about antenna. What I intend on doing is placing the usb adapter at the focal point of a parabolic dish, this focus's the signal dramatically. I've previously hit over 7km from a parabolic antenna to a flat panel neither of which was powered.
 
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