Setting up a wireless network for neighbourhood

[eye_suc]

Hi all

First off i would like to thank the people up in JHB for starting JAWUG. Damn awesome! We could cover the whole country in a few years time!

OK, i dont know much about wireless networking, actually never ever worked with it. But i know a bit about normal networks, i attend lans, at work i fix network crap. Also a developer, so not completely thick (cept round the middle maybe).

I wish to set up a wireless network that could cover a radius of about 1km. The idea is that neighbours could connect to my network and thusly to each other. We want to connect about 20 people in the end, hopefully much more, but i dont know what the limits are.

Is this possible? To create a blanket area that anybody with a wireless network card can connect to? Our area is very flat until you reach different suburbs.

What gear do i need and what gear would the clients need?

PS: I wanted to connect to stellenbosch (+- 20km away). durbanville (hills in the way, prolly not even 10km away) and brackenfell (hills, less than 10km away), but this seems impossible and nobody could give me a cost effective (i am NOT rich) sollution. Thus i want to create a small wireless "LAN". Stuff the rest.

 

[Obelix]

Im going a similar route. You need an outside antenna. Omni antenna are not all that strong, so 1KM radius is probably doable. Buildings and trees are gonna be your biggest problem. Most ppl wont be able to sit in their house and pick up the signal on their notebook/pci card. They'll need an external ant as well, but it neednt be a omni. they could use small flat-panel ones that piont straight at your ant. As long as yours is powered up, everyone else should be able to use the network.

 

[eye_suc]

Thank you kindly for the response Obelix

So they also need an external antenna? Kinda makes sense, they probably wont be able to send data with only their cards. Was hoping omni would work, the greater the range, the better!

The whole directional thing seems pretty limiting, since you need TWO antennas to connect to TWO other people, 3 for 3, etc etc... or am i understanding this wrong again?

 

[MaD]

You would need a decent wireless access point, a decent omni antenna (and a good place to mount it) and they would each need wifi PCI cards with a decent patch antenna or a ethernet wifi modem (lunchbox style ala uninet).

What you could also do is google for PDF's of case studies for wireless LANs. Great to see you're gonna do it, seems more and more people are going ahead with it these days, you'd be surprised how many AP's are in the Blouberg area, over 40 at last count.

 

[Obelix]

Just the one omni ant on your side will be ok. Multiple connections can be made to one ant. Each user has his own ant point at your omni ( you just need the one omni at your side ) You need a good accesspoint ( dlink, linksys, gigabyte, etc ). I'd go for the kits supplied by jawug. You get everything you need for a very good price. the other guys

 

[skydog]

eye_suc - really glad to see that more people are getting involved with wifi. once you start you'll get sucked in. it's great fun.

One of the main things with wifi is that it takes some experimentation.
a possible better option to the omni is a more directional patch antenna.

it will give a better signal strength but limit your direction. if you going to have 20 people conencting to a "highsite" then maybe to APs with a patch antenna each. other option is for each of the clients to have APs to conenct. This will ulimately increase the spread of the network.

if you wanna chat join the durban guys on irc at za.shadowfire.org channel #dwc.
or the jawug guys irc.jawug.za.net #wnet i'm sure they can help

 

[Decotey]

A little experimentation and a lot of trial and error