We've got a cul-de-sac with a half dozen homes, and are interested in getting a high speed connection and sharing it. Our local cable provider (Charter) provides 30 meg at a price that would work out.
(most of the folk here are part timers so the speed should be adequate when shared)
Placing a Linksys model mumble mumble five y/o in the windowsill almost gets enough connectivity, so we figure that putting it up on the roof would work out.
What we're looking for is a unit that's reliable and can handle the multiple connections - possibly up to 50... without crashing.
Bonus points for something that's powered by POE, so we can run low voltage up there.
Prefarbly something intrinsically designed for outdoor use with a professional enclosure. Alternatively we can build a weatherproof box...
Low density area, with only two or three others barely in range when testing from a ladder next to the roof... (another bunch from our own small group, of course).
Lots of the equipment, for example TiVos, are legacy 802.11b/g. (and yes, I know about the TiVo bandwidth issue when people pull down videos...)
ALready tested... I set up the windowsill and visited the neighbors using my laptop. Got decent coverage that was just-about-almost ok. (not including a basement)
The 50 is worst case. We figure that each household nowadys can have up to ten WiFi devices... but it's unlikely most of them will be active, or at least heavily active, at the same time.
Sounds good. PoE is much more civilized.
They'll give us a second for another ?twenty? per month. More or less. Something not too horrendous.
- If you want ugly pricing ask about a fixed IP...
Understood if we're looking at a large base. But it's just a half dozen, of which we're one. Yes, famous last words...
Well, I'm from the generation that spent six hundred dollars for a 2,400 baud modem... so I'm not going to scream at commercial grade pricing.
Thanks again. UBNT looks good.
- oh, and Charter might actually have 50 megs donstream in our area rather than 30. On cable, no less, not fiber.
Incidentally, thanks for not mentioning a mesh network.
I think you need a demonstration of how bad it can be. Setup two access points and two client machines on the same RF channel. Setup one to download some streaming video. Setup the second pair to do some manner of speed test (using IPERF or JPREF). What you'll probably find is that the speed test will be severely impacted by the streaming video traffic. Try it again, this time using an adjacent RF channel. You should see the same impairment until you get about 3-4 channels away.
Like I said, just getting a strong signal isn't enough. Try a speed test (IPERF or JPREF) and see what happens. If that's too much trouble, just ping the router and see if the latency remains constant. If it climbs, and then returns back to its original value, that's packet loss, which suggests that you may have an interference problem.
You missed my suggestion of using 5GHz. It's not that much more expensive. That provide each hose with a single connection to the central access point. Each house then has their own 2.4Ghz wireless router, which is used to connect to the usual mess of 2.4Ghz devices. If you use 2.4Ghz for everything, then you'll need connectivity to your central access point from every part of the house. That's often impossible. It also creates a bandwidth problem if there is any client to client traffic, such as running a media server. It also eliminates the use of wi-fi repeaters (range extenders) which I detest. Think really hard about using 5GHz client bridges.
These daze, there are very few applications that need a static IP address in order to function. Some of the online games are allegedly a holdout. No clue which ones. The only real requirement is if you're hosting a mail server in order to have a working DNS MX record, which your customers should not be doing anyway.
Incidentally, if Charter ever gets IPv6 going, it might be possible to buy IPv6 blocks and not use NAT. Don't hold your breath.
You're probably also going to eat your words. A 5 user system can be thrown together out of just about anything. A 50 user system has to be properly engineered and planned.
Not to worry. Anything you buy today, will probably be obsolete tomorrow.
Careful. Make sure that's a sustained 50Mbits/sec, not a peak. DOCSIS 3.0 is nifty. How about 305/65Mbit/sec from Comcast:
Well, I did the next best thing. I had two TiVos d/l video from the same mumble mumble Linksys AP. The bandwidth from the "cable modem" connection passing through the Linksys was adequate.
I ran various speedtests that were linked to from dslreports.com. Looked good excet for a few places.
- we're not talking long distance, and the houses are primarily light wood frame. No (thank you, thank you thank you), none of that plaster-over-metal-screening I've had to deal with back in NYC...
I guess I wasn't clear in that I had, indeed, tested that out.
Umm, uggggggghhhhh. That would be a killer. And, natch, I hadn't even thought of that one... ouch. Double Ouch. Triple Ouch..
Thanks for that warning.
well, I've measure steady 30 meg (well, more like 20-25) d/l in the 30 meg areas. (not sure how much of that reduction is avoidable). So it looks like they're not just using the "burst" deal. (hmm, what's their marketing name for that? something like powerboost?)
Admit it. We're all tempted to move to Kansas City...
You weren't measuring your local wireless speed impairment. You were measuring the speed of the cable modem connection. Try setting up an IPERF/JPERF server on your LAN and don't bother using the internet for speed testing. I really don't know what you'll see, but there should be some evidence of bandwidth sharing between devices.
Also, some streaming (i.e. Pandora audio) is not really streaming. It comes in a burst just before the end of the previous tune with no traffic in between. Try using YouTube or just stream HD video from a local media server.
No dry wall? No stucco? Sounds ideal as dry wood is fairly transparent to RF.
That's what switches and bridges are all about. The wireless bridge keeps the traffic with source and destination MAC addresses on one side of the bridge. If you make everyone connect to the central access point, the benefits of such bridging is lost.
Incidentally, make sure that your router can do "AP isolation" (which is misnamed and should be "client isolation". That will prevent your neighbors from getting into each others systems.
I'm in one of those rural areas which every connectivity proposal before the FCC allegedly addresses. Too bad that they never seem to arrive in my rural area. However, I shouldn't complain. We have areas where there is no service. Comcast recently had to be arm twisted into supplying service to some of these areas.
No stucco (well, maybe a spot here and there). But yes, they fo have drywall inside.
- no "foil" barrier on the insulation. Why yes, it's your basic el cheapo contractor minimal construction...
We're actually lucky in that we have two separate wireline telcos who both provide DSL... (yep, one of the few neighborhoods with an actual "overbuild"). The cable speed is much better, but having the DSL alternative comes in handy every year when the cable co. tries raising our monthly charge when our "intro rate" runs out.
It's been three times (iirc) now that this has happened, and I told them we'd be switching to DSL... and they offer us the intro rate for another year.
- we also have a mix and match of wireless options, both from the various "cellular" companies and also a couple of WISPS.
on the other hand... last week the telco central office hiccupped, knocking out both their wire lines _and_ a hefty chunk of wireless. (The CLEC and cable phone circuits were ok).
- and.... it took out the 911 PSAP. The outage shouldn't have killed 911 for more than 1 minute or so... but they didn't have secondary circuits coming into the center.
- and in that case, it shouldn't have taken more than 15 minutes before all 911 calls (from those who had phone serice) should have been rerouted one town over...
It took 15 hours to get service back to normal.
- oh, and there's MORE. The outage also killed off the... the NWS All Hazards Radio. That station is a _key_ portion of emergency communications, and they're supposed to stay up and broadcasting for anything up to a Russkie nuclear ground blast. (well, ok, I'm exagerrating a bit. but those stations have _lots_ of secondary alerts that are slaved to them).
I think the 5.8G point to point is a good idea. Think of the 5.8G links as a backhaul. With the 5.8G between houses, you know exactly the number of links/users. You could even set up the link so they talk to specific MACs. That will reduce the number of wifi thieves.
The only problem is it makes work for the folks on the remote end.
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