danny burstein wrote:
> In <13e5qc7bur97v18@corp.supernews.com> "Peter Pan"
> <PeterPanNOSPAM@AkamailNOSPAM.com> writes:
>
>> danny burstein wrote:
>
>>>
>>> They're a perfect candidate for the T-Mobile
>
>> Ummmm, you may want to rethink that part about "they are a perfect
>> candidate for"... While cable DOWNLOAD speeds are usually very high,
>> and can be shared with multiple users, the UPLOAD speed is usually
>> very low/small (mine is 12Mb down, but only 150Kb up!) two users
>> doing VOIP stuff will slow the upload way down, three? probably
>> undoable..... And how many of those kids will have the tmobile
>> phones that do that?
>
> Given that the choice is between the current cellphone
> situation, which is not-at-all, as opposed to working
> a modest amount (at least enough to get a call and then
> head over to a wireline), this looks like the way
> to go. Also, we should be able to do QOS and let the
> phones grab the bandwidth from the web browsing folk.
>
> (The APs from T-Mobile, which are rebranded, umm Linksys?,
> have this built in.)
>
> There are certainly problems, but ther eare options.
>
>> When you talk about a camp setting, where does the power come from?
>> What's the layout (terrain, foliage, weather in the area etc, do the
>> cabins have metal snow roofs?)... I ran into a problem at my place
>> in idaho, metal snow roofs, 32" of snow on the ground killed the
>> fresnel zone, and during the summer, so much foliage from the trees,
>> wireless couldn't penetrate from one building to the other)
>
> The camp is in the Pa/NY/NJ border area, so yes, there
> will be weather... but it's got adequate emergency power.
>
> Again, I 'm not building anything out to the level of
> a hardened milspec, but something that'll work in the
> main portions of the camp reasonably well will make a
> _huge_ improvement over what they've got now.
>
>> You had talked about Running hard cables, what's the terrain like?
>> flat? easy trenching? Or maybe Hills/rocks, clay, and tree roots in
>> the ground (yuck!)
>
> Flattish, soft soil. Many buildings actually have spare conduit
> space between them.
>
> Aerial cable runs would only be about 50 feet apiece so, aside
> from concerns about lightning, etc., would be doable.
>
> (I'd hope that WDS, as in the APple Extreme, would be
> a simple drop in, but I'd sure like to hear from anyone
> with experience, first).
>
> Thanks.

The reason I asked, was I got bit in the rear in idaho, lots of snow in the
winter, and lots of green stuff grew in the spring summer (blocking wireless
pretty good, so I looked at alternatives, wasn't too enthused about
trenching/hardwire, so looked for a plan c).... For what it's worth, we were
doing a bunch of portable/sat buildings for the local school, however, it
had power to each building, and we changed to powerline networking, and a
wap/router connected to the other half of the powerline transciever, and
just plugged it in wherever we wanted both a wireless and wired connection.

For the cell, we went with a repeater on the main building, yagi directional
on the roof to a tower about 18 miles away, and the output of the BDA
connected to an omni antenna for the staff/students.... (let them use their
own phones, pretty much no matter which carrier)...

Since you already have power from one central place, wouldn't even have to
mess with running cable, you may want to check em out.... (just an aside,
the below suggestion is based on a truism, not the common fallacy that
powerline networking has to be on the same circuit, in fact they have to be
on the same LEG off a transformer, not the same circuit off a breaker box..
If only one electric meter, then for sure it's on the same LEG, that's why I
asked about power, but if you have emergency power, then it's probably wired
off one leg coming in from the public electric already)

Powerline
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Powe...tAdapters.aspx
One main wap/router and 1/2 the powerline unit connected to the router, the
other at the remote buildings, connected to another wap router (router/NOT
the wan input), different ssid's, dhcp server still on, just changed the
default ip address... allows sharing network resources (like file servers
and printers) AND the internet connection, heck if someone happened to have
one of those t-mobile things, or even any other voip device, they could use
in the remote sites, again would be subject to the upload speed of the
internet connection - For more info, read about things like the iphone and
college wireless networks)

cell repeater http://www.cellantenna.com/repeater/...g_repeater.htm
(the school was on 5 acres, we limited one acre/main building and two
closeby to having good cell coverage, happened to also cover the parking
lot, so during the winter, people came from miles around to park in the lot
and talk on the phone, would have been annoying, cept it was a rural area,
and most of the people had plows, and happened to plow for free while they
used the phone - Cool!)

When you said bulletproof and easy, I was thinking we had to look for that
so HS students could use it, and I would guess that even special needs kids
are smarter than HS students :) .....