Advice on building high-power rural wifi access point

Hello, I'm visiting my parents who live in the middle of nowhere. When
I was still living with them I convinced them to buy a Hughes internet
satellite dish, which provides them with some high latency broadband.
My dad has an old Motorola two-way radio antenna which reaches at
least two stories into the air. We live in a sparsely populated, but
relatively flat part of Arkansas, where mostly just my relatives live.
In the interest of bringing this faster than dial-up (we can only
connect at 28kbps due to bad phone lines that will never be repaired
at this rate) to the rest of my family members who live nearby. I'd
need it to transmit at least a mile away.

So my question: What's the highest strength 802.11 b-g transmitter I
can buy, and is it possible to use my dad's existing radio antenna, or
at least the pole it's mounted on.

I'm interested in this idea, because if it's viable, then my family
members can all pool their resources and potentially buy a second
satellite dish which I could traffic merge with the current equipment
to potentially cut the page load times.

On Oct 23, 2:12 pm, BikePilgrim <bikepilg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So my question: What's the highest strength 802.11 b-g transmitter I
> can buy.

Wrong model...you want the AP that can be throttled DOWN in power.

The maximum effective radiated power for a Point-to-Multipoint is 4
watts. Therefore you can use a 4 watt transmitter feeding a zero dB
gain antenna - which means you'll have zero dB gain for the receiver.

But if you use a 13 dB gain antenna with your AP backed down to only
200 mW, you'll have 13 dB gain for the receive side.

BikePilgrim <bikepilgrim@gmail.com> hath wroth:

>Hello, I'm visiting my parents who live in the middle of nowhere.

Google Maps and Google Earth can't seem to find Nowhere, Arkansas.

>When
>I was still living with them I convinced them to buy a Hughes internet
>satellite dish, which provides them with some high latency broadband.

If there are no other alternatives, satellite will suffice.

>My dad has an old Motorola two-way radio antenna which reaches at
>least two stories into the air. We live in a sparsely populated, but
>relatively flat part of Arkansas, where mostly just my relatives live.
>In the interest of bringing this faster than dial-up (we can only
>connect at 28kbps due to bad phone lines that will never be repaired
>at this rate) to the rest of my family members who live nearby. I'd
>need it to transmit at least a mile away.

Have you looked into buying a T1 line with ISP service and sharing the
cost? It's expensive, but if you can get perhaps 10 houses involved
in sharing the cost, it's tolerable. How far away is the nearest
civilization where you can order a T1, cable, DSL, and all the latest
acronyms?

>So my question: What's the highest strength 802.11 b-g transmitter I
>can buy, and is it possible to use my dad's existing radio antenna, or
>at least the pole it's mounted on.

Wrong question. Very high power is not a good guarantee of range or
reliability. All it does it make your transmitter heard over a wider
area. However, the receiver isn't going to hear any farther because
the other end is still running a low power xmitter. The only way to
make that work is to raise the power at both ends of the link.

There are some companies that seem to sell "high power" equipment,
which these days seems to mean anything with 250mw or above. Senao
and Ubiquity come to mind.

>I'm interested in this idea, because if it's viable, then my family
>members can all pool their resources and potentially buy a second
>satellite dish which I could traffic merge with the current equipment
>to potentially cut the page load times.

I think you should look into how to combine two internet connections.
It doesn't just magically combine downloads into one stream. The most
common way is to use a "load balancing router" and let it distribute
the load.
<http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=49&pl1_id=3&pl2_id=20>
<http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=226&pl1_id=3&pl2_id=20>
If you're downloading from a single site, it will still go at the
speed of a single connection. However, if you simultaneously download
from a different site, it will use the other connection and you will
get the combined download speeds. I think you might find it more
useful to get the bigger HughesNet antenna, and just pay for the
faster service.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Oct 23, 12:12 pm, BikePilgrim <bikepilg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, I'm visiting my parents who live in the middle of nowhere. When
> I was still living with them I convinced them to buy a Hughes internet
> satellite dish, which provides them with some high latency broadband.
> My dad has an old Motorola two-way radio antenna which reaches at
> least two stories into the air. We live in a sparsely populated, but
> relatively flat part of Arkansas, where mostly just my relatives live.
> In the interest of bringing this faster than dial-up (we can only
> connect at 28kbps due to bad phone lines that will never be repaired
> at this rate) to the rest of my family members who live nearby. I'd
> need it to transmit at least a mile away.

You may want to read some magazines like HF and Popular Computing, if
you can find back-issues at a library for instance, as they cover this
sort of situation in-depth with step-by-step design & build.

> So my question: What's the highest strength 802.11 b-g transmitter I
> can buy, and is it possible to use my dad's existing radio antenna, or
> at least the pole it's mounted on.

"Strength" of your transmitter is only part of the equation; you need
low-noise signal amplification and possibly electronic-noise filtering
so that you can receive your neighbor's signals at your antenna. You
may want to look at building a cheap signal-repeater / transponder for
each home, with these boosting the signal strength to-and-from the
network's central access point, you can get a much more distributed
system without as many null-signal points in your coverage area.

> I'm interested in this idea, because if it's viable, then my family
> members can all pool their resources and potentially buy a second
> satellite dish which I could traffic merge with the current equipment
> to potentially cut the page load times.

Makes sense. This is not uncommon, you know, even here in the U.S.,
never mind areas in Africa where this sort of implementation is the
normal route to internet access, and there are a number of articles
and even books already published on this subject.

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:hpquh314c2a0npbqsnhdnu7s92uh280h3r@4ax.com...
> BikePilgrim <bikepilgrim@gmail.com> hath wroth:
>
> >Hello, I'm visiting my parents who live in the middle of nowhere.
>
> Google Maps and Google Earth can't seem to find Nowhere, Arkansas.
>
> >When
> >I was still living with them I convinced them to buy a Hughes internet
> >satellite dish, which provides them with some high latency broadband.
>
> If there are no other alternatives, satellite will suffice.
>
> >My dad has an old Motorola two-way radio antenna which reaches at
> >least two stories into the air. We live in a sparsely populated, but
> >relatively flat part of Arkansas, where mostly just my relatives live.
> >In the interest of bringing this faster than dial-up (we can only
> >connect at 28kbps due to bad phone lines that will never be repaired
> >at this rate) to the rest of my family members who live nearby. I'd
> >need it to transmit at least a mile away.
>
> Have you looked into buying a T1 line with ISP service and sharing the
> cost? It's expensive, but if you can get perhaps 10 houses involved
> in sharing the cost, it's tolerable. How far away is the nearest
> civilization where you can order a T1, cable, DSL, and all the latest
> acronyms?
>
> >So my question: What's the highest strength 802.11 b-g transmitter I
> >can buy, and is it possible to use my dad's existing radio antenna, or
> >at least the pole it's mounted on.
>
> Wrong question. Very high power is not a good guarantee of range or
> reliability. All it does it make your transmitter heard over a wider
> area. However, the receiver isn't going to hear any farther because
> the other end is still running a low power xmitter. The only way to
> make that work is to raise the power at both ends of the link.
>
> There are some companies that seem to sell "high power" equipment,
> which these days seems to mean anything with 250mw or above. Senao
> and Ubiquity come to mind.
>
> >I'm interested in this idea, because if it's viable, then my family
> >members can all pool their resources and potentially buy a second
> >satellite dish which I could traffic merge with the current equipment
> >to potentially cut the page load times.
>
> I think you should look into how to combine two internet connections.
> It doesn't just magically combine downloads into one stream. The most
> common way is to use a "load balancing router" and let it distribute
> the load.
> <http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=49&pl1_id=3&pl2_id=20>
> <http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=226&pl1_id=3&pl2_id=20>
> If you're downloading from a single site, it will still go at the
> speed of a single connection. However, if you simultaneously download
> from a different site, it will use the other connection and you will
> get the combined download speeds. I think you might find it more
> useful to get the bigger HughesNet antenna, and just pay for the
> faster service.

and for interactive use, the satellite delay may dominate the effective
performance

ie 2 links will not reduce the speed of light up to orbit and back.....
>
>
> --
> Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
> 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
> Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
> Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
--
Regards

stephen_hope@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl