I'm looking for cheap, bulletproof, simple, and easy

Oh, and also for Peace on Earth, the end of taxes,
the truth about the Kennedy murder(s), and the
phone number of that cute Fed.

But barring all that...

I've been volunteered to help in a pretty worthy
cause, but I'm inexperienced in what they need.

I've hooked up single base stations aplenty for small
businesses and families, but this is much bigger.

Situation: A summer camp (with some year round usage)
in the middle of nowhere cellular wise. They've got
an internet connection and a single base unit, letting
the office staff and a kid's computer room get online.

They're a perfect candidate for the T-Mobile
"HotSpot At Home" offer. (This is a recent addition
to TM's services, announced the same week as
the ipod, so few folk heard about it. If you've
got one of their newer/compatable phones, it'll
use an 802.11 connection when available. This
works seamlessly for both incoming and outgoing
calls, and, for that matter, will work if
you're at an 802.11 spot in, say, Russia
or Pakistan.)

The camp is a specialty one halping kids with
illnesses, and a good number of the volunteer
medical staff (and everyone else, of course)
would like to be reachable without having to
give out the camp's number, wait for a runner, etc.

So.. what I'd like is a recommendation on how best
to set up, say, a half dozen APs in the camp and
have them feed back, eventually, to the "cable modem".

(they'd be inside the buildings, so weather and power
aren't big issues).

I can run the ethernet cabling, and could even do
an ethernet<-> fiber optic bridge, although I'd prefer
options for wireless hopping.

The main problem is that it's got to be something
I can pre arrange here in the city, then bring
the boxes up there, spend a day or so, and
have them work.

Note that we're not worried, at this stage,
of outside interference/leaches.

My initial gut feeling is to use a half dozen
Airport Extremes with their WDS mode, but I've
got no experience with them.

Price is a bit of a concern, but not super critical
within reason.

I can spend plenty of time in town working and preparing,
but travelling to the camp itself is a Big Deal so
I'd hope to minimize those as much as possible.

Remote maintenance of the "pull the plug, with 15 seconds,
and put it back in" will be possible. More than that
is uncertain.

Suggestions, pointers, experience notes, cheerfully
appreciated.

Thanks


__________________________________________________ ___
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

I believe that Buffalo Technology routers are head and shoulders above
the other consumer products in terms of reliability. I'm talking
Netgear, Linksys, DLink, etc.

I talked up Buffalo Tech in a recent thread but you might not have
seen it.
--
David Arnstein (00)
arnstein+usenet@pobox.com {{ }}
^^

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?

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)

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!)

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.


--
__________________________________________________ ___
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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 :) .....

Does anyone else get a half-second delay between talkers when using T-
Mobile WiFi Hotspot@home? T-mobile blames Qwest (my Megabit broadband
provider) and Qwest blames T-mobile. The ping time to Google is 84
milliseconds. The ping time to T-mobile is double that - could Qwest
be intentionally degrading T-mobile's packets? My Qwest connection
rates "97% service" using speed-rating programs. My Wifi phone is the
Samsung one and it works great on the regular network. All my
computers are off the internet and I still get the half-second delay
between talkers. I am pretty stupid so please forgive me if part or
all of this makes no sense. -Vance in Denver