Need Suggestions for which router and external antenna to use for network at a marina

What's up all. I'm new to this forum and I'm hoping you guys can help me advance my knowledge of wireless, especially with this certain job I've been contracted to do. Check it out.....

I have a marina in an upscale neighborhood that uses your normal 3meg DSL connection and needs to share that with the boats in the marina. The marina is in the shape of a diamond with the modem (and where the router will be placed) located at the bottom tip of the diamond in the marina office. We're probably talking about a square mile worth of coverage that will be needed (kinda guessing there). Security is not that big of a deal, they have requested to just use a 64bit WEP due to ease of distro of a 10 character WEP key to the 60 or 70 boat owners in the marina. My main concerns are price of equiptment and reliability of signal/connection within the marina. I've seen a few antennas that are from 80 to 300 dollars in price that appear to be what i'm looking for coverage wise (or so they state on the websites), but my main question is with connectors. I assume that it's not as easy as simply screwing in a big coffee can to the back of the linksys and calling it a day. Most of the antennas i came across had an RP-TNC connector to go to the wireless broadcasting device. And i know that most consumer level routers (netgear, linksys) use just TNC or SMC (i could be wrong on that one, if I am please let me know!).

I'm looking for suggestions on which make and model of antenna and router would be the best for use in this application. I'm a network technician by trade so that part is no problem, but this is the first time I've dealt with installing an extended range outdoor wireless network.

Thanks in advance for your help on this one!

-Wop

If you set up from one end a patch antenna would be your best bet. These are semi-directional antennas with a spread of anything from 60 to 180 degrees. The best thing is to work out how many degrees width of coverage you will need from the antenna and choose one that has a beamwidth close to what you are after. Pacific Wireless is an example of a company that makes a wide variety of proven antenna designs, I have found their stuff to be excellent.

Depending on the layout of the marina (e.g. if there are a few obstructions), you might get more reliable coverage with several APs scattered about in a mesh network, each using an omnidirectional antenna to communicate both with each other and the clients. To do this you need access points that support wireless distribution system (WDS).

The majority of high gain wireless antennas use standard 'N' type connectors. Most common brands of access point use RP-SMA (D-Link, Netgear, etc) or RP-TNC (Linksys, Cisco) connectors. Pigtails and adapters to connect antennas to these access points are widely available and inexpensive.

As far as choices of AP go, there is plenty. Linksys WRT54G routers running third party firmware are cheap and do the job well but don't quite have the RF performance some products aimed directly at this type of application have. Senao make some very reliable WDS access points with excellent RF performance and these are pretty inexpensive as well. Have a look for the NL-2611CB3 and NL-3054CB3 access points.

My personal choice for this would be the Mikrotik RouterBOARD 100 or 500 series. It's a tad more expensive but includes an easy to set up hotspot service which is easier to use than WEP for clients and allows more fine control over internet access. It also has WDS support plus everything else you can imagine. Teamed with some Pacific Wireless outdoor hardware these would be pure gold for such a setup.

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Jeremy

Marlborough WiFi Project

Thank you for your input NZ! Good stuff there....


Actually, the first route I was gonna take was a Netgear rangemax router and two linksys WAP54G wireless access points. I've used these access points CONSTANTLY in past applications and I swear by them for a cheaper, MUCH more reliable option to the god-awful "range extenders" made by linksys and dlink (I can't believe they're even still allowed to sell those things). The director of the marina said he would have two plexiglass (sp?) boxes/containers for the WAP54G's made and secured to the top of two lightpoles (about 20 feet high) that sit at the left and right corners of the diamond shaped marina. Weatherproof power cabling down the pole to weather-protected UPS's would also be used. I don't mind doing the work, it just seems like there's probably a better, more cost-effective option.

I was looking at this one http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2415u_pro.php ........how far off am I from what I really need? Also, I can't tell if this will come with adapters to plug into an off the shelf netgear or linksys router (which is what I planned on using).

Also how would I go about accurately determining the degree range that I will be needing for good coverage?

Thanks a million

-Wop

Those antennas are good, a bit expensive though (check out http://www.wisp-router.com/product_i...oducts_id=133). From the base unit something like http://www.wisp-router.com/product_i...roducts_id=322 as it has a nice 65 degree spread while still maintaining reasonable gain.

Either case you will need an RP-TNC male to N male pigtail (eg this)and pass this through a hole in the box, or better still you could use an RP-TNC male to N female bulkhead bolted to the side of the box, then run a short N male - male cable from that to the antenna. The latter method means you dont have to open the box to install/remove the antenna.

I probably wouldn't use plexiglass for the enclosure, better off to get a purpose built enclosure from an electrical wholesaler or a specialist wireless store such as Hyper-Link or WISP-Router. It needs to be reliable plus the purpose built cases usually include mounting hardware and cable pass-through glands.

If you have a map of the area you could work out the angle of coverage required very quickly using a protractor or similar.

How were you planning on getting internet to the WAP54G? WDS is much more reliable than a 'dumb' repeater and saves cables.

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Jeremy

Marlborough WiFi Project

You should look at using the 600mW engenius eoc-3610s

http://www.keenansystems.com/store/c...roducts_id=224