This area has retail and businesses on all sides. It is probably about 1 mile at max the strip with all the buisness. This is mainly a summer community, so buisness are very seasonal and alot of buisness have complained about the pricing for broadband during their summer months. You gotta pay for the buisness plan which is money and it usually ends up with buisness calling us for a solution to steal some weak wifi signal.
Say for example I had a central location in the middle of my towns 'Main Street' with a broadband connection and I wanted to make a town wireless network where all the shops can connect for a charge and get access. I will have to look into what connection I can use, mite be some legality using a cable service and sharing it off.
Now what would be the best solution to spread this from a central location to cover i guess a 3/4 range/radius. That 3/4 mile range mite be a bit off, it is only 1 street, buisness on both side, could only be a 1/2 mile long.
That equipment will probably get you through a single layer of buildings and their interior walls.
The solution for the whole length of the street might be to have an access point every other street corner, alternating the wifi channel to avoid interference.
so maybe cheapest solution mite be to just run a bunch of Buffalo HP-G54 in bridge/wds mode. Try to put in as many of our clients on main street as possible and then have the main router where we got the best interent connection.
What would be the best way for security? Is their any software to manage this, maybe a program like a monthly fee or something. Or maybe they had to have a username/password or something??
I don't know if the cable company would go for that. You might have a hard enough time getting them to let you share a seperate connection every other block. You'd better work out the deal before buying equipment.
Also, repeaters might be more of a boggy headache than you'll want, saving you some money but causing you more troubleshooting and a loss of quality.
Your access points will have to be out along the street, or else you'll need more of them, so you need to think about outdoor equipment, perhaps with power-over-ethernet (POE).
I have been googling 'outdoor wireless mesh networks' and 'outdoor wireless routers/repeaters/accesspoints' and I dont really come accross anything.
What is the difference between a mesh network and running many access points bridged up? Seems they are the same correct?
Do you have a suggestion for hardware? I see Cisco has stuff but mite be a bit out of price range. I also saw some homemade solutions(ex - http://www.mavromatic.com/archives/000451).
I haven't even got to the interent side of it yet, curious more about eh hardware right now.
I dont know how hard it would be to get the power company to let me install something like this on the poles, maybe then i could tap into power and not need to worry about solar/poe. But I have also been looking for solar powered devices.
What is the difference between a mesh network and running many access points bridged up? Seems they are the same correct?
For practical purposes, yes. What I was suggesting was to have the cable company service each access node directly, with 4-8 businesses sharing the node (and cost), which might be faster, more stable, and more palatable to the service provider than dozens of businesses piped through a single account.
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Do you have a suggestion for hardware? I see Cisco has stuff but mite be a bit out of price range. I also saw some homemade solutions(ex - http://www.mavromatic.com/archives/000451).
That's similar to what you'd need. The modem could be inside a building, but the router close to the antenna to avoid signal loss. You'll need a better antenna, though. An 8 dB omni would service the inside of one house with thick plaster walls, but not multiple concrete and brick buildings.
You can use consumer routers if each node is it's own seperate internet connection. And you wouldn't need solar panels. With a power-over-ethernet (POE) converter, you can send DC power to the router over two of the unused wires of the ethernet cable connecting it to the modem.
You would have multiple cable bills, of course, but your set-up would be less expensive and the service would be faster and more likely to actually function as you need it.
It wouldn't work having 1 main router, and all the access points being bridged off the main router? Why exactly not? I was figuring I would put these access points outside maybe on a telephone pole or on some roofs of some shops(1st floor ones), every other one will be on alternating sides of the street. If i was to do this i would have access to power, maybe in some spots. But I also wouldn't be able to run POE, cause I wouldn't want to have to bring the cable into the place. Or am I not understanding that correctly?
Theoretically, you can bridge/repeat your access points with self-contained solar power supplies, but it will be more expensive to set up, slower, and less reliable than having multiple access points that each have a wired pipe straight into the Net. I really don't have good advice for setting up such a repeater system.
Generally, these kinds of projects are more ambitious than reality allows. They aren't money-makers, are often big money-losers, and need to be done as public works kind of projects and not as for-profit enterprises.
Why? If the cable company even allows the whole street to be piped through a single account and the power companies allow huge solar panels and storage batteries to be mounted to their poles, the clients might be so dissatisfied with the repeater service they refuse to pay money for it.
If it were me, I'd start small with a single access point, and use a couple of sector antennas placed back-to-back up above roofline, pointing up and down the street, just to see what kind of coverage that gets, and what kind of equipment the clients might need (like bridges with outdoor antennas) in order to communicate with it.
Okay so I pulled up google maps, and I measured it with a tape measure, and compared on screen(It was 4inches long, 200 feet on google maps was 3/4 of a inch, so 4/.75 = 6, 6x200 1200 feet). Looks to only be about 1/4 of a mile long. The Red, Pink, Blue are locations that would be the best main base, either for those sector antennas, or the main router. The Red would be the best as its a better client of ours, it would be higher then the other two, but the others would work equally as good, just lower buildings. (More text after picture)
Any more input? BTW I am not researching this project to make money, just something I would like to do, I do not need a profit on this, mite be a free service, just something I would like to research, and attempt to get working.
The pink building seems to provide the clearest view around the curve of the street. Line of sight is very important.
As far as antennas go, check the arc of coverage (azimuth) to make sure it covers the width of the street, and get the highest dB you can afford, legally and monetarily. Make sure they're easily adjustable for aiming.
You can always try a repeater later, after you get the main service up, just to see how well it does.
A four-antenna array would be fine. You almost need a customized antenna array, with stronger sector antennas pointing up and down the street, and less powerful ones pointing to the sides. With sector antennas instead of omni-directional antennas, you can place them well above traffic and aim them down into the target areas.
Distance in an urban area is hard to guess, even for those who can actually view the site. What kind of interference lurks in or behind each wall is more critical than the distance across open space. A quarter mile is optimistic, considering that your limitation is going to be determined by the weakness of the client devices. Laptops just don't broadcast that far, especially through brick walls.
To cover most urban areas, a strong access point is needed every other block, meaning they cover 1/12 to 1/8 of a mile. You might get more if the clients have an outdoor directional antenna pointed at yours. You might get less if buildings have thick walls, metal walls, or are running their own 2.4 GHz networks.
Wireless for a 'Main Street' 
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