New High Central Node coming online soon, advise needed.

Hi Guys,

I finally got off my ass and started causing an awesome location for an AP. The location is the top of a 9 story tower block in Grafton. About 300m from Auckland hospital.

The basic situation is, we're a university halls of residence. During the uni semester we have around 140 residents conencted on a LAN. We are now going to extend this to two other hostels which will have about 90 and 40 users respectivly. As this hostel will be the central peering point, I figured why not go all out and make it a AP for the wireless community at the same time.

I've got a digital camera coming tomorrow to do a 360 degree photos so we can get an idea of home many people can see us. We can see devonport, the Waitakares, the back of remura etc. Will post photo here

The first stage will involve putting up a 180 degree waveguide up pointing west. This will be an open AP. It will be used by a couple of nodes on site and anyone else that can connect to it. The orientation of the waveguide is yet to be choosen, hopefully upright with a large downtilt on it so the local sites and connect. If that fails, it'll be mounted horizontally.

Next getting two dish antenna pointing at the other hostels and getting them connected.

So here's what I see needs to be done, and the order it'll need to be done.
1. Get another AP and the waveguide.
2. Get some IP ranges, (one for each hostel) and the interconenctions.
3. Switch all the IP's here to the new range. (DHCP not handling all addrs yet)
4. Mount the antenna and AP.
5. Work out how to do the routing, and if I need another server to do it.
6. Setup a server to handle routing.
7. Connect and test with any one that can connect.
8. Connect other two hostels.
9. Have fun and try not to break anything.

Basic network setup diagram follows.

Internet access will only be available to our residents (have a plan for this bit).

So, I've got the approval and some money is available, as cheap as possible would be an advantage. Now I need some suggestions, more details, experience from you guys as to how I'm going to pull this off.

Timeline for initial stuff: About two weeks to have something working.

So what have I missed, anyone have any brilliant ideas that would make my life easier.

Feel free to contact me:
Mike Cochrane
mike@graftonhall.co.nz
373 3994 (work)

- Mike :-)

Pretty Map, Photo stolen from: http://www.linz.govt.nz/rcs/linz/pub/web/r...apR11/index.jsp

Other hostels are 95% confirmed, I'll give names when all confirmed and I have permission to. Some of you will know from the map anyway.



- Mike :-)

Looks really good.

What APs are you going to go for. I'd choose a 802.11g.

Do you have something to test with on the weekend to see what else is out there?

The IP range might be changing too.

Going for 802.11b's at the moment as they're cheap.

I'm hopefully going to have a waveguide up on saturday to play with. Pointing east from here.

- Mike :-)

Thats a 140 ppl LAN damn that is some bandwith !!!

Would be mint... wouldn't image much work would get done.. Gamers paradise !!!

32 Player Desert Combat baby !!!

__________________
Major Havoc
<a href='http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~tuppa/' target='_blank'>Ping Zero </a>
[PzC]

Wait until we get all 3 hostel connected. Interhostel games with 200+ residents?

- Mike :-)

So how are you going to connect to the Internet? how can a user pay for this access?

__________________
Wi-Fi Guy
Auckland

Only the students that are living onsite will have internet access. It won't be available to the community. We don't have the bandwidth for that yet.

- Mike :-)

As Promised, here are the photos from the top of our building. West and East are 180 degree panoramas, North is about 100 degrees. Click to see full sized versions.

Facing East:

First Waveguide will be facing this way, should go up tomorrow.

Facing West:

Second Waveguide will go this way, up by mid Jan.

Facing North:

Two Point to Point links going this way. Others in city may be able to hit them though.

So can anyone see where they live?

- Mike :-)

I can see myself in the east view, I have a fairly good view of the hospital frome home.. I'm in that valley to the left of Mt Hobson in the pic

Hey Bender,

There's a waveguide up there at the moment. Feel free to have a got at connecting if you want.

ESSID: GH-Tower-Public
Channel: 3

Tell me if you have any success. DHCP is running, you'll get an IP address and should have internet access.

- Mike :-)

Don't have any gear at present apart from the two little wireless cards I'm using at home, am hoping to give it a shot soon, going to grab a card with a detachable aerial on Monday and start looking at antennas.

Okay I have my gear now and have been trying all day to connect, I'm about 2.1km away with just a sparse tree in the way, however using Helix's 15dbi antenna we were able to connect fine. Using my 19dbi grid I'm not having a hell of a lot of luck, I have tried horizontial and vertical polarisation with no joy.

Holding it in my hands on the balcony I briefly spotted Helix and rnet12 (Radionet on ANZ Tower in town). I have now mounted it on a large pole attached to a ladder which is more solid so shouldn't be shaking much, although still cannot see you.

Is your equipment all up and working? Having a look around now for the hack to increase antenna power on my AP to see if it will help.

Hey,
I noticed the NZMike AP on the Auckland map a couple of weeks ago, and I've been trying to figure out where abouts in Grafton there was a 220m high tower, and then I stumbled onto this forum, your closer then I thought possible, I'm across the road in the Post graduate accommodation (Park Road).
I cant get a signal in my flat on the bare wifi card, so it looks like I'll have to buy an small external antenna.

Hey guys,
I am currently living in an apartment in Hobson Street on the 3rd floor. I can see a clear view of the ANZ building from my balcony. My Kismet is picking up a AP with a clocked SSID "Radionet", and under info it says "ANZ_Mike_AP\000\000Gq\350\000\000\000"

After googleing ANZ Mike Radionet the best thing I came up with was this forum. Though you might want to know Also maby tell me a bit more.

Cheers
-Antony