New Node in Auckland CBD Covering West Auckland!

Finally, my node is active!!!!
It is one of ShadowX's slotted waveguide on top of the ihug building facing west.
It covers a damm large area.
No internet offered as yet (no plans to either) however I do intend to get dchub and an ftp/http file server online soon.

If you live west and can connect, or are in the area and have a chance to attempt to connect, I would appreciate comments in this forum, in particular antenna type, card type, signal, noise, etc.


Details:
D-Link 900ap+ Access Point (17dBm)
ShadowX (Borg) 8 Slot Waveguide (18dBm)
Channel 13
MAC 00-80-C8-AC-C2-48
SSID cbd.johnburns.nzwireless.org (SSID transmit enabled)
WEP disabled
IPSubnet 10.23.28.0/24
Access point IP 10.23.28.254
DHCP range 10.23.28.1 - 10.23.28.50

Its not too exciting as yet as its just an AP however with a nice large area of west auckland It should be in a useful spot.

Thanks
John

Excellent, well done.

Same config as me; Antenna and AP wise.

Just a question - feel free to correct me, but shouldn't you
be transmitting on a channel between 1 and 11.
I thought 12 and 13 were not used in NZ

Steve

When did you get your wave guide off ShadowX? It was probably mine. again. boo hoo. everyone else is having fun but me. :cry:
From what I've heard they sell like hot cakes. and work real well.

does this node covers auckland CBD? i got no signal in my PDA.

Is this actually _ON_ the ihug building? Do you work for ihug or something, or if you dont mind me asking, how did you get permission.

Do you see any of the north shore, perhaps davenport?

John,

Any chance of getting a photo of it?

JJ,

Hahaha.. Well you gotta be quick with them waveguiced. No point in having them sitting around doing nothing

Its going to be really interesting to see what sort of range your going to get from there.

YES it is

I contract to ihug at the moment

I asked the CEO

At this stage It cannot see devonport however I have plans to put another on the nor'eastern side of the roof

I will try to get photos soon.

Cheers
John

Sounds like these wave guides rock - what is stopping you quietly hooking it up to an Internet port?

__________________
Wi-Fi Guy
Auckland

Probably the same guy that let him put the aerial on the roof!!

Wookie - Absolutely right, part of the arrangement was that I only used channels not in use and I did not connect to the LAN in the building.

I have changed the channel in use to 11 due to both requests from nzwireless users and the fact I need to use a pci card which only supports 1-11 to connect from home.

Also, to reiterate, the antenna is in the CBD but faces directly at TeAtatu peninsula. Basically all of west auckland with a view of the cbd will be able to get it with a decent antenna.

I am doing some range tests with a Sky tv dish and will get back with results and diagrams in the near future.

Cheers
-John

Detected with PocketWarrior on an Ipaq Pocket PC with
a Linksys WPC11 Ver 3 Pcmcia Card.

Located in my office in Newton Road, just below and opposite
the Dogs Bollix. Approx 570m away (according to my GPS mapping software)


BSSID 00:80:C8:AC:C2:48
SSID cbd.johnburns.nzwireless.org
CHANNEL 11
WEP N
FIRST SEEN 13:37:05
LAST SEEN 13:39:39
SIGNAL -78
NOISE -92
FLAGS 65
BEACONS 100


SteveM

I work across the road from you :P

I wonder if i can pick it up from here

Roll up, Roll up!
Tonight only!!
Antenna will have a modified camera flash strobe on top of it, should flash from dark until about 1am or so.
One flash every 5-8 seconds.

If you live out west, get out your binoculars and take a peek.
Approximate position from west (te atatu ish anyway).
Take the distance between the skytower and the asb tower (tall building with lit up yellow ASB on top).
Go to the right of the ASB building for about 4 times this distance.
You should be looking at the newcall building. antenna is to the bottom right of the newcall building.

LOOK FOR THE FLASH and report back......

Cheers

-John

Thanks! I'll take a look tonight.

Try as I might, I couldn't see it. I was looking at an area where there were a bunch of buildings with red lighting on them. I think the ihug building may just be a bit left of there. Unfortunately to look at left of there I'd have to get on the roof, as Birkenhead is in the way when looking from the deck.

I saw it, and realised that my idea of what was where was a little out.
Either way, I now know where the antenna is which makes alignment far easier......

Does anyone know the best way to align these things?
My sky dish on the roof picks up the signal, albeit weak.
I then put a spare ap on my sky tv dish and thought that I could tap into the waveguide to align the signal for the downtilt this way - I can pick up literally 50 or 60 aps from its present position, just not mine.....

Maybe I'll rehash the parabolic dish feed to see if that changes anything.

Cheers

-John

Dont forget to take the polarisation into account. you may need to rotate the feedeer by 90degrees.
In theory a reflected signal has no polarisation but in practce i have seen it with a polarisation and have no idea as to why.

The 8slot is horizontally polarised, and my tin can feed, the little copper element is mounted horizontally inside the can which from what I understand is horizontally polarised.

Anyone have an idea what a normal (standard) omni antenna is, I can pick up a lot of signals as soon as I turn the feed 90 degrees, but I believe this means the signal is vertical.

Maybe I need to take my time and make a proper biquad antenna, or failing that stop being so cheap and buy a 24db grid.

-John

Does anyone know of a place where I can get a cheap 24db parabolic antenna? (or even a smaller parabolic) Fab-corp have them but apparently shipping isn't all that cheap for them.

www.scarfies.net.nz

They are listed at $180 each pickup, but scarfies quoted me $200 each delivered to Auckland.

-John

I would sugest holding off for a week or two as we have some other bits in the pipe line that may be better suited to what your after.

John your node detected from top of Mt Eden

1.4kms away

Sig -84
Noise -90

Also detected my node bigted.akl.nzwireless.org

6.2 kms!

Sig -85
Noise -92

Detected with PocketWarrior on an Ipaq Pocket PC with
a Linksys WPC11 Ver 3 Pcmcia Card, no external antenna.

SteveM

that's pretty good for something with no ext aerial!!

After mucking abour with a 60cm SkyTV dish and getting a signal too low for any decent use, I brought home a 90cm dish and mounted it on my roof, a little further out, with a better view of the city.
Coupled to this is my new high tech Liquorice allsorts can feed. I am now pulling in a -48dbm signal at the feed can - this goes as high as -40 but the lowest value was -48 over the last 6 hours.
Add to this about 12 metres of RG213 and the signal is getting a lot worse.

I hope to have an ftp server online shortly so all you people out west, pull finger and get to it! A wireless link is no fun with only 1 connection.

-John

John,

Is there a second aerial that connects back to you at home? Or is it a stand alone AP?

Wookie

Wookie,
At the moment I am playing around with a 90cm dish and a tin can feed. The only issue is that I have a perfect signal at the dish (-30dbm!) but the length of rg213 I am using is a little too long.

I am in need of around about 15 metres of LMR400 which should fix the problem.
I tried tonight mounting a USB client on the roof and using 3 active repeating USB cables to connect to it but it doesn't like that.
I'm not too keen to be running a spare pc in the roof so at the moment I am on hold until I can get a decent length of cable.

cheers
-John

What about POE from the PC in the house to the AP and dish?
Thats the setup i run... i must take some pics. Infact ill go do it now!


Wookie

Wookie,
In fact this is what I am looking at. I plan to use a 900ap+ at home in client mode - how reliable are they? Will I end up using 2 ip addresses (one for the ap in client mode and one for my pc?) or is the ap's ip address transparent when in client mode?

Either way, I will try this tonight with a *borrowed* ap and if I am happy with the results will buy one for the job.

Regards
John

The AP's IP is transparent when you are in client mode. I normally set the AP's to the same IP as my network for ease of management
AP has a 192.168.0.? IP and the client gets assigned a 10.10.0.? IP

john, do you recognise any of these buildings?

Sorry the image is a bit crap, I had to take it with digital zoom.