Small town

defyndie · #1 (**permalink**) 09-19-2006, 04:03 AM

Greetings,

I have a few questions that maybe some of you WiFi gurus will be able to answer. I am throwing around the idea of starting a WiFi network for my hometown. It's a small town, only about 5,000 people, I'm not sure about diameter, radius, and sq. ft. but it's nothing that big.

The questions are:

1.) How many antennas do you think I would need? What other equipment will be needed?

2.) How far will these antennas reach? Feet? Yards? Miles?

3.) How would it work? (I'll explain)

Would I have to get a T3 connection at one place, then broadcast that one connection with uber coverage? Or would I set up multiple connections spread uniformly and broadcast the individual connections half uberly(ish?)?

Any other help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a lot of homework to do on this, but like I said, just throwing around the idea.

Thanks in advance,
Wade

NZLamb · #2 (**permalink**) 09-21-2006, 05:50 AM

It certainly sounds feasible and I know of several people (including myself) who have done similar projects.

Generally speaking, high gain wireless antennas will cover anything up to 20km quite happily without too much complication, depending on their size and spread. The key factor is that you need to have a good line of sight between any two points in order to obtain coverage as solid objects very quickly absorb RF at microwave frequencies.

While it may be possible for you to broadcast from one location (this will depend on the layout of the area you wish to cover) you need to consider the load and reliability you want from the equipment. The more access points you have, the better you can spread load accross them and you reduce single points of failure.

As an example, a typical point-to-point 802.11g wireless bridge is good for up to about 25Mbps real world throughput over a distance of up to about 10km with a good quality link, so you you would want a minimum of two access points if you intend on making the most of sharing a T3 internet connection.

If you are wondering about gear for such an application, check out the offerings from MikroTik. This stuff is very popular with wireless ISPs as it is miles beyond the capability of a lot of other wireless gear and most of the traffic management can be done in the same box.