wifi for campgrounds

[denniston]

I've been asked to design a smallish wireless network for our church's district campgrounds. I have about $400 - $500 to spend on the install. I'm planning on installing one primary wireless router with several other routers running dd-wrt as repeaters.

I'm not sure what equipment I should purchase. I've set up several similar connections but on a smaller scale. In the past I've used the trusty wrt54g. I'm wondering if I should look to newer technology for better range? I did a little test install and did some "war walking" and was pretty pleased with the signal strength.

From looking at the charts I liked the looks of the WRT610N, Wzr-HP-g300nh, Wrt320N, RT-N16.

I'm looking for something that has good range, is stable, and will handle a moderate number of connections. (I don't expect a lot of people to be on the network at once, probably only a handful or two)

I appreciate your advice.

P.S. these will mostly likely all be installed in the gable end of buildings around the camp grounds. Thanks

 

[thiggins]

You may be better off using G gear. They don't run as hot and you'll have a wider choice of products that support alternative distros.

You might look at Engenius and Ubuquiti products. They have outdoor APs that support PoE, are weatherproofed and have integrated antennas.

 

[denniston]

Those are good thoughts. I'm looking into some of those products. I definitely ok with sticking with g. I really don't have any familiarity with those brands. Would you say they are pretty solid? You mentioned POE. I'm really thinking more of going with wireless repeaters. Running wires would be great, but i don't think it's feasible. Do these products support repeating functions?

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

Those are good thoughts. I'm looking into some of those products. I definitely ok with sticking with g. I really don't have any familiarity with those brands. Would you say they are pretty solid? You mentioned POE. I'm really thinking more of going with wireless repeaters. Running wires would be great, but i don't think it's feasible. Do these products support repeating functions?

Both brands are well-known and good for the application. Outdoor APs usually support WDS bridging/repeating. But check the specs to be sure.

Repeating and/or mesh will provide extended range without cabling (except for power). But they kill throughput. Each "hop" (radio that a signal passes through until it hits an AP with a wired network connection) imposes a 50+% throughput reduction. This is because the radio has to receive, then retransmit.

In other words, a wireless network based on repeaters is good for browsing, email and other low bandwidth apps. But not so good for media streaming.

 

[denniston]

I just talked to Len Taddei from EnGenius. He recommended the EOC-2611p. Looks like a pretty good product. I'll probably head in that direction. I understand the throughput degradation with wireless repeating. Everything will be a 1 hop. Interesting aside; my internet comes into the house via a wireless repeater. The other night my wife and my son were both able to watch different netflix movies at the same time. But I do agree hard wiring would be the best. Maybe in the future we can hard wire the outlying AP's.

Thanks for your recommendation.

 

[thiggins]

That's pretty impressive that you are able to support two Netflix streams (what was the quality of the connection...how many "dots") from a wireless Internet feed. What are you using as your repeater?

I didn't see WDS support as a feature of the EOC-2611p. You also realize that it is not omnidirectional?

 

[denniston]

My set up is:
6mbps cable modem at the church
connected to wrt54g running dd-wrt (ap mode?)
wrt54g at church in wireless bridge mode repeating the signal at my house.
I'd say it's about 50' - 75' between them.
I'm not sure what you mean by "how many dots"

As far as the EnGenius AP's I've been looking to see what the coverage spectrum is of these antennas. I've read that you can adjust them to be more or less directional? I'm wondering if I should buy the optional omni antenna, or some other brand?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1503200&csid=_21

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3276487&Sku=E155-1034

I've attached a map of the campgrounds that we are working on. What would be your suggestion for placement, and equipement? i.e. ap's, external antennas, etc

 

[DaveMcLain]

One option might be to do something similar to what I'm doing in the installation shown in this thread:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=3052

Use an AP on one end of the link and at one side of the area you wish to cover. Then have a couple of other stations where you have two boxes. Box one would be an AP set up as a "client bridge". It would have a directional antenna that points at the main AP's directional antenna. Connect another box set up as strictly an AP with omni directional antennas so that it can accept clients. You could do a couple of these which would act as relay stations to the main AP. You could add several as needed and the throughput would not be bad at all. Some careful shopping on E-Bay and the use of DD-WRT could allow you to do this inexpensively using equipment that's easily replaced in case of an accident.

 

[denniston]

That's a good idea Dave. I'll keep it in mind for future upgrades.

Right now I'm stuck trying to decide what outdoor omni antenna to buy, and how to determine how much area each ap will cover. I have the radiation patterns of the internal antennas, but i don't know how wide those patterns should be as I'm planning the layout of the wireless network.

 

[DaveMcLain]

Check out the L-Com website they have a TON of different style antennas and pigtails for any application. I bought my dish antenna from them along with several others for different applications.

On the high gain dish I just bought one that used an N connector which is standard and this allowed me to just get a pigtail to make it work with either a Linksys or Engenius box because they have different connectors. One is RP-TNC and the other RP-SMA if I remember right. Keeping the pigtail short and running the box via POE is the way to go. On my setup that's at the shop right now I'm using a Linksys POE kit to run power to the WRT54G that I have mounted inside of the weather proof enclosure.

I've really enjoyed the homebuilt approach because it allows me to use inexpensive boxes purchased via E-Bay or some place like Wal Mart. That way if one would ever conk out a replacement costs very little just because none of the hardware is very specialized.

This all works surprisingly well for me.

 

[thiggins]

My set up is:
6mbps cable modem at the church
connected to wrt54g running dd-wrt (ap mode?)
wrt54g at church in wireless bridge mode repeating the signal at my house.
I'd say it's about 50' - 75' between them.
I'm not sure what you mean by "how many dots"

I think the "dots" thing is only shown by the Roku boxes. It's an indication of the quality level of the stream, shown during initial buffering. Dots range from 1 to 4 and then "HD".

As far as the EnGenius AP's I've been looking to see what the coverage spectrum is of these antennas. I've read that you can adjust them to be more or less directional? I'm wondering if I should buy the optional omni antenna, or some other brand?

I'd have to see the reference that says the antennas can be adjusted between omni and directional. I'm familiar with only omni or directional antennas.

I've attached a map of the campgrounds that we are working on. What would be your suggestion for placement, and equipement? i.e. ap's, external antennas, etc

The best way to determine placement is via site survey. The more trees / vegetation you have, the more APs you're going to need.

 

[denniston]

Is there any way to do a site survey besides trial and error i.e. installing an AP and seeing what kind of coverage you get? My dilemma is to know how many AP's to order, and wether I should set them up in the corners to cover a section or to buy omni antennas to cover a radius? The EnGenius rep said 1 ap would cover 5km, but with the trees and such at the campgrounds my guess is I'm going to need more to cover, just not sure how many...and way to get a rough estimate? I'm not sure if I need 1 or 5. thanks for all your help. This forum has been invaluable!

 

[thiggins]

It's not easy designing a good wireless installation, especially an outdoor one with lots of vegetation.

I would go with higher-gain omnis (6 dBi minimum) vs. directionals. Don't believe any manufacturer claims regarding range. 5 km is highly unlikely, especially with vegetation. Also, that spec is probably a signal-drop range, vs. a range with decent throughput.

What is your goal for throughput by the way, i.e. what applications are you trying to support?

Also, how many users will the network support?

You *might* be able to do it with three APs, but you better get all of them
up as high as possible (clear of trees and buildings). Also move the APs marked 2 and 3 in your diagram to a more central location, so that the three form a triangle.

Make sure you position the repeaters at a point where they get a strong signal. You do NOT want them positioned at a fringe / weak signal point. If you do that, you'll be receiving a low throughput signal, which will then be cut by at least half.

You might also consider Dave McLain's method of using a "backhaul" AP, connected to another AP. With two radios, you won't get the 50% throughput drop.

 

[tipstir]

Is there any way to do a site survey besides trial and error i.e. installing an AP and seeing what kind of coverage you get? My dilemma is to know how many AP's to order, and wether I should set them up in the corners to cover a section or to buy omni antennas to cover a radius? The EnGenius rep said 1 ap would cover 5km, but with the trees and such at the campgrounds my guess is I'm going to need more to cover, just not sure how many...and way to get a rough estimate? I'm not sure if I need 1 or 5. thanks for all your help. This forum has been invaluable!

How large of the camp ground? I would buy the 5 and whatever you don't need you can send it back or return it or just keep it as backup spare. When it comes to wireless you never can go wrong with extra APs.

 

[DaveMcLain]

I think that your choices on AP placement will depend entirely on what you find after some experimentation.

In my example where there is one AP with a large directional antenna and then a client which serves another AP(you could have several of these) I would assume that these clients would have to be arranged into a mostly straight line away from the one "master" or back haul AP.

I have not done a lot of testing but the beam from my antenna is pretty directional at the distance(about 100 yards) that my client is away but even farther away I can still connect to the main AP using the wireless card in my netbook even while significantly off axis. I think you'd have a reasonable amount of freedom in your client AP placement.

I would choose my channels so that the ones which are used for the AP's that are going to accept clients are all different and non overlapping to the channel used by the back haul AP. SSID's and encryption should be different too to help avoid confusion.