Wireless Mesh not just for surfin the net

https://www.ekahau.com/products/T101/

There are a lot of new products coming out in the market place an the above was is just a sample of what a wireless mesh can do for you. Most people think that wireless mesh is surfing the internet or getting emails. The market of tracking anything with Wi-Fi tags is really taking off. Remember when GPS was all the rage. Think again with Wi-Fi tags you can track almost anything using your wireless mesh.

Building a 802.11b network may be now considered slow. Just because human need bigger and faster doesn't mean your network should go obsolete.

Denial of Service

Feb 22, 2005 moskaluk.com website was hit we a denial of service attack. Generally this is the first time in 5 years that my site was not up and I would like to apologize to everyone who tried to get to the site but could not. Unfortunately my provider has to put more layers of safety into the site which mean more cost to me in the long run.

Thanks for your patients!

Don Moskaluk

Wireless Mesh Innovators

Sometimes I just wonder why I investing my money, my time, my resources into Wireless Mesh Technology. I know it the next big thing but I keep wondering if there is another solution. Recently I wrote to a colleague in New Zealand who thought my comment was slightly amusing. He suggest that I share this with you all.

Here is my thought on Wireless Mesh:

I hope that mesh technology is not nature way of removing idiot innovators by natural selections. You know climb on top of roof frozen roof, hanging on for dear life, then watch them fall?

What was I thinking!

Outdoor Unit (ODU) Assembly - Part 2

Original article can be view at http://www.moskaluk.com/outdoor_ass_part2t.htm

The next assembly is mounting the antenna. For this operation two antenna are used with one radio card. The radio card has 2 MMCX male slots available. Rather than putting in two identical antenna I using a mixture of directional antenna and an omni directional antenna.

This give me a unique radiation pattern. The direction antenna has 65 degree projection and the purpose is to cover a long distance between gateway and it neighbour node. The omni direction is design to mesh with clients and with other nodes with in its radiation pattern.

This principal has been not documented very well; however, it been tried by a number of people who have shown success. I believe the first person who adopted this principal was a kid that had a link across a lake. When the wind picked up the lake became choppy and the link was hard to maintain. The kid put a directional antenna on one of the radio cards and left the omni direction as is. He also did the same on the other side of the lake.

Switching on antenna diversity he placed one direction antenna to listen while the other directional antenna across the lake to send, such TX RX setting. As the story goes he hasn't had a problem. (I just want to thank Lynn for educating me.)

In my scenario the antenna and radio cards can work in diversity mode; however, I will be running them as two antenna on the radio card with out diversity.

This assembly requires to drill three holes, one for the omni directional antenna, one for the directional antenna and the other for the power cord. Next I screw in the backing plate before threading the pigtail and antenna in.

The omni antenna whole is drilled in the center of the unit. the antenna is placed in and screwed to the pigtail. This holes it in place. Next seal the antenna on the outside by running clear silicon (waterproof) around the base of the antenna on the outside. No connection is visible on the outside.

Install the second antenna on the outside of the lid. Measure and Drill four holes as shown. Four machine screws and nuts are used to hold it into place. Seal the edges of the antenna and around the screws.

Next drill a hole for the power cord and for the second pigtail. This located at the bottom of the ODU. I add a nib around the whole to work as a drip for rain water. I then thread power cable and pigtail through. I put a stop on the power cord and mounted inside the box. The Pigtail does not get a stop. I then seal the opening again with a clear silicon.

Then add a single power plug to the outdoor extension wire and and plug the power cord in.

Note this unit contains a Ethernet over Power line rather than Power over Ethernet. The device needs normal electricity as well as an ethernet connection from the motherboard to device. In the same dwelling another connector is plug into the wall and the ethernet is either connected to LAN or PC.

Then attach the Pigtail to the radio card. Connect the N connectors to the Male to Male N connectors.

The power cable is a outdoor grade unit with industrial plugs. The power cable is actually a long extension cord. The idea is that any electrician can install rather than any antenna installer. Either you can put a plug into or you can mounted to a switch. Nevertheless the options are yours to make!

Don't for get to test your unit out prior to installing it!

The assembly for this device is pretty unique in that it has two antennas on a single 200 mW 802.11b radio card with two antennas. It can act as either a gateway or repeater mode in either wired or wireless mode.

Lesson learn first if you notice that the white directional antenna has been install upside down. I forgot to switch that cover around. Second the regular outdoor power cable is coming out of the side of the unit. This should have been drilled on the bottom, as rain falls downward. Also I forgot to tell you to put silicon around the power connection.

I have made many variation of this basic unit but this one was unique.

Mobile Mesh First Flight continues

Well you read it here first about Mobile Mesh First Flight and now it all over the net. Here are some links to the video and an article!

Video is now on the website

http://www.wireless.southwitham.net/html/news.html

and article on The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/broadband_planes/

Metropolitan nodes topology in Texas?

Article with pictures can be view at www.moskaluk.com/dual_radio_install_in_texas.htm

February 14, 2005 Kenny Bain turned on an access point in McLeod, TX that pulls it's bandwidth from the Vivian network. "This is my first access point (on the LA network) located in Texas" said Kenny. He used the TC10000 motherboard and installed 2 PCMCIA adapters in it. The total trip from my Vivian LA to McLeod Texas is about 6.2 miles. Looking at this picture, it's hard to tell, but this is on the biggest hill in town.

He buried an AC line out to it. The tower that the dish is aimed at is 5 miles away. The mast is 20 feet tall. The extra coax that is rolled up is there in case he needs to go up another 20 feet. If you pay close attention, you can see the grounding rod and straps going to the gear and antennas. The AP is grounded, as well as both antennas.

Kenny explained that there is no shielding between the radio cards. He put them on
ch 1 (local access) & ch 11 (backhaul).
-12dBi omni and 24dBi grid.
-That's a 1 3/4 inch pipe - 21 feet long Pipe.

The unique feature is Metropolitan nodes topology does not have to be located in a city. Linking towns together is another good example for dual radio cards.

The Need to Dream

Article can be view on www.moskaluk.com

When I started with wireless technology back in 1996 it was a need for a company to reduce recurring costs. The cost was that it had many facilities and warehouse all located in a 20 Km zone. Using statistics and trying to eliminate waste of the cost of wired networks, I came across many products that with a little capital cost would save the cost of many T1 connections. All I had to do was put up a few antennas.
The need to get better networking and low cost was the need back then. Today with open source product of Locustworld the idea of having and sharing bandwidth with my friends and neighbours was the goal. The DSL connection I had was and is very flakey.  

It wasn't until a year after I finished writing my dissertation on metropolitan area networks that I started to experiment with Locustworld. In the dissertation I show that economic advantages would be in the area of ISP when the ISP was to use it own infrastructure. I used technology examples such as, Free Space Optics as a backbone and Wireless as the last mile solution. 

Mesh was just being experiment on by a number of companies. The one that caught my eye was Mesh Networks. As I tried to contact them to buy some equipment I was told that they only deal with Tier one customers. 

I then came across and knew about Locustworld because of the posting of Jon Anderson. After reading in slash dot new hardware that Locustworld came out with I thought I should give it a try. Once I started with 3 mesh nodes I saw that this could actually grow exponentially and that the dream of a Metropolitan Area Network using my own infrastructure could actually happen. A pretty big jump from 3 nodes to a whole city!

Almost everyone I talked with that starts Open Source Network is doing it from the grass roots up. Why the technology is still relatively new. You hear everyday that Nortel, Mesh Network, Tropos, Belair, etc. are building out new wireless meshes. You also here the problems of large municipalities trying to get into telecommunication. No body is bragging that the have Metropolitan solution made. No one is claiming best practices And the reason? We are all still learning. Oh even my own home town of Toronto E-city commission is trying to get into wireless mesh. And everyone wants it and everyone is looking for leadership.

The need to dream is apparent the need to succeed is paramount! 

Outdoor Units (ODU) Assembly Part 1

View article with pictures at http://www.moskaluk.com/outdoor_unit_assembly.htm

The outdoor assembly project, using the new outdoor enclosure, is moving along. After testing out the MeshAP Software and Hardware I am now ready to begin assembling the MeshAP with the Outdoor enclosure.

I allow 0.25 inch spacing between the power supply and mother board. I also ensured that the unit was offset with space for the power cord and other plugs.

With the non metallic backing plate of the enclosure I have mounted the mother board and the the ATX power supply. The power supply was mounted using self tamping screws. I noticed the model of ATX I have has a fan. There are no mounting holes where I want to install the unit to the backing plate. I use the area with fan and drill four holes.

On the backing plate I mounted the mother board with hex risers and with riser hex screws. These were purchased a electronics shop. The spacer have a tamper on both ends.

The size of the riser was 0.5 inch.

Once the power supply and the motherboard board where mounted I installed the radio card again and plug it in to see if it still worked.

The next assembly was to attach the radio card permanently to the motherboard and the backing plate. I notice in my first attempts at ODU that, with out a backing plate, I simply plug the radio card in to the motherboard. There has been numerous time that the vibration due to wind has loosen the PCI radio card adapter.

To mount it I used a wire that fit through the hole of the adapter, and drilled two hole directly below the hole in the adapter. I then threaded a wire between the whole in the back plate and then through radio card adapter. I twisted the wire firmly so that there wasn't any movement in the radio card. Warning if you twist the wire too firmly you may break the radio card adapter. I use this method because sometime I need to replace the radio card. It is not eloquent but it works!

The Next Best Thing - Not Again

One the biggest complaints about Open Source Wireless Mesh is the lack of availability of Radio Cards and more to the point the lack of speed and bandwidth. The problem with Linux distro's are they don't support many types of radio cards. There restricted to Prism chip sets or Anthros. There are also Atmel drivers available. Nevertheless the problem also is the lack of speed and bandwidth. One would think that with 802.11G that bandwidth would really help. Well so far it is really limited to short distance. 
 
On the horizon, in 2006, there is a new standard call 802.11n. Yes it will be compatible with A and G but what it has is tremendous speed and bandwidth. There has been talk about speed exceeding 300 or 400 Mbps. The product is call MIMO short for multiple-in, multiple-out.

This technology works by having multiple antennas 2 or more. The technology is available to day that exceed 100Mbps but the problem with MIMO isn’t with the technology, but rather the manufacturers are based on non-standards. These radio cards won’t be certified by The Wi-Fi Alliance or any other group. So far Dlink, Bilken and a few more manufacturers have access points and radio cards.

The talk on other blogs are that they are amazing and they blow away 802.11g for distance and performance. However they currently do not provide interoperability with other manufacturers. The worst part, is this generation of MIMO technology isn’t what the final 802.11n specification will look like. So purchasing MIMO today except for specific applications in which you need substantially higher throughput and range from a single device over interoperable, certified 802.11g means you may be buying a standalone device.802.11n might achieve speeds of several hundred megabytes per second. There’s is practically a total certainty that the final 802.11n won’t be just a firmware upgrade, but rather a difference in both hardware and silicon compared to today’s MIMO devices.

Here is where we all kick in. Again the biggest hurtle to these type of radio cards are that they don't have linux drivers and they cannot create an Access Point. Rather than wait for someone to make linux drivers why don't we all ask the main chip manufacturer to provide Linux drivers that are worthy or creating an Access Point like Prism based radio cards? Since the standard is not official would a letter campaign by over 100,000 user get there attention?

The chip manufacturer is called:
Airgo Networks
900 Arastradero Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304

T: 650-475-1900
F: 650-475-1708

info@airgonetworks.com

Let start spreading the news and ask them in your own words to ensure that licensed manufacturers also produce linux drivers.