Node Fremont
Status: Out of service...
I have taken down my node. It has been up for more than a year and it really had no traffic to speak of. SeattleWireless has been a great experiment... but I believe that some technical limitations of existing off-the-shelf 802.11b hardware may prevent the goal of a wireless metropolitan network from being achieved. I learned a great deal from all the folks involved in SeattleWireless and I thank you all for your willingness to help. Two and a half years ago I knew nothing about TCP/IP and today I am comfortable building Linux routers; I didn't know what SSH or VPN were and now I use them almost every day. Thanks guys!
I have a few thoughts about my experiment with wireless hardware that I thought I would share: I believe the point to multipoint (hidden node) problem was the show stopper which prevented my node from having the utility we needed from the network to make it something that would scale. One channel could never be used for more than a point-to-point link. At one time there were more people that wanted to peer with my node than channel space would allow. The open-source community has not come with a workable solution to the hidden node problem - until it does, SeattleWireless will not be able to grow in the way it was first envisioned. Also, the ever-increasing background noise of 802.11b has also cause signal to noise reduction to the point where long-distance point-to-point links that operated well a year ago do not function today.
For reference, I will leave the old node info below
Upstream Links: NodeOne and NodeSPU link with Node124 is currently down for upgrades.
We had a successful link tests with:
QaNode (with 8dB patch I get 17dB SN even though it is way off the axis of my antenna)
Location: 4018 Greenwood Ave North Map
Node Type: CxNode
Equipment installed:
- RG-1000 with Hyperlink Tech 8dB omni antenna
P350 router box running LEAF Bearing linux distribution (http://www.leaf-project.org) with two Dlink DWL-520 cards and two 13dB molded Yagi antennas from DbiPlus.
- Access point SSID is seattlewireless and hands out 10.18.4.*/24 for client connections with DHCP
- link to node one is 10.18.4.0/30 - SSID = southlink
- link to node SPU is 10.18.4.16/30 - SSID = swnhub1
link to node124 is 10.18.4.12/30 - SSID =?TBD?
Services Offered: Access to the remainder of the SeattleWireless network! Just associate and DHCP
List of all the hardware:
- RG-1000 (in bridge mode)
- Hyperlink Tech 8dB omni antenna
2 Molded 13dB Yagi antennas from DBiPlus
- 10 foot mast (1 1/4 inch EMT conduit)
- 12 feet of LMR-400 for omni
- Two 10 foot cables of LMR-200 for directional antennas
- Power over ethernet -Sort of- used all 8 wires of a separate Cat5 cable just for power to RG
Waterproof plastic junction box (just like this WaterProofBoxes)
- Nuts, bolts and angle iron for mast mounting to house
- Lots of tywraps
- UPS
Old P-350 linux box (LEAF "Bering" distribution see http://leaf.sourceforge.net ) for router (mounted on the side of my house!)
The Plan:
I wanted to have all radios mounted on the roof. Coax is expensive and causes signal loss. I did use a 12 foot coax for the RG because I did not want a big ugly box on top of the mast. I was able to run the coax down the center of the mast so my installation looks clean and the coax is protected. The yagi antannas for the PtP links also have 10 foot cables (LMR-200).
