Reply To: mesh network development in sonoma county?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply.
I think you’re in northwest Rohnert Park. I’m in northwest Santa Rosa.
Without an intermediate station it may be difficult for us to establish a direct link, even with dish antennas (mmmm I have some large redwood trees that may be just in the wrong place!)
A number of years ago, before DSL internet access was as widely available as it is today, I was part of the “No Cat Network”, based in Sebastopol (with meetings at O’Reilly) that was installing a WiFi network to distribute internet access to those who couldn’t get DSL.
Here are a few web sites–
Griffs Digital Ham Radio Site — Digital Emergency Communications
–lists some advantages & disadvantages of using 2.4GHz “WiFi”-like nodes —
http://w5vwp.com/blog/?page_id=17
There’s a link on that page to this one —
http://hamradio.wsu.edu/projects/wan
by the Washington State University ham club,
showing a few simulations of signal path & loss.
Here are some sites —
http://broadband-hamnet.org/
(there’s replacement firmware to download for Linksys and Ubiquiti WiFi routers)
and
http://broadband-hamnet.org/just-starting-read-this.html
http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/section-blog/37-hardware-faqs/101-supported-hardware.html
note especially the link on this page to a .pdf
near the top, “Hardware guide to print “,
with details on quite a few wireless routers.
Alternative firmware at
http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki
Another firmware
https://dev.openwrt.org/
———–
I do have two dish antennas that could be used on 2.4GHz (though I have no idea where or how I could mount them!). I don’t currently have an appropriate wireless router to use. If you already have one, it might make sense for me to try to find a similar one (on ebay).
My email is mcquate (at) sonic (dot) net — so we can correspond more directly.
73,
Dave
WA8YWQ