Wireless Service for a small town

[James Knott]

Sidney Shapiro wrote:
> Hi all. I currently run a server farm in a small Northern Ontario town.
> I have been approached by the town and asked if I could offer high speed
> (or higher than dialup) to the 4,000 or so people who live in the town,
> an area of about 5km. My building is located near the center of the
> town, and does not have direct line of site to a lot of the town, yet
> there are no major structural impedances. Does anyone have an idea of
> how I could get this working? From what I assume, I could put up an
> extra server to act as a gateway to my switches and from there to the
> routers. On the other end of the server, I would run an antenna on the
> roof from a wireless router type box. (I have been looking at the D-Link
> ANT24-1801 Yagi antenna for a base or the SMC SMCANT-DI105 10.5 dBi
> Antenna or the SMCANT-DI145 High Gain 14.5 dBi Antenna - which they
> claim can reach 9 miles without LOS) Once the main base is set up with
> enough power, I would like to be able to install a smaller wireless
> antenna attached to a router in the persons office/home. I am looking to
> do a dry run with about 50 antennas and routers, and expand from there.
> Any suggestions regarding the backend of the service to control access
> and services? Any alt hardware? Is there a P2P solution for this which
> would allow users to boost each others signals?

Are you saying you want to use wireless to distribute the internet
access?  I think you'd need a bit more than what's available with common
wireless gear.  For example, you mention the high gain antenna.  It will
be very directional and limit the area you can service.  You'd be better
using an omni-directional antenna at the base and high gain directional
antennas at the customer.  You'd also want to use equipment designed for
multipoint distribution, such as what Look was using a few years
ago.Also, how does the internet connection get into town?  There's a
couple of O'Reilly books that cover much of what you're planning.




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