drift's blog

Over the past week, Air-Stream-CLG (Colonel Light Gardens) has undergone several upgrades to improve its throughput to the rest of the network and also its local coverage area.

Upgrades included:
-Switching from a Mitsubishi R100 to a Routerboard RB433
-Switching from a Minitar MNWAPB to a R52H 350mw minipci card to drive the ~8db homebrew 2.4ghz omni
-Extra height on the omni to improve coverage (800mm was added to the mast as that was the only pipe I had available.)
-Switching from an old AT PSU to a Jaycar 24v 1.5A plugpack to power the RB433 over PoE.

Had a few blackouts today, lost the 364 day uptime on the Air-Stream-CLG Minitar :(
Not happy, Jan!

Still, pretty impressive not to have any blackouts or power interruptions in 364 days (my A-S gear isn't on a UPS).

Air-Stream-CLG is still running beautifully :D
It has managed to survive the recent bad weather, still holding a decent signal of -70dBm even in the pouring rain & strong winds! The mast doesn't have guy wires, so it does sway a tad in the wind.

A few weeks back the mast had to be taken down due to a leak in the box housing the R100 & Minitar APs. This caused a few days downtime while I resealed everything and made sure all the components were dry. The SR2 wifi card was the only thing that was affected by this leak, but it's working fine now :)

If you want to see a few extra pictures etc of the install, take a look at http://dorifto.hopto.org/wifi/pix/_Antennas/AS-CLG/

Future plans:
Backbone to Air-Stream-Melrose-Park
Switch AP from a Minitar to a R100 with 400mw minipci

Hurrah! After quiet some time, much swearing, and a bit of luck, I'm finally associated to Air-Stream-Pasadena. Current downstream speeds range from around 60KB/s to 150KB/s. I'm using a minitar ap, datarate is set to 1M. If it is set to auto, speeds tend to be worse. Currently I'm unsure if this is a problem at my end or at Pasadena.

I also have another 19db antenna on my mast, pointing at Melrose Park, however I don't have another AP to connect it to, so its just sitting there looking pretty.

More info to come, perhaps some pics aswell.

Drift