Air-Stream-APANA

The Australian Public Access Network Association SA (APANA) Node on North Terrace was upgraded on 3rd February 2007. This was one of the first sites in the Air-Stream network to deploy a WRAP 1-1 embedded wireless router three years ago and has been running with good success ever since that time. See: old set-up

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During the last few years we have been upgrading backbones on the core network to 802.11a with great success and after some planning the equipment was put together for an upgrade on this site funded by Air-Stream Wireless members. As seen in the stitched image above the site has good LOS from the North West around to the North East of Adelaide CBD. Access is possible from the ground along North Terrace, Adelaide Uni, the SA Museum and surrounding public areas.

The site deploys two WRAP 2 board (128MB) seen above which have been housed in customised metal water-proof enclosures. The larger enclosure includes a 5 port 100base switch which has been modified with a switch mode regulator to down-convert the 18V DC injected over the Ethernet cable from the basement some 60 metres below.

Due to the long cable run there is a 2V drop and now there are two routers we have upgraded the POE system to a 18 Volt DC 120Watt power supply. The system is short circuit protected and incorporates a LPT control PCB to allow a power cycled of the WRAP units above via the Internet or from the alternate router, if in the rare case of system lock-up.

Note: The waveguide above has been replaced with a 8dbi Superpass Omni

The site now provides not only better coverage because of high speed backbones to Highgate Park and Walkerville but also deploys two high power APs with better driver support under Air-Stream's customized router OS.

Access Point:
North Sector Horizontal Polarization - ssid: Air-Stream-APANA-H
Omni Vertical Polarisation - ssid: Air-Stream-APANA-V

Backbones:
Air-Stream-Walkerville - 5.8Ghz
Air-Stream-Julia-Farr - 5.8Ghz
Air-Stream-Ridleyton
Air-Stream-Woodville-West

North Terrace APANA

This Access Point is located on North Terrace in Adelaide CBD, the image below is a line of site 150 Degrees from North West to North East.

The site was made possible by the Australian Public Access Network Association Inc. a non-profit organisation for individuals who are interested in learning computer networking skills in a friendly hobby environment. http://adelaide.apana.org.au/ or via radio

APANA is located in the Basement of the Building 60 metre below where our Air-Stream router equipment is installed. A low voltage isolated 20VAC 20W supply is feed over an ethernet cable providing good safety. While ensuring suitable power is available to both supply telemetry and UPS systems. An ethernet connection is also available and provides a direct connection between the Air-Stream Network and APANA.

The Router is designed around the SMC 260Mhz embedded CPU PCB, with onboard Flash Card more details at http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm . Which offers spaces for two mini pci slots where I have installed two senao Prims2 100mW cards, leaving two ethernet ports for a Backbone AP and the APANA connction.

This small and low power unit has allowed the installation of both the main board and the UPS system inside a waterproof housing. Creating an opportunity to place the equipment directly where the Antennas are, reducing the amount of cabling and improving signal performance as short coax runs can be deployed.

The Senao 100mW cards run in AP mode under Open BSD and are used for the main Access Points at the site.

The image on the left is the Router and two wave guides. One faces North West the other North East, providing full coverage to the North. The image just to the right is the main backbone. The Dish is 25db and is pointed south to Julia Farr. The backbone uses a Minitar AP in client mode and is connected to the router via an POE cable.