As a new person I have found there is an access point about 200m from my house (Melrose Park) and another 2 access points within 1 Km of my home.
Is there value in putting more access points if the area seems well serviced?
Assuming my bucket of money to spend on stuff like this is limited (and small).
Would it give better value to the community to put resources into less developed areas?
Community Wireless Network
The network is owned and shared by all members, making it bigger always means, better coverage, more members and more content. Unlike other hobbies a member can be proud of the whole network as there own set-up. So helping to develop other areas is indeed worthwhile.
always a good idea to put an
always a good idea to put an AP up if you can there is still a chance down the track that someone can connect through you thus helping out the network even more :D
I have managed to connect to
I have managed to connect to Melrose Park with just a laptop from in my house however the signal seems borderline.
If only I could do more than just connect. :-(
I think I need some sort of tutorial on how to get the air-stream thing tho work.
With an outside antenna with a bit more hight I assume the signal should improve.
I have an old computer (about a 400MHz machine) from an upgrade I did.
Considering the modest distance would “The Bullet Access Point Kit (2.4 GHz)” from WiFi extreme likely be good enough to expand the network.
Would this then also fix the flaky signal on the lap top?
What you should do next
Don,
We will endeavour to get you online. I've had a quick look at the registration table on Melrose, I see two connected clients:
1 omni 00:0B:xx:xx:xx:83 no -82dBm@1Mbps 11Mb... 1d18h39m55s
2 omni 00:0E:xx:xx:xx:55 no -91dBm@1Mbps 11Mb... 7h28m42s
Neither has a fantastic signal. Which one are you ?
If this is the signal you are achieving indoors, then you certainly should get a decent connection with an external antenna. To answer your question, generally the network team will discourage the use of bullets for anything other that a simple client connection but it all depends on your budget. Hopefully some of the others can contribute to this thread discuss the best path to take, you should also discuss on IRC with more experienced members (read on).
What you should do next
If you make it this far I would strongly suggest jumping in the IRC chat server to talk with other connected members about what to do next! Full information on how to do that can be found here http://www.air-stream.org.au/irc .
I know we are in need of more helpful information and 'how to' type articles for network basics like this. Hopefully this is enough to get you started!
Let us know how you go!
HMMM???
Thanks for the information looks like I will be outside my comfort zone initially.
With all the talk of bridging the digital divide on the web pages naive me thought it would be easy and cheap to get connected.
I suppose many new things have a steep learning curve initially.
what client?
On the what client am I question.
I may be nether of the looking at the times logged in
I just have a laptop I scrounged presently from my sister and have just logged in a few times for 15 minutes to an hour.
The laptop has a dodgy screen but I thought it may have potential to be attached to a radio in the future.
I have a new netbook coming in the post eventually.
I suppose I will have to look up the IP address of the laptop.
Link Hardware
Wow! Connect with a laptop in your house? I can only dream of such simplicity! *envy*
The Bullet AP kit should suit your application, but there are probably some members who have done a connection like yours with just a plugin wireless card that can connect an external antenna into the laptop or PC. The advantage of the bullet though is that it's fixed, and you can run the network cable down to your home router and have Air Stream accessible from any computer on your lan :D
Comand Line???!!!
Unfortunately I can only connect I can’t do much more presently.
Having had all sorts of command line adventures this afternoon.
I am running windows xp and the ipconfig/release command seemed to reset the ip to 0.0.0.0
The instructions suggested the ipconfig/renew command however this did not give the opportunity to specify the ip.
I will have to go back to Google and ask more or slightly different questions.
I am beginning to remember why I abandoned my plan to study IT and took up the interesting and exciting discipline of economics.
I suppose a thread about the pricing and the product life cycle would not stimulate much interest?
(Basically 802.11n is very expensive now and in 18 months time the 802.11n products available will be a lot better and a lot cheaper)
I suppose Hotelling's law and why computers seem so similar would really send people to sleep.
It has been suggested that economics was invented to make accountants seem interesting.
If you don't have the signal strength...
If you only have a flaky signal then you are obviously expecting too much. You are looking at a software solution when you need a hardware solution. Look at getting the bullet, _OR_ a PCMCIA/PCI card with a decent external antenna _BEFORE_ trying anything more.
Don't plan to connect with 802.11n hardware yet! Much of the network still uses b/g.
learning more
I have a basic antenna in the post (supposedly 7 dbi).
One great advantage of 2.4 Ghz is the antennas are so small compared to HF
I would guess the internal antenna in an older laptop (about 5 years old) would not have much gain.
I was on my shed roof today and got a signal to noise ratio from “net stumbler” 24 interestingly I got a signal to noise ratio of Pasadena2 of 14 it seems the card in the laptop is too old to support the db signal strength feature.
I would certainly agree that without a reasonable signal there is not a lot you can do.
I am guilty of taking the laptop and going for a short drive the signal is a lot better in the next street about 200m away.
After all antennas high in the sky are quite obvious if you look.
On setting the IP addresses
The addresses seem to end in /and a 2 digit number is this entered as well?
Also I get asked for a subnet mask if I just guess number it then seems to get rejected because it has to be contiguous.
Any hints would be appreciated I had little joy trying to use a sublet mask calculator that Google found.
I suppose to put a positive spin on the challenge of getting on the network is that certainly I am learning new things.
However it does make the free Internet at the library seem very easy and simple.
re: learning more
Yes, you're right in guessing laptop internal antennas have little gain. They're designed to work within a very close range to the AP.
In terms of raised antenna, yours will not need to be very high at all (say 1-2m), especially if you can pull a SNR of 24dB off your shed roof with a laptop! *is impressed*
On the IP addressing, the 2 digit number you refer to is called the Mask Bits. I assume you used the subnet calculator at http://www.subnet-calculator.com/
To get the subnet mask:
- Change the network class to "A". Class A covers the 10.0.0.0 IP address range.
- Now you can change the Mask Bits to whatever your after.
- The Subnet Mask field should now be showing the mask you need.
For the 10.96.0.0/11 range that AS uses for SA, the mask works out to 255.224.0.0
For my AS range, 10.106.2.192/27, the subnet works out as 255.255.255.224
You may not need to change the class for a mask of 24 or higher. You won't need to change the other fields in my experience as these are more advanced options that I haven't bothered asking IT guys about how they work.
Success (almost)
Thanks for your help.
The IP address seems to have stuck now.
I connected again but still no response from the AP.
I will have to try from the car tomorrow.
If I type the correct IP into a browser should I get some sort of response??
Such as 10.114.2.4
My new net book came today it is nice to have a battery that lasts a reasonable time.
Melrose Park seems to be about -82 db and the noise here is -100db
Is it a statement about the demographic here that there are only 2 access points most of the time.
I was at Unley Park and there were 17 APs acvtive
Good to see you are
Good to see you are progressing. There is no denying some learning is involved, but that's part of the reason we are here.
You will only get a response in your web browser if that IP you are connecting to is hosting a web service. A more reliable way to check connectivity is with the 'ping' utility. Simply open a command prompt and type ping followed by the IP address. Your machine will send out some special packets and wait for a response. You will either get a response time returned, or a timeout message.
Example:
C:\>ping 10.114.2.1 Pinging 10.114.2.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 10.114.2.1: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=255 Reply from 10.114.2.1: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=255 Reply from 10.114.2.1: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=255 Reply from 10.114.2.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255 Ping statistics for 10.114.2.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 18ms, Maximum = 59ms, Average = 36msalmost doesn't count it
almost doesn't count it seems.
Bother
what now?
Tried pinging a few IP addresses.
No reply.
Are there any instructions on how to actually connect to the network?
I got the new antenna and it seems we have a signal to noise ratio of about 40db.
Can I assume that signal strength is not an issue now?
I must admit when there is no guarantee of connecting with the network I naively thought that this was because of signal and coverage issues.
re: what now?
Awesome, you're starting to get close to having a full connection! We never said it was easy ay? ;)
You're signal strength is excellent, so now you need to focus on getting through as you obviously have started to do so. Various parts of the network may "seem" unreachable from time to time depending on hops, timeouts, which way the wind is blowing etc. When working your way through, start close, and work away! The node database is your friend here! So firstly, ping the Melrose Park AP itself, if you don't get anything, then you need to double check your IP address settings. Then ping through the node itself (ie. Can you ping other clients connected to the AP? Can you ping any of the backbone IPs? Can you ping the LAN clients?), if you can ping these, then branch out. For example, if you can ping the Melrose Park side of the Melrose Park-Pasadena2 backbone, then try pinging the Pasadena2 side. If you get pings ok, then try the LAN clients there. By this stage, you can pretty well be assured your on the network! If you have troubles pinging through, then there may be routing issues which, unfortunately, are out of my scope of understanding and we'll have to get someone else in to working that side of things out, _OR_ the node may simply be offline. Not all nodes on the database are kept up to date with the latest status! Keep trying and keep at it!
A responce
Eventually some sort of response
>ping 10.121.128.97
Pinging 10.121.128.97 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Reply from 10.121.128.97: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.121.128.97: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.121.128.97: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 10.121.128.97:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 63ms, Average = 39ms
The round trip times have varied from 9ms to 1002ms
How exciting!!
Check your default gateway
Congratulations!
If you can ping that address (the address of the Melrose AP), but nothing beyond that, I reckon you are missing a default gateway setting.
In your network settings, set the default gateway to 10.121.128.97 then trying pinging some other network IPs.
T
default gateway is ok
but still cant ping anything else.
thanks for the suggestions.
I am beginning to be confused.
(Actually I was confused and well outside my comfort zone when it came to using fixed IP addresses)
If I contact the node isn’t what happens after that dependent on the network?
I would have guessed that what happens once the packet enters the network has nothing to do with my equipment.
Am I wildly naive and optimistic hoping to eventually find some content on the network?
Or am I just computer illiterate?