WISP or other options

Thu Mar 27 10:10:25 UTC 2014

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 05:09:05AM +0000, Warren Bailey wrote:
> It's not 802.11 and it doesn't act that way.

Actually most of the installations I've seen -- and my day job is
working with community networks around Scotland that have built all
manner of strange things -- the problems most often have nothing at
all to do with the physical layer. More often they're related to doing
things with spanning tree that we all learned in networking long ago
to not do, or running many layers of NAT because IP routing is not
understood. Things like that.

The only common RF problem is leaving the channel selection on
"auto". Which invariably means one radio, like an access point with a
sector antenna, can't hear the point to point link coming in to the
dish behind it and picks the wrong channel.

Again, yes, you're right, you have to understand how this stuff works
and think a little bit when you build, but your messages saying "It's
really really hard" are coming across a little like FUD.

> A pair of Air Fiber is like 3k USD, and at 24ghz you had better know 

The AF24 are also illegal here. Or rather the lower channel belongs to
the police, and the upper channel is limited to a very low output
power. We have a pair of these, with a special non-operational license
from Ofcom to put them through their paces. They do work, though they
are a pain to align and subject to rain fade. They are on the West
coast which is very rainy. Right now we're using them to measure rain
intensity rather than to carry real traffic (which we can't do with a
non-op license anyways).

-w