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Wireless Networking
Overview
I'm located in Seville Grove and was connected to the WAFreeNet
(a wireless community freenet in Perth, Western Australia) for many years.
I am now also connected to the WACAN wireless network.
Wireless Link At Home - SGNet
I previously had an 8m mast and antenna installed at my house, linking to the
MartinMast
(NodeDB entry) access point
in the hills.
After moving house, I installed a
3m mast on top of my roof, still linking to the MartinMast access point
via a modified 24dBi Conifer dish.
When the ArmadaleAP AP went live in 2005 as a WAFreeNet AP, I linked in to it, using a
modified 18dBi Conifer dish.
Once Armadale was upgraded to 5GHz radios, the 18dBi Conifer dish was replaced with an Ubiquiti NanoBeam M5 19.
An Ubiquiti PowerBeam 400 ISO is being used to link to the WAFreNet AP in Roleystone.
The mast used to have a 180 degree slotted waveguide on it, connected
to a Minitar MNWAPB access point, providing access to the Seville Grove Net (aka SGNet).
An Ubiquiti NanoStation is now at the top of the mast, and provides a point-to-point link to a nearby friend.
Antennas
Over the last few years, I've modified some Conifer antennas,
and have done some testing to
determine which Conifer modification provides the best signal strength.
Some more detailed testing with a larger number of
modified feedhorns confirms that my copper/brass dipole modification performs better than
the more common pcb dipole modification.
I have a detailed guide on building a biquad antenna,
a page describing a double biquad,
as well as a page describing a compact collinear.
The results of testing some downpipe waveguides,
biquads, a collinear and a cantenna against one of my modified Galaxys
are now available.
Photos of the insides of a rubber ducky antenna are also
available, when I pulled one apart to see what was inside.
Software
I've also use a linux PC as a wireless router,
to handle the routing between my wired home network, my wireless home network,
my Smoothwall internet firewall,
and my freenet connection.
Due to issues being experienced with
hidden node
problems, the WAFreeNet investigated a couple of options,
including the locally developed
Frottle,
and WiCCP.
Frottle has now been
running on one of the most congested access points for quite some time,
and is proving to be extremely effective at reducing the effects of hidden node issues.
LinkSys WRT54GS running OpenWrt
I've been playing with a LinkSys WRT54GS wireless router running OpenWrt,
and have one configured as a wireless client,
providing DHCP and DNS services, as well as running
an OpenVPN termination.
ArmadaleAP
In 2005, two APs, a waveguide, and a 24dBi dish were installed on a ~45m mast in
the Armadale area, to extend the WAFreeNet further south. See here for details.
In 2015, the old 2.4GHz hardware on the ArmadaleAP mast was replaced with newer 5GHz hardware,
and the mast was linked into the WACAN network.
last updated 29 May 2016
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