Setting up a WAN?

netwhizkid

MODS: I'm really sure where is best for this, feelfree to move it as neccesary!

I am thinking about building a WAN where I live. I wonder how complicated is it to do this. I know about the IrishWAN website but messed up my registration there (accidentally erased the configuration e-mail) and am waiting for it to be rectified. I wonder are there any boards users here who have any experience of a WAN. It seems to be one of the only methods of bringing broadband to where I live. Eircom have practically ruled out exchange ennoblement in the short to medium term. I was thinking of building a base station on top of a mountain, which is over 600metres high. I have no problems with the mountain, as I own it! I have read a lot about WiMax and it says it offers NLOS (Non-Line of Sight) a study was undertaken in my parish and about 30 people would take up broadband if it were there. This number would increase to 50 if I could supply the outreaches of the neighbouring parish that are outside the Exchange radius for ADSL or if their line failed the test etc. I would uplink from this parish as they have ADSL there and from what I’ve read Satellite uplinked WANs simply just don’t offer the ping rate required for Voip, online gaming P2P etc. What sorts of costs are involved? I would need an uplink station and a distribution point, which would be located on the hilltop. I was thinking of either a small wind turbine or a solar panel rigged up to batteries and an inverter for electricity. WiMax seems to be a good technology from what I’ve read, but what other technologies are available? Also what sort of legal and regulatory requirements are there? For Instance, Comreg licenses and County Council planning requirements, possibly having to form a limited company etc.

I would love to hear from anyone with any experience in this field as I am thinking that may be the only way of bringing broadband to my area now that Eircom has refused point-blank to enable the exchange even when Ministerial Pressure was applied.

All help is most gratefully appreciated.

TimTim

Go look at GBS schemes and see how its done.

Or if I remember correctly WestNet would be involved in stuff like that.

Blaster99

I think you can safely forget about exotic stuff like WiMax. IrishWAN typically uses 2.4Ghz to users and 5.7Ghz in the backhaul. The former because CPE is cheap, the latter because you get higher speeds and longer distances. Neither require a licence.

I know some of the IrishWAN guys have played around with non-ESB power but I would guess that to achieve any form of reliability you would want to get electricity to that hilltop.

The only real problem with sharing ADSL is that if anybody uploads anything, the download speeds will be crippled. You will need to ban P2P certainly.

IrishWAN are the guys to talk to so get yourself back on there.

Mutant_Fruit

One word: ROFLMAO.

Am i the only one who thinks he's taking the piss? He owns the mountain, wants to build a tower thats over half a kilometre in height and wants to use solar panels to power it? The mind boggles.

Also, he doesn't seem to have fully grasped the concept of paragraphs...

Peanut

http://www.marlow.dk/site.php/tech/wan
Specifically,
http://www.marlow.dk/site.php/pics//gallery/20050827_and_20050910-Loughrea_GalwayWan

btw ignore the term "WiMax", instead you would need to look at what the best price/performance technology is available at the moment. Also seriously don't overlook at how support on the setup would be handled, and make sure you factor that in.

djmarkus

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

One word: ROFLMAO.

Am i the only one who thinks he's taking the piss? He owns the mountain, wants to build a tower thats over half a kilometre in height and wants to use solar panels to power it? The mind boggles.

Also, he doesn't seem to have fully grasped the concept of paragraphs...

Hardly Constructive.

Tenshot

Blaster99 wrote:

The only real problem with sharing ADSL is that if anybody uploads anything, the download speeds will be crippled. You will need to ban P2P certainly.

While this can certainly be a problem if not taken into account, it's not insurmountable.

We're operating a group scheme based on a shared 3 Mb/s ADSL line (just added a second one, in fact) and initially had no QoS rules on the router. When we hit about 4-5 users, we ran into exactly the problems you describe.

After a bit of QoS configuration and tuning a year ago, it's now working very well with 35 users and counting. The upstream is 256 Kb/s, downstream is 3 Mb/s line.

We classify upstream traffic into four priority queues:

- Queue 1: all UDP traffic that's not file sharing, and with length < 300 bytes [maximum priority; this is basically voice traffic and some games]
- Queue 2: all other packets < 200 bytes, and all normal protocol traffic
- Queue 3: instant messenger traffic
- Queue 4: all traffic to remote TCP/UDP ports > 1024: basically FTP and any non-standard TCP protocols

Queues 1 & 2 are given all the bandwidth they can use; Queues 3 & 4 are limited to a max of 100 Kbps each. We should really have outbound SMTP mail on port 25 moved to queue 3 or 4 as well, but it hasn't been a big problem so far.

The important thing is to make sure that small packets get priority upstream, since these are usually the acks for downstream file transfers (or VoIP packets).

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

he wants to build a tower thats over half a kilometre in height

Er, I think he was saying that the mountain was that high, not the mast...!

Peanut

Tenshot wrote:

The important thing is to make sure that small packets get priority upstream, since these are usually the acks for downstream file transfers (or VoIP packets).

I guess it depends on how many p2p users you have (if any), and if you can reliably detect p2p traffic, but I notice that some of the newer p2p traffic uses a lot of udp, and p2p in general uses the ACK flag and small packets so it's a bitch to classify properly.

masteroftherealm

So what your saying is you wanna share out an adsl line to 50people?
Only option would be to get a coporate connection 6mb+ DSL u and down.
Doesnt make sense as theyd get better speeds from dialup or sat broadband.

WiMax is out of your budget unless your a millionaire! WiFi is an easily boostable proven technology that would work esily.
We need to know distances from yur mountain to the neighbouring towns etc, is the mountain siutable for a tower? Can u post a picture of your monutain to the towns so I can see the lay of the land from it to your sites.

You'll need some decent backbone hardware and high grade antennae too.
If your seriously interested this will be a large projec and you will need a great deal of technical help. Feel free to PM me for more info.
Jay
Cisco Wireless Tech

oscarBravo

TimTim wrote:

Go look at GBS schemes and see how its done.

Or if I remember correctly WestNet would be involved in stuff like that.

We're involved in GBS schemes, but have very little to do with this DIY-type approach. We've helped a few DIY schemes out for historical reasons, but as a rule we're a strictly commercial wireless operator.

azzeretti

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

One word: ROFLMAO.

Am i the only one who thinks he's taking the piss? He owns the mountain, wants to build a tower thats over half a kilometre in height and wants to use solar panels to power it? The mind boggles.

Also, he doesn't seem to have fully grasped the concept of paragraphs...

I know loads of people in rural Ireland doing exactly what he is asking. Mostly farmers renting out their land to IrishWan users. This type of setup is very common. I get my internet connection from one.
I think he means the mountain is 600mts high. Also, there are lots of nodes on this island powered by wind and batteries.
You shouldn't be so quick to mock etc......

To answer the original poster.. you should get back to Irishwan and re-register with another username if needed. All the resources and info is there and they will be more than willing to help. Where abouts in the county are you?

netwhizkid

azzeretti wrote:

I know loads of people in rural Ireland doing exactly what he is asking. Mostly farmers renting out their land to IrishWan users. This type of setup is very common. I get my internet connection from one.
I think he means the mountain is 600mts high. Also, there are lots of nodes on this island powered by wind and batteries.
You shouldn't be so quick to mock etc......

To answer the original poster.. you should get back to Irishwan and re-register with another username if needed. All the resources and info is there and they will be more than willing to help. Where abouts in the county are you?

Hi and thanks azzeretti,
Yeah I am working on getting on Irishwan as we speak!! And now on my 1,000th post :cool: I will reveal my location more specific I live in Kilgarvan, Most people know it as the home of Jackie Healy Rae. I am hoping to do something as our community is being left behind as are loads of others. You say you get your own internet connection from something like I'd in mind. What sort of applications can be used? Blaster99 said I'd have to ban P2P for it to be successful, Would i also have to axe Voip and Online gaming? I'd really like to integrate Online gaming capabilities anyway. What other methods are available for linking up with the WWW besides using an ADSL connection to provide for it? There is no cable system here and the FWA isn't "officially available" despite the Eircom mast purported to be enabled for FWA. Anyway thanks for all the help I will keep all concerned updated as things progress.

I'm afraid ye shall have to wait till my 2,000th post for me to reveal my name and true identity!!

azzeretti

The real issue with determining what applications can be used is the type of internet connection you use. We are connected to a good synchronised ISP which means VOIP and gaming is no problem (I only use VOIP now, having gottin rid of my landline) There is restrictions on P2P and really think no matter what pipe you get connected to you should consider banning it.

So, basically you would need to look for SDSL or simialr to allow any large uploads. Eircom will not provide SDSL, nor will any satellite providor, so that will rule them out. I know that in some exchange BT will offer 1:1 2MB connections but this is VERY pricey (couple of grand a year). If there are any other ISP's in your area you could try them. But by the sounds of it you may have to restrict application usage. Most users, in my experience, will not mind this as the only want to browse and download music etc. Gaming shouldn't really be a problem as most game server will rely on low latency and don't require hugh upload speeds (but might if a 256k upload is split 50 ways!)
Will all the user need VOIP and Gaming facilities? You could get in a good Eircom line and filter certain ports from certain users IP address which might deny all VOIP and Gaming protocols from them but have open access for you?:D
Let me know if I can help in anyway!

netwhizkid

I'd be guessing the most there'd be is about 5 voip and online gamers, some online gamers might use voip too. The rest would be down loaders and the odd photo etc to upload. Nothing too major.

oscarBravo

azzeretti wrote:

We are connected to a good synchronised ISP...

What are they synchronised to?

azzeretti

The borg.

I mean the connection is a sychronise or symmetric connection i.e same upload as download, but I reckon you knew that.

oscarBravo

Synchronised and symmetric don't mean the same thing. They don't even mean anything remotely similar.

azzeretti

Do you mean the literal definition between the two words? If so, then of course your are correct. But the two words are often interchanged when describing DSL connections. Symmetrical DSL is often referred to as Synocronise DSL regardless of connection type, duplexity etc. However, the more commonly used term is Symmetric. Sorry if this was confusing, but I thought you were giving a sly dig;)

oscarBravo

I was giving a sly dig The two words are interchanged, but incorrectly so. There's no such thing as synchronised (or synchronous) DSL. The term has only ever been used in error. It's just plain wrong.

It's a pet peeve.

Blaster99

How does WestNet deal with P2P?

azzeretti

I agree with you. But it was still sly
I just have gottin use to using it, incorrectly or not, most people do!!

netwhizkid

Thnks for all the help fellas, I am now onto irishWan and i will see what they say. I will keep the thread updated as things progress.

bushy...

Getting back to ............I am thinking about building a WAN where I live. I wonder how complicated is it to do this....
its not so complicated anymore,and once you get the first few nodes going you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.............

To get an idea what some of the gear used in Irishwan is like :

http://www.irishwan.com/index.php/Hardware:Installign_a_WRAP

That has just a single radio and antenna but that particular board will take another radio card, allowing you to relay too.
Since that page was put together, Routerboard ( http://www.routerboard.com ) have released a newer board with a few more features (some can take a daughter board allowing 4 radiocards,they also come with RouterOS preinstalled (saves money/time/pain and has many more features than the OS mentioned)
One very useful feature is built in P2P filtering,just click on the drop down list of what you want to block/control.
Anyway now everyone has fallen asleep, have a look around
http://www.irishwan.com/ to find out a bit more , you can email me at bushyiwan@gmail.com for ( free!! ) advice if you need to.

netwhizkid

Thanks for that bushy..., I might take you up on the free advice We a re currently applying ever increasing amounts of Political pressure and will soon have nearly the whole Dail working on the Matter ADSL enablement is the No.1 Priority, and we have have made it clear to the politicians that they won't be getting this from us. A wan is still probably the option that will end up been chosen. Anyway thanks for all the help. I will let ye know how it is progressing.