Using a WRAP 2 for a core access point in the Air-Stream community wireless network
I wanted to establish a core access point to provide linkage between several of our Northern Adelaide members and the remainder of the network in the central Adelaide area.
This meant an array of 4 antenna utilizing an 8db 2.4 GHz Superpass Omni,
25db 2.4 GHz Hills parabolic dish and 2 x 26db 5.8 GHz Hills parabolic dishes and great views over the northwestern city!!
The main problem we had to overcome was to control this setup would ordinarily require an ATX PC wireless router secured in the right environmental conditions in a nearby building. However, we did not have access to such an environment.
So, to support our hardware requirements and achieve our needs we chose to mount our wireless equipment on the masts themselves.
For this purpose we chose a WRAP 2 platform consisting of:
The reason we opted to use 128MB WRAP 2 boards as the wireless router solutions is because they are compact, powerful, easy to mount and work with, and they are in many ways just a mini pc waiting to have antenna, pigtail and wireless card plugged in. Together combined with our own homebrewed Free BSD O/S they provide an instant wireless router and no ATX PC box in sight ;)
In future we are hopeful that Yawarra will be able to supply a higher performing router board with multiple PCI slots in a similar small form factor to further reduce build costs on other sites we have planned.
Thanks Yawarra for your great help so far.
- Paul Ridley, member of Air-Stream Wireless Inc.
Air-Stream Inc.
Core Access Point
Para Hills
Adelaide SA
Email:
Web: www.air-stream.org.au
This meant an array of 4 antenna utilizing an 8db 2.4 GHz Superpass Omni,
25db 2.4 GHz Hills parabolic dish and 2 x 26db 5.8 GHz Hills parabolic dishes and great views over the northwestern city!!
In future we are hopeful that Yawarra will be able to supply a higher performing router board with multiple PCI slots in a similar small form factor to further reduce build costs on other sites we have planned.
