Neighborhood WiFi?

My nephew and I live out in the boonies; we don't have access to DSL
or cable. We live on top of two different hills about a mile apart,
but line-of-sight to each other. He has determined that he can get a
T1 line for about $500/mo. That's a little over his budget, so he
wants to see how feasible it would be to sell some of his bandwidth.

The houses out here are pretty spread out, but between the top of his
roof, and the top of my ham radio tower, we probably have a direct
view of close to 20 potential customers within 1/2 mile of each of us.
The houses range from shacks to some fairly upscale villas, and this
is a pretty techie area, so it probably isn't too unreasonable to
assume we could get 8 customers (bringing the line costs down to $50
ea/mo.).

Since this is a techie neighborhood, it is probably also safe to
assume that most of the potential customers have a home LAN (probably
mixed ethernet/wireless). In order to reach all of the potential
customers, we will definitely need some sort of backbone directional
between my house and his, and the each of us will also need an
omni-directional antenna to service the customers we each can see.

For the backbone, I was going to use a couple of surplus satellite TV
dishes with a cantenna or patch antenna feed. For the omnis, I was
going to suggest some commercial units with a below-the-horizon
pattern since most of our potential customers are well below our
elevations. I am also assuming that each potential customer would
also need a directional antenna (shotgun, yagi, or dish) pointed at
one of our omnis.

My question is regarding equipment. Will we need a bridge on each end
of the backbone, or just a WAP? On the nephew's end, he could use a
wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
attached to the backbone antenna. On my end, I'm not sure what I
would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni. I am
assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower, but what will the customers
need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.

Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?

Oh, and what about lightning?

Regards,
Ed

I would suggest since you have line of site and you are not that far to use
a router "Linksys Vers4 router, with dd-wrt"on his end and a19 db panel
antenna with a connector to router not cable. Then use the same on your end
but two of the configurations. One set to client the other set to access.
Cat5 them together. This way he can put one Sid out you can put another.
Any where in-between week use a Signal Seeker. The Signal Seekers will reach
that distance alone. But you will have more control over the above of your
network. And they can be stand alone units no computers to contend with. The
Signal Seekers would be easy for your customers to hook up. They just plug
in to USB. They could use one then set that computer to share the connection
to there wireless network.

Ed



"Ed Bailen" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My nephew and I live out in the boonies; we don't have access to DSL
> or cable. We live on top of two different hills about a mile apart,
> but line-of-sight to each other. He has determined that he can get a
> T1 line for about $500/mo. That's a little over his budget, so he
> wants to see how feasible it would be to sell some of his bandwidth.
>
> The houses out here are pretty spread out, but between the top of his
> roof, and the top of my ham radio tower, we probably have a direct
> view of close to 20 potential customers within 1/2 mile of each of us.
> The houses range from shacks to some fairly upscale villas, and this
> is a pretty techie area, so it probably isn't too unreasonable to
> assume we could get 8 customers (bringing the line costs down to $50
> ea/mo.).
>
> Since this is a techie neighborhood, it is probably also safe to
> assume that most of the potential customers have a home LAN (probably
> mixed ethernet/wireless). In order to reach all of the potential
> customers, we will definitely need some sort of backbone directional
> between my house and his, and the each of us will also need an
> omni-directional antenna to service the customers we each can see.
>
> For the backbone, I was going to use a couple of surplus satellite TV
> dishes with a cantenna or patch antenna feed. For the omnis, I was
> going to suggest some commercial units with a below-the-horizon
> pattern since most of our potential customers are well below our
> elevations. I am also assuming that each potential customer would
> also need a directional antenna (shotgun, yagi, or dish) pointed at
> one of our omnis.
>
> My question is regarding equipment. Will we need a bridge on each end
> of the backbone, or just a WAP? On the nephew's end, he could use a
> wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
> attached to the backbone antenna. On my end, I'm not sure what I
> would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni. I am
> assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
> of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower, but what will the customers
> need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
> limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
> appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
> visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.
>
> Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?
>
> Oh, and what about lightning?
>
> Regards,
> Ed
>

Ed Bailen <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

>My nephew and I live out in the boonies; we don't have access to DSL
>or cable. We live on top of two different hills about a mile apart,
>but line-of-sight to each other. He has determined that he can get a
>T1 line for about $500/mo. That's a little over his budget, so he
>wants to see how feasible it would be to sell some of his bandwidth.

It may be $500/month but there's also a setup charge, and some
equipment charges for the CSU/DSU. Calculate your costs carefully.

>The houses out here are pretty spread out, but between the top of his
>roof, and the top of my ham radio tower, we probably have a direct
>view of close to 20 potential customers within 1/2 mile of each of us.

Line of sight is a requirement at 2.4Ghz. However, 900MHz will go
through trees fairly well. However, 3000ft is not so far that wire is
still an option. For example, Cisco has their LRE (long reach
ethernet) that will go about 5000ft ft to 15Mbits/sec. You can also
run just one phone pair and use a pair of SDSL modems to do
768/768Kbits/sec (or faster). Of course there's fiber, but that's
expensive. Consider wire if possible.

>The houses range from shacks to some fairly upscale villas, and this
>is a pretty techie area, so it probably isn't too unreasonable to
>assume we could get 8 customers (bringing the line costs down to $50
>ea/mo.).

The shacks probably belong to the techy type engineers. The villas to
the managers. Sigh.

I think you're being a bit optimistic on the costs. That may be the
shared cost of the T1, but does not cover answering the phone in the
middle of night, dealing with abuse issues, storm maintenance,
interference mitigation, antenna installations, etc. If you have lots
of spare time and are on good terms with the neighbors, that might
work. However, if this is a business proposition and you're in a
position to guarantee the service, you may find the benifits do not
compensate for the hassles. When something goes wrong, you'll get 8
phone calls.

We have a neighborhood LAN with a mixture of wireless, wire, fiber,
and coax. I lost count of how many houses are on the system. About
12 machines currently. Mostly kids. I find that I have to devote at
least one full day per month fixing things and dealing with user
issues. Would you do that for $50/month?

Think of it this way... You're playing ISP (internet service
provider). You need to do everything that a wire line ISP does in
addition to dealing with the complexities and mysteries of wireless.
Got a machine you can dedicate to monitoring the system?

>Since this is a techie neighborhood, it is probably also safe to
>assume that most of the potential customers have a home LAN (probably
>mixed ethernet/wireless).

Never mind the techies. Worry about the kids. At this time about 1/3
of the traffic on the internet is BitTorrent. It will hog every byte
of available bandwidth. One clueless BitTorrent user will cause the
system to grind to a halt. Users can control their bandwidth use, but
most don't. That means you have to go into the QoS or bandwidth
management business for them in order to keep the system alive. Are
you ready to play bandwidth policeman?

>In order to reach all of the potential
>customers, we will definitely need some sort of backbone directional
>between my house and his, and the each of us will also need an
>omni-directional antenna to service the customers we each can see.

It's a common arrangement. The backhaul should be on a different
channel or band as the distribution network. You'll need at least
1.5Mbits/sec in both directions, which is easy enough to obtain with
almost any wireless link. If you're really in the middle of nowhere,
interference should not be an issue, but methinks a site survey with a
spectrum analyzer might be a useful precaution.

>For the backbone, I was going to use a couple of surplus satellite TV
>dishes with a cantenna or patch antenna feed.

Yeah, I can tell you're a ham. That will work depending on distance
and interference. Plan on spending some time matching the feed horn
to the dish or you'll get different gains in xmit and receive. If you
have better things to do, I suggest a commercial dish and a radio that
runs PoE near the antenna to eliminate coax losses. If you do plan to
run coax, then use LMR-400 with N connectors. No PL-259's or BNC's.

>For the omnis, I was
>going to suggest some commercial units with a below-the-horizon
>pattern since most of our potential customers are well below our
>elevations.

No. The vertical radiation angle necessary to be useful is too narrow
with high gain omnis. An omni also picks up crud from all directions.
Instead, I suggest sector antennas pointed in the general direction of
your customers. Each antenna is easily tilted downwards. You can
start with an omni for testing, but plan on switching to sector
antennas fairly quickly.

>I am also assuming that each potential customer would
>also need a directional antenna (shotgun, yagi, or dish) pointed at
>one of our omnis.

If you calculate the gain (in dBi) per dollar spent, the yagi is a
loser. I suggest either a dish or a panel (patch) antenna.
http://www.fab-corp.com
If you wanna do the ham thing, building a biquad is quite easy and
gets decent gain.
http://www.vallstedt-networks.de/?Fotogalerien/quad2

More later.... I'm late for a disappointment.

>My question is regarding equipment. Will we need a bridge on each end
>of the backbone, or just a WAP? On the nephew's end, he could use a
>wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
>attached to the backbone antenna. On my end, I'm not sure what I
>would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni. I am
>assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
>of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower, but what will the customers
>need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
>limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
>appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
>visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.
>
>Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?
>
>Oh, and what about lightning?
>
>Regards,
>Ed
--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:12:23 -0600, Ed Bailen <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

Continuing onward...

>Will we need a bridge on each end
>of the backbone, or just a WAP?

Chuckles. How many different types of bridges would you guess there
are? See my list at:
| http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FAQ_for...ireless_Bridge

Anyway, you have a choice of doing it several ways. Short version
(because I'm busy).

1. Your ISP delivers one routeable IP for every user. Each user
supplies their own firwall for NAT. I think (not sure) that a simple
access point and client radio will work because it only needs to pass
one MAC address. However, methinks a transparent bridge or "wireless
bridge" will be better in case the topology changes.

2. Your ISP delivers one IP address. The NAT router is installed at
the nephew end. The wireless backhaul is a transparent bridge or
"wireless bridge" in order to pass multiple MAC addresses. Each user
has an additional NAT firewall for their multiple machines.

3. Your ISP delivers two IP addresses. The nephew end gets one, and
everyone else has to do NAT to share the other IP address. The nephew
end has a router as does the tower end. The wireless link needs to
only pass one IP address and can therefore live with just about
anything. Each user will have an additional router

3. Some variation in between including mapping routeable IP addresses
to NAT IP's in a Cisco router.

So, what's your prefered topology and we'll figure out what type of
backhaul you need? I recommend number 1.

>On the nephew's end, he could use a
>wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
>attached to the backbone antenna.

Yes, something like that. The safest is a transparent bridge, which
will pass multiple MAC addresses and will work with just about any
configuration. Something like a Linksys WAP54G.

>On my end, I'm not sure what I
>would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni.

Again, it's topology. The backhaul will probably be two identical
wireless bridge radios (i.e. WAP54G). The ethernet connection from
your WAP54G would go to some kind of common access point (or router)
depending on your IP address layout and topology. Each user would
have some kind of common client adapter to connect. They will
probably also have an NAT router to deal with multiple computers.

>I am
>assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
>of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower,

300ft is the maximum CAT5 run for real PoE (power over ethernet). That
will work. Visualize climbing the tower in the rain and snow in order
to placate one your complaining customers.

>but what will the customers
>need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
>limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
>appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
>visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.

Sorta. Again it depends on your IP address layout. If you can
deliver NAT'ed IP address to each client, then a wireless client
bridge radio and a simple ethernet switch will take care of their
system. Of course that doesn't protect them from attack from the
network, so a single MAC wireless bridge and a router would probably
be more useful. Something like a WAP54G in client mode, with any NAT
ethernet router behind it.

>Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?
>
>Oh, and what about lightning?

If it hits, you lose. Unless you buy hardware that's specifically
designed for outdoor use, lightning is highly likely to destroy the
devices. Carry lots of spares.

>
>Regards,
>Ed
--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
# http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Thanks, Jeff, for both of your informative replies.

I'm pretty lukewarm on this idea for many of the reasons you have
mentioned (customer support, equipment spares, etc.) and I hadn't
thought of the possible bandwidth hog, but I didn't want to rain on
nephew's parade without at least looking into it. I'm retired and
nephew isn't, so you can guess who would be doing most of the customer
handholding.

I'll pass your info on to nephew, & maybe I can talk him into going
with a satellite connection if he wants more bandwidth that the ISDN
connections we get out here.

Regards,
Ed

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:02:56 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Ed Bailen <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>
>>My nephew and I live out in the boonies; we don't have access to DSL
>>or cable. We live on top of two different hills about a mile apart,
>>but line-of-sight to each other. He has determined that he can get a
>>T1 line for about $500/mo. That's a little over his budget, so he
>>wants to see how feasible it would be to sell some of his bandwidth.
>
>It may be $500/month but there's also a setup charge, and some
>equipment charges for the CSU/DSU. Calculate your costs carefully.
>
>>The houses out here are pretty spread out, but between the top of his
>>roof, and the top of my ham radio tower, we probably have a direct
>>view of close to 20 potential customers within 1/2 mile of each of us.
>
>Line of sight is a requirement at 2.4Ghz. However, 900MHz will go
>through trees fairly well. However, 3000ft is not so far that wire is
>still an option. For example, Cisco has their LRE (long reach
>ethernet) that will go about 5000ft ft to 15Mbits/sec. You can also
>run just one phone pair and use a pair of SDSL modems to do
>768/768Kbits/sec (or faster). Of course there's fiber, but that's
>expensive. Consider wire if possible.
>
>>The houses range from shacks to some fairly upscale villas, and this
>>is a pretty techie area, so it probably isn't too unreasonable to
>>assume we could get 8 customers (bringing the line costs down to $50
>>ea/mo.).
>
>The shacks probably belong to the techy type engineers. The villas to
>the managers. Sigh.
>
>I think you're being a bit optimistic on the costs. That may be the
>shared cost of the T1, but does not cover answering the phone in the
>middle of night, dealing with abuse issues, storm maintenance,
>interference mitigation, antenna installations, etc. If you have lots
>of spare time and are on good terms with the neighbors, that might
>work. However, if this is a business proposition and you're in a
>position to guarantee the service, you may find the benifits do not
>compensate for the hassles. When something goes wrong, you'll get 8
>phone calls.
>
>We have a neighborhood LAN with a mixture of wireless, wire, fiber,
>and coax. I lost count of how many houses are on the system. About
>12 machines currently. Mostly kids. I find that I have to devote at
>least one full day per month fixing things and dealing with user
>issues. Would you do that for $50/month?
>
>Think of it this way... You're playing ISP (internet service
>provider). You need to do everything that a wire line ISP does in
>addition to dealing with the complexities and mysteries of wireless.
>Got a machine you can dedicate to monitoring the system?
>
>>Since this is a techie neighborhood, it is probably also safe to
>>assume that most of the potential customers have a home LAN (probably
>>mixed ethernet/wireless).
>
>Never mind the techies. Worry about the kids. At this time about 1/3
>of the traffic on the internet is BitTorrent. It will hog every byte
>of available bandwidth. One clueless BitTorrent user will cause the
>system to grind to a halt. Users can control their bandwidth use, but
>most don't. That means you have to go into the QoS or bandwidth
>management business for them in order to keep the system alive. Are
>you ready to play bandwidth policeman?
>
>>In order to reach all of the potential
>>customers, we will definitely need some sort of backbone directional
>>between my house and his, and the each of us will also need an
>>omni-directional antenna to service the customers we each can see.
>
>It's a common arrangement. The backhaul should be on a different
>channel or band as the distribution network. You'll need at least
>1.5Mbits/sec in both directions, which is easy enough to obtain with
>almost any wireless link. If you're really in the middle of nowhere,
>interference should not be an issue, but methinks a site survey with a
>spectrum analyzer might be a useful precaution.
>
>>For the backbone, I was going to use a couple of surplus satellite TV
>>dishes with a cantenna or patch antenna feed.
>
>Yeah, I can tell you're a ham. That will work depending on distance
>and interference. Plan on spending some time matching the feed horn
>to the dish or you'll get different gains in xmit and receive. If you
>have better things to do, I suggest a commercial dish and a radio that
>runs PoE near the antenna to eliminate coax losses. If you do plan to
>run coax, then use LMR-400 with N connectors. No PL-259's or BNC's.
>
>>For the omnis, I was
>>going to suggest some commercial units with a below-the-horizon
>>pattern since most of our potential customers are well below our
>>elevations.
>
>No. The vertical radiation angle necessary to be useful is too narrow
>with high gain omnis. An omni also picks up crud from all directions.
>Instead, I suggest sector antennas pointed in the general direction of
>your customers. Each antenna is easily tilted downwards. You can
>start with an omni for testing, but plan on switching to sector
>antennas fairly quickly.
>
>>I am also assuming that each potential customer would
>>also need a directional antenna (shotgun, yagi, or dish) pointed at
>>one of our omnis.
>
>If you calculate the gain (in dBi) per dollar spent, the yagi is a
>loser. I suggest either a dish or a panel (patch) antenna.
> http://www.fab-corp.com
>If you wanna do the ham thing, building a biquad is quite easy and
>gets decent gain.
> http://www.vallstedt-networks.de/?Fotogalerien/quad2
>
>More later.... I'm late for a disappointment.
>
>>My question is regarding equipment. Will we need a bridge on each end
>>of the backbone, or just a WAP? On the nephew's end, he could use a
>>wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
>>attached to the backbone antenna. On my end, I'm not sure what I
>>would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni. I am
>>assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
>>of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower, but what will the customers
>>need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
>>limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
>>appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
>>visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.
>>
>>Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?
>>
>>Oh, and what about lightning?
>>
>>Regards,
>>Ed

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

> Never mind the techies. Worry about the kids. At this time about 1/3
> of the traffic on the internet is BitTorrent. It will hog every byte
> of available bandwidth. One clueless BitTorrent user will cause the
> system to grind to a halt. Users can control their bandwidth use, but
> most don't. That means you have to go into the QoS or bandwidth
> management business for them in order to keep the system alive. Are
> you ready to play bandwidth policeman?

I learned this the hard way. I have a T1 with community wireless
network. I tell each and every client "I don't support file sharing. If
you're going to do file-sharing, please sign up for some other service."
Every now and then one of them figures I won't notice if they suck up
every single damn bit of the bandwidth for days at a time. I've kicked
two customers completely off the network and reformed three or four
others. Hard to compete with DSL when they don't give a damn if you suck
up every bit of 3Mbs for weeks on end.

Jeff



Found this on DD-WRT. Couldn't you do this and set the limits and share
across the network so no one person could hog it.



you can share your available bandwidth evenly among you and your brother
using the htb queueing discipline in tc..

I'll explain by example..

tc qdisc del dev eth1 root

tc qdisc add dev eth1 root handle 1: htb default 10
tc class add dev eth1 parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate 128kbit ceil 128kbit

tc class add dev eth1 parent 1:1 classid 1:10 htb rate 1kbit ceil 1kbit
tc class add dev eth1 parent 1:1 classid 1:20 htb rate 63kbit ceil 128kbit
tc class add dev eth1 parent 1:1 classid 1:30 htb rate 64kbit ceil 128kbit

tc qdisc add dev eth1 parent 1:10 handle 10: sfq
tc qdisc add dev eth1 parent 1:20 handle 20: sfq
tc qdisc add dev eth1 parent 1:30 handle 30: sfq

iptables -F

iptables -A POSTROUTING -t mangle -o br0 -d 192.168.1.100 -j
CLASSIFY --set-class 1:20
iptables -A POSTROUTING -t mangle -o br0 -d 192.168.1.101 -j
CLASSIFY --set-class 1:30

this is meant for at connection with a downstream limit equal to 128kbit
(kbps).

If your ip is .100 and your brothers is .101 the downstream bandwidth will
be shared evenly among you. and as a bonus if you're not using any of your
bandwidth your brother will be able to "borrow" from you


"Jeff Liebermann" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:12:23 -0600, Ed Bailen <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> Continuing onward...
>
>>Will we need a bridge on each end
>>of the backbone, or just a WAP?
>
> Chuckles. How many different types of bridges would you guess there
> are? See my list at:
> |
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FAQ_for...ireless_Bridge
>
> Anyway, you have a choice of doing it several ways. Short version
> (because I'm busy).
>
> 1. Your ISP delivers one routeable IP for every user. Each user
> supplies their own firwall for NAT. I think (not sure) that a simple
> access point and client radio will work because it only needs to pass
> one MAC address. However, methinks a transparent bridge or "wireless
> bridge" will be better in case the topology changes.
>
> 2. Your ISP delivers one IP address. The NAT router is installed at
> the nephew end. The wireless backhaul is a transparent bridge or
> "wireless bridge" in order to pass multiple MAC addresses. Each user
> has an additional NAT firewall for their multiple machines.
>
> 3. Your ISP delivers two IP addresses. The nephew end gets one, and
> everyone else has to do NAT to share the other IP address. The nephew
> end has a router as does the tower end. The wireless link needs to
> only pass one IP address and can therefore live with just about
> anything. Each user will have an additional router
>
> 3. Some variation in between including mapping routeable IP addresses
> to NAT IP's in a Cisco router.
>
> So, what's your prefered topology and we'll figure out what type of
> backhaul you need? I recommend number 1.
>
>>On the nephew's end, he could use a
>>wired router to feed a WAP attached to his omni and a bridge(??)
>>attached to the backbone antenna.
>
> Yes, something like that. The safest is a transparent bridge, which
> will pass multiple MAC addresses and will work with just about any
> configuration. Something like a Linksys WAP54G.
>
>>On my end, I'm not sure what I
>>would need between the backbone antenna on my end and my omni.
>
> Again, it's topology. The backhaul will probably be two identical
> wireless bridge radios (i.e. WAP54G). The ethernet connection from
> your WAP54G would go to some kind of common access point (or router)
> depending on your IP address layout and topology. Each user would
> have some kind of common client adapter to connect. They will
> probably also have an NAT router to deal with multiple computers.
>
>>I am
>>assuming that my connectivity to the WAN would be through a 100' run
>>of cat5 up to whatever is on the tower,
>
> 300ft is the maximum CAT5 run for real PoE (power over ethernet). That
> will work. Visualize climbing the tower in the rain and snow in order
> to placate one your complaining customers.
>
>>but what will the customers
>>need to connect to their antennas:, just a wireless router? (From my
>>limited understanding it doesn't sound like a bridge would be
>>appropriate since we wouldn't want any of the customers to have
>>visibility to each other's (or our) computer resources.
>
> Sorta. Again it depends on your IP address layout. If you can
> deliver NAT'ed IP address to each client, then a wireless client
> bridge radio and a simple ethernet switch will take care of their
> system. Of course that doesn't protect them from attack from the
> network, so a single MAC wireless bridge and a router would probably
> be more useful. Something like a WAP54G in client mode, with any NAT
> ethernet router behind it.
>
>>Can anyone offer some suggestions or URLs?
>>
>>Oh, and what about lightning?
>
> If it hits, you lose. Unless you buy hardware that's specifically
> designed for outdoor use, lightning is highly likely to destroy the
> devices. Carry lots of spares.
>
>>
>>Regards,
>>Ed
> --
> # Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
> # 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
> # http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
> # http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

"Ed" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

>Found this on DD-WRT. Couldn't you do this and set the limits and share
>across the network so no one person could hog it.

Probably, but there are other things that BitTorrent will break.
Besides eating bandwidth, it eats buffers. Read through this thread
first:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.i...9e16ca820c153f
Throttling the bandwidth is a big help, but even so, it's still
possible for BitTorrent to monopolize a broadband connection. If it
opens hundreds of the streams and the router can't handle them all, it
will crash the router.

There's quite a bit here on how bandwidth managers work but nothing
specific to BitTorrent.
http://www.etinc.com
I just block ports 6881 and 6981 and be done with it.

Incidentally, I only partly understand how QoS works and borrowed most
of my configurations from examples. I are not an expert.

QoS on a WRT54G(s) running DD-WRT v23
http://solosoft.org:81/projects/qos/

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <q4Sdnb-xSa5KULnZRVn-(E-Mail Removed)> on Fri, 24 Mar 2006 23:58:09 -0500,
Rôgêr <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>
>> Never mind the techies. Worry about the kids. At this time about 1/3
>> of the traffic on the internet is BitTorrent. It will hog every byte
>> of available bandwidth. One clueless BitTorrent user will cause the
>> system to grind to a halt. Users can control their bandwidth use, but
>> most don't. That means you have to go into the QoS or bandwidth
>> management business for them in order to keep the system alive. Are
>> you ready to play bandwidth policeman?
>
>I learned this the hard way. I have a T1 with community wireless
>network. I tell each and every client "I don't support file sharing. If
>you're going to do file-sharing, please sign up for some other service."
>Every now and then one of them figures I won't notice if they suck up
>every single damn bit of the bandwidth for days at a time. I've kicked
>two customers completely off the network and reformed three or four
>others. Hard to compete with DSL when they don't give a damn if you suck
>up every bit of 3Mbs for weeks on end.

Why not simply use a router that enforces QoS (Quality of Service)?

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR ALT.INTERNET.WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FAQ_for_alt.internet.wireless>

[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <(E-Mail Removed)> on Sat, 25 Mar 2006 00:17:00
-0800, Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>"Ed" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>
>>Found this on DD-WRT. Couldn't you do this and set the limits and share
>>across the network so no one person could hog it.
>
>Probably, but there are other things that BitTorrent will break.
>Besides eating bandwidth, it eats buffers. ...

True, but I've not seen that to be a problem with decent routers.

>Throttling the bandwidth is a big help, but even so, it's still
>possible for BitTorrent to monopolize a broadband connection. If it
>opens hundreds of the streams and the router can't handle them all, it
>will crash the router.

Use a better router, ideally one that can enforce comprehensive QoS.

>There's quite a bit here on how bandwidth managers work but nothing
>specific to BitTorrent.
> http://www.etinc.com
>I just block ports 6881 and 6981 and be done with it.

That *won't* necessarily stop Bittorrent -- it's easy to use different ports.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR ALT.INTERNET.WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FAQ_for_alt.internet.wireless>