Seeking advice about covering residential park in Wi-Fi for weekend event

Greetings from Wisconsin,

In late July, our city will be one of a group of host cities for the
2006 MS Tram that brings cyclists through our area as they fundraise
for MS research. In 2002, this event brought 1,200 visitors to our
city; this year we're expecting at least 1,500.

I have volunteered to cover the park where most of the festivities will
be held, including eating areas, bike storage areas, RV parking areas,
and camping areas, in good ol' 802.11b/g. This park is in a
residential part of town with no businesses within two blocks.

The shape of the park is somewhat trapezoidal, 1350 feet wide on south
end, 500 feet wide on the north end, and 900 feet long between the
north and south ends. Homes line the south and east sides of the park.

My thoughts to this point have centered around contracting with two
homes that have either cable or DSL, preferably cable in this
neighborhood, setting up a machine using something like ZoneCD at both
locations that throttles the overall connection speed so the home can
still use their connection if need be, provides basic logging, i.e.
matching MAC to TCP/IP transactions, throttles the individual
connection speed to wifi devices, and an SRX access point connected to
each machine. Then there would be SRX access points mounted throughout
the park that would relay traffic back to the hard-wired SRX access
points. Ideally, there should be load-balancing and failover in place.

I've got until mid-June before I really have to start hammering this
out and testing it, but since I have plenty of time I'd like to
evaluate my options.

Feel free to chime in with your opinions and advice. With my regular
participation, I anticipate this thread to be a long-running thread, at
least through the end of July. =)

--
Isaac Grover, Owner
Quality Computer Services of River Falls, Wisconsin
Computer Consulting, Networking, Maintenance, and more.
Commercial and Residential Inquiries Welcomed.
Web: http://www.qcs-rf.com

 

Before you get into the logistics start with the preliminaries.

A couple of concerns
Amicable negotiations with cable company.
Signed contract with cable company.

 

I agree - most cable companies won't generally allow a homeowner share their
connection at the residential rate (though they likely have a business rate
that does permit it), but for a cause like MS, they're highly unlikely to
have a problem, so start with getting the cable co. involved. You may end
up with a far superior service for less effort than you planned - if they
cable co. sees an upside to their involvement.

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll give them a call to see what we can
negotiate.

Isaac Grover, Owner