The RouterBoard is interesting. One of our first ever scfn routers was from MicroTik, and they later provided hardware for our book that we subsequently used for a couple of years running m0n0wall. I'm sure its improved, but we found their OS pretty confusing to setup, esp vs pfsense & m0n0wall. If you're thinking of using it for the RF side of things, I've never been impressed with their claims to be able to run multiple radios on the one motherboard. We tried, but the radios interfere way too much so that you never get the appropriate throughput. So it wouldn't be effective, imnsho, to add directional antennas to a multiple radio RouterBoard system, for example.
Depending how much time and energy you want to devote to this for free, I recommend you simply plug in a few Meraki radios until the coverage is adequate and move on. You can do billing / login control via their dashboard as needed. Remote monitoring, configuration etc. is all there. Upgrades are automatic. You can keep it on the cheap side by rolling your own outdoor boxes and using the older 802.11g radios (like most of Golden Hill). Or go for the fancy 802.11n radios and get 300mbps dual channel support. (Or, what I would do is in between: use the "dove bar" Outdoor radio, like the one used on the Pink Palace rooftop - its actually hooked up to dual waveguide antennas iirc!). As a general architecture point, more lower power radios is going to be better than fewer high power ones. Usually the limiting factor is not the laptop (say) hearing the AP, it is the AP hearing the laptop. For all sorts of reasons, have many lower power radios works much better. Hope this helps. Sounds like a fun project! On the bandwidth side... nothing works better than bigger pipes. But you can get a *heck* of a long way with sharing, esp if you limit upload traffic. We've found that saturating the uplink kills the supposedly 10x faster downllink way before it seems full. I guess the ACKs down't get out for all the people who are mostly downloading if someone is hammering the uplink. Doing some creating shaping / outright port blocking can keep things moving along. The pfsense "share bandwidth equally" seems to work well enough overall. cheers, michael On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:59 -0800, "Kim C. Callis" <[email protected]> wrote: > That sounds interesting, but I noticed that is the radio is only doing > 802.11b. I really need to have g going, considering folks want to do > streaming, voip, etc. Also, can I still have pfsense guiding things? You > can > reach me directly at [email protected] > > On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:46 PM, rwf <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Tropos 5110 in mesh configuration. > > > > I can get you a few pretty reasonable. ~100.00 > > > > We use it for all our marinas. > > > > > > > > > > > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > > [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Kim C. Callis > > *Sent:* Saturday, December 19, 2009 4:38 PM > > *To:* SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List > > *Subject:* [SCFN] pfsense and APs > > > > > > > > I am getting ready to setup a wireless link to cover a Marina. I figured > > since I was going to do a fully enclosed box (actually 2 boxes), I thought > > about using the routerboard 433 and the main AP connected to a pfsense box. > > As I reading the manual for the routerboard OS, I saw that it is a very > > flexible system. It would seem somewhat redundant do both routerboard as > > well pfsense. I need to do two AP, one acting as a repeater. I am thinking a > > sector antenna for at least one of the AP. > > > > It is odd, there is currently a couple of WRT54 (running DD-WRT) trying to > > provide service for the dock and has filed miserably. I have secured a > > location that is about 45' above the deck on both sides of the dock, which > > should solve the connection issue. I like the fact that I can get some 500mw > > cards for the routerboard, but I guess I will use any AP that provides me > > with a little power, can can handle being outon inclement weather, allow for > > decent selections of antennas with having to get creative. > > > > Any suggestions would be appreciated! > > > > > > > > -- > > Kim C. Callis > > [email protected] > > _____________________________________ > > > > Save the Cheerleader. Save the World. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List > > To unsubscribe, please visit: > > http://socalfreenet.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_socalfreenet.org > > > > > > -- > Kim C. Callis > [email protected] > _____________________________________ > > Save the Cheerleader. Save the World. _______________________________________________ SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List To unsubscribe, please visit: http://socalfreenet.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_socalfreenet.org
