Look at one of our vendor members, higher cost than roll your own, but everything in one box, server, radius, etc., etc. It may prove to be a lower cost for a difficult start up and difficult area, leading to better customer satisfaction and word of mouth advertising, faster ROI and penetration. http://www.bluemesh.net
-----Original Message----- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Fred R. Goldstein Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 1:23 PM To: wireless@wispa.org Subject: [WISPA] MicroTik HWMPplus mesh? First off, I'd like to say hello to the list. Mike Hammett pointed me at it a couple of weeks ago, after I posted a wireless-related question (wireless in the trees) at isp-clec, and he reposted it here. This list is a lot more active... I've been reading the past few months archives and it's really quite informative. I'm a consultant working with competitive service providers all over the place. I don't run a WISP but some clients do. I am working now with a startup that wants to serve some "unserved" (no cable or DSL, just long-loop POTS/dial-up) remote territory which is about to get middle mile service to the nearest "city" (year-round pop. <10,000, but it's big for the area) thanks to a stimulus grant. The unserved "last mile" area covers a strip about 5 to 30 miles from the backbone point. It's the RF environment from hell: Heavily wooded and hilly. The most valuable strip of land is a long narrow beachfront strip a block or so wide, with a palisade (steep wooded hill) blocking it from the rest of the area. Plus it's convex (curves out into the big lake) so your line of sight within the beachside strip is very small. So in most places on the waterfront there's not even cellular service, since the cell sites are over the rim. No WISP is crazy enough to go there. My clients and I, however, are unusually crazy... why else would we be in the communications business? Given that environment, there only way to get to most of the subscribers is via multiple hops. We'd come down to the beach in at least two points near the ends, maybe in the middle too, and build microwave rings. I don't see how this could work with any of the canned mesh solutions. Most, like SkyPilot, only mesh at 5.8 Ghz, and there are some paths that are just too woody for that to work. Some of the subscriber access sites may need 900 too. I think each RF path and local-coverage cell will have to be engineered to local conditions. What looks to be the most flexible approach might be to use the MicroTik Routerboard multi-radio mPCI systems. Then we can use off-the-shelf 5.8 GHz cards and PtP antennas for the clear paths, and plug in the Ubiquiti XR9 or similar high-power 900 radio for tree blasting. User access would probably be sectorized at whatever band works. MicroTik says they have a meshing protocol, HWMPplus, that provides Layer 2 (this is critical; we're not building a Layer 3 network, and with this many hops, latency and loss are critical) dynamic meshing, essentially applying a routing protocol (smarter than bridge STPs) among nodes. I can't find any documentation for it on line, though, and a distributor I've been talking to has never tried or sold it. So does anyone on the list have any experience with the HWMPplus mesh? Or any other suggestions? Thanks! -- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
