Tales from the Towers, Chapter 21: Let’s do it for the children

I get a lot of calls from people interested in starting a WISP. Since I look at each deployment as a challenge both technically and financially, it’s very interesting to me to hear the scenarios and the expectations. On the other hand, I’m also involved in several industry blogs centered on different products, and I have had the opportunity to listen to many experts with years of experience describe their methodology and philosophy behind their designs. What’s most fascinating is that the modern WISP operator has developed into the medical equivalent of the general practitioner or the proverbial jack-of-all-trades which has resulted in many successful deployments. Keep in mind that most profitable WISPS are built around PTMP design instead of a municipal mesh model. I’m hoping Guerilla WiFi can change the model. ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers Chapter 20: Can’t we just all get along?

I think it’s time to set the municipal alarm and wake the industry back up. Between Verizon and Sprint, I can’t figure out whose marketing department is worse. I do know these companies keep supporting more reasons to push WiFi. The technical divisions of these companies finally deploy high-speed mobile broadband but they promptly shoot themselves in the foot by either limiting users to 5GB per month or throttling to 256Kbps which is slower than EV-DO. I can’t even in good conscience beat up AT&T since everyone else, including Consumer Reports, is already doing that. I think it’s more of an admission that 4G is overhyped and oversold. Apparently getting bandwidth to the tower is a lot harder than getting bandwidth from the tower to the user. It doesn’t matter how much horsepower the car has if you can’t get gas in the engine. I think I will keep my unlimited bandwidth EV-DO card a few more months until Clearwire shows up in our city with an investor in tow. Right now I’m not even sure that a 12-month contract has any value with them. ... Read more...

Tales From the Towers Chapter 19: Catch a Wave-Guide and You are Sitting on Top of the World

The Beach Boys are going to hate me for this but I’ve been waiting for years to use that line.  I also wanted to title it, “Look Ma, no mesh” but I should have used that one several articles ago.  It’s not that I have anything against mesh as there is an application for almost every technology.  At this point in the industry and the economy, however, it’s time to get past a word very few non-technical people understand and the excessive associated cost of it.  Anyway, this article is about wave-guide antennas so let’s get back to that. ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 18: More details on deploying large scale Wi-Fi networks

In this installment of Tales from the Towers, Rory Conaway dives into the technical details of deploying a large scale municipal Wi-Fi network with explanations on using beam-forming equipment.

Based on some of the emails I’m getting, the biggest complaint is not enough details in my articles and without them, it’s difficult to implement the idea. Fair enough, I’m definitely guilty of that. In my defense, please understand that I want to have a personal life. As most WISP’s can attest, if I had to put down every single detail on every single project or idea, I would be writing from here to Kingdom come. Except for the six guys on the planet like me that think they ought to make a movie out of every article in EETimes (I think a lower noise figure on a 741 OP-Amp makes a compelling plot line), most of you would be canceling your Ambien prescriptions. The reality is that the details only matter to technical people and those are embedded in white papers. I’ve written a couple but I can’t sit still long enough to finish dinner, let alone do a 20-page technical document. My wife says that if I had put as much time into my homework as I have in these articles, I would have my Masters Degree by now. Of course, if University of Phoenix would give me real life credit for standing in a man-lift, hanging antennas 80 feet in the air, I would have received a Doctorate without ever having attended class.

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 17: Who Needs White Space?

This article explains why the “White Space” (300 to 400 MHz frequencies) may not be ideal for wireless ISPs (WISPs) operating in cities. It focuses on how WISPs can build a network using the 900 MHz frequency band instead with the new beam-forming equipment.

It’s time to step up our game.  There is no problem generating massive bandwidth from an access point (AP) location.  We have done that.  What we haven’t figured out yet is how to leap over tall trees in a single bound or walk through brick walls.  If you are willing to add in another 20Mhz of super-powerful, wall-penetrating, obstruction busting, tree smashing signal, then we have solved the problem. ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 16: Setting up large scale wireless video surveillance

This is not a how-to article on setting up a home video surveillance network since even my neighbor, the non-technical guy, installed his own video surveillance system. Most of us have an understanding of how an IP-based video surveillance network works. What we want to cover is why all this phenomenal bandwidth we are creating takes video surveillance to another level and why that may or may not be a good thing — and how to apply this to a large scale city video surveillance network.

A long time ago, video surveillance cameras used terms such as CIF (352×288 pixel resolution) and 4CIF (702×576). Computers used resolutions like VGA (640×480) and SVGA (1024×768). The common denominator in all pf these is the 4×3 screen ratio. Movie makers marched to their own drums with 16:9 ratios until the standard today is the 1080 level (1920×1080). ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 15: Thinking is Cheaper than Doing

I said we would figure out how to compete with cable and it’s time to put up or shut up. I’m not writing the entire business plan here and I’m going to leave some key pieces out to protect some of what I’m working on, but the basic concept is here and it’s solid. We will put it all together later but let’s just think it through first and add some more tools. ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 14: How to Make Money as a Wireless ISP

I have received calls from many people who want to start a wireless ISP (WISP) business, whether using a mesh/muni model or a point to multipoint (PTMP) system. Although I believe there is no better time than now, that doesn’t mean it’s easy, but I hope to prove that it’s financially feasible everywhere. Competing against satellite or cellular services like EVDO, WiMax, or even LTE is a no-brainer in areas that have no wireline services. I’ll cover the new Sprint/Clearwire LTE service just announced for Phoenix in another article. There are also other services like VoIP that can be provided, but for the beginning of this analysis, I will cover Internet services only.

A WISP can serve three types of geographical areas:
1) Rural – 20 or fewer potential subscribers per square mile;
2) Suburban – 800 potential subscribers per square mile (1100 people per square mile in Scottsdale); and
3) City – 3,000 plus potential subscribers per square mile (Boston: 12000 people per square mile). ... Read more...

Tales From the Towers Chapter 13: Interference Is Not Just a Hockey Penalty

Unlicensed frequencies mean that interference is a way of life in most major cities. The question is what to do when all the frequencies you plan on using or even radios that are in operation start having errors. I just came from an installation like that. In addition, then I was asked to design an expansion to the system. One of the clues was that interference is a problem is when things work for a couple weeks and packet errors in the log jump from nothing to tens of thousands.

By default, most of us set up our networks with 20MHz wide channels. That’s the default for 2.4GHz WiFi and usually the default for most 5.8GHz deployments. However, what happens when we do a site survey and 500 APs show up on the list? If the design is already deployed, your options are limited. You basically have three: ... Read more...

Tales From the Towers Chapter 13: My mom is making me clean my room

This is the twelfth chapter in a series by Rory Conaway called Tales From the Towers about deploying and managing large scale Wi-Fi networks.

I have all these random thoughts hanging out there from the various articles so I thought it time to tidy them up before continuing on to some new ones. Let’s start with what’s really old is sometimes new again. Various ideas antenna and radio designs have been coming to me as I have been writing these articles so I thought I would share a few of them.

For those of you who are too young to have missed the Golden era of Ham and CB radio era, I have some interesting news for you. Many of the ideas that WiFi AP manufacturers have come up with are similar to some CB radio antenna systems from 35 years ago. It’s really funny to see how these ideas are implemented in WiFi with new capabilities. I’m not saying that antennas haven’t shown any innovation since then but… Of course, could you imagine a 36’ aluminum stock horizontal polarity wave-guide antenna? I would have had to sink 10’ concrete blocks into the ground to keep my garage from blowing over. ... Read more...

Tales from the Towers, Chapter 11: You Can’t Fit a Square Peg Into a Round Hole

My attention deficit disorder is going nuts so I’m going to veer off Triadland a little bit more.  We have defined a reference low-cost system and we clearly discussed the fact it’s definitely not the best system for a public safety mobile environment.  So I’m going to call this article the prequel.  How do we determine what equipment to use or in other words, what is the best system?  Actually, most of them have some unique value depending on the application.

Ok, that’s a copout and allows me to avoid the question.  However, there is no easy answer.  I’ll go through the process that I use when asked to design a system.  Keep in mind there are way more variables than I can cover here.  The other thing that is highly important is that you know as many products on the market.  I’m not just talking about mesh products, but PTP products, PTMP products, mobile products, virtual IP software, VPN products, antenna designs, etc…  In addition to reading and keeping data sheets from everybody, get your hands on and get as much field experience with as many manufacturers as possible. ... Read more...

Municipal wireless designs... ... Read more...

Now let’s talk about the real-world in deploying this type of system.

Realistically, light poles or traffic lights are the obvious deployment locations. They are usually spaced pretty optimally. The problem is they are either owned or operated by the local municipality or the local power company which in many cases, is overseen by a local governing board. Either way, the key word here is government. ... Read more...

Our network is pretty inexpensive... ... Read more...

Before we continue developing the system further,

it’s a good idea to discuss all the various antenna designs that go into a municipal design process.  I’ve described one type of design with omni-directional antennas, although I use many different designs customized to the target client.  It won’t meet all needs; no system will unless the budget is unlimited.  It is being designed to be as flexible as possible, but there are specific technologies that may work better in some areas.  Wireless hardware manufacturers have put forth various designs and optimized their hardware towards that goal.  Budgets have sometimes dictated other designs such as “Tales from the Towers.”  Due to new equipment that has been released, the numbers of potential designs that can be deployed have exploded. ... Read more...

Our system is installed and our credit card maxed out. Now, we have to either pay for it or figure out how it’s going to save what we invested in it. As an income based system, it’s pretty easy to figure out a direct correlation between expenses and revenue. If there is some kind of defined savings, we need to try and make that objective and measurable.

Let’s talk about the profit scenario. These are just the direct costs:

1. We spent $10K putting in the system;

2. 50Mbps costs $450 per month (data center plus roof rights);

3. Pole rental costs $5 per month per pole (16 poles) or $80 per month

On the income side, you are going to have daily, weekly, and monthly clients. Let’s say you charge $5 per day, $15 per week, and $30 per month. It’s fairly easy to calculate your income/revenue to put a profitable scenario together. However, let’s go back to the original premise of a low cost system. ... Read more...

In the last article, access points were installed, WDS links set up for hopping, and we were ready to access the Internet.  Although TriadLand is ready to rock, we now need to connect the users.  First we need to connect the network to some type of Internet service and then come up with a way to authenticate people who want to use it.  After that we will cover the details of system management and how to overcome them. ... Read more...

The low-budget Muni-wireless system is ready to be deployed.

We have identified the perfect one square mile area to be covered.  The streetlights are 25’ tall and exactly 660 feet apart with full time electric power.  There are no trees and the houses are 20’ tall and made of wood.  Nobody in the area owns a microwave oven or any indoor WiFi routers.   This will be known as TriadLand.  It’s my make believe city. I get to name it. The goal for the first square mile is complete indoor coverage to a laptop.  Let’s find out if that is realistic.

This is the third installment of my “Tales from the Towers” series of articles about deploying large scale Wi-Fi networks in unlicensed bands. The theme: share and share alike. Although we were going to discuss putting access points (APs) on the poles in this week’s article, an incident occurred last week that I think is worth discussing before we go any further. Always keep in mind that unlicensed bandwidth is a shared commodity. It’s also a good idea to have a good relationship with your competitors or anyone in the area that is using unlicensed bandwidth. Sometimes that’s a little hard to do, but it’s definitely in your best interest to try. ... Read more...

Continuing the discussion of the budget muni wireless network requires analyzing the front line component, the Access Point (AP). There are many variations of APs. They all have features and capabilities that provide enhancements in certain environments. Some of the APs break the practical limit of 20-30 users by using multiple radios in a single enclosure, proprietary polling systems (not compatible with other vendors), and advanced beam-forming techniques. However, the focus is from a budget standpoint and that means this design will start with a single 2.4 GHz radio with an omni-directional antenna. In later articles, I will cover upgrading the design to support more users and a larger coverage area. The beauty of this design is that it’s cheap to get in the game and scalable. ... Read more...

Several people have asked me how to build lower cost municipal Wi-Fi systems that cover anything from a very small area to hundreds of miles. To be honest, we haven’t yet deployed a muni Wi-Fi network that covers hundreds of miles, but in the course of my work as a wireless ISP over the past few years, I have learned many lessons from our small and medium-scale deployments that may be useful to people who are thinking of rolling out large scale muni Wi-fi projects. ... Read more...