WLRH Internet Connection Project

Creator: hfuller Status: Proof of concept Born On: 20:12, 6 April 2018 (CDT) Last Updated: 18:39, 03 May 2018 (CDT)

Overview

Due to funding and historical reasons, it has proven impossible or at least impractical for WLRH to gain access to a high-throughput Internet connection, despite UAH being incredibly nearby, and also being ready and willing to offer the connection itself. The only missing piece is the infrastructural build-out between the two. Since Makers Local has some expertise in point-to-point wireless (and is developing more as we speak), I figured we could help a fellow not-for-profit organization out, and come up with a solution to that problem.

Steps

1. Gain approval from UAH to provide network services from their location for this purpose.
   • Done as of 23 Mar 2018
2. Meet with the General Manager to make the offer of providing this service, on behalf of Makers Local.
   • Meeting has been scheduled as of 13 Apr 2018
   • Done as of 17 Apr 2018
3. Decide on a location for the "receiver" equipment.
   • The temporary location will be on the tower, but closer to the base.
4. Decide on a location for the "transmitter" equipment.
   • Approval gained from Optics Building staff to mount radio equipment on the building, approx 23 Apr 2018.
   • Support structure installation completed on the south side of the Optics Building telescope riser area approx 30 Apr 2018.
5. Decide on appropriate equipment based on those locations.
   • 5GHz will work due to the readily available line of sight to this location. A backup link may need to be 2.4GHz, but I doubt it.
   • Proof of concept equipment was purchased: MikroTik RouterBoard SXTsq 5 ac
   • UAH-side equipment installation for proof of concept completed on 1 May 2018.
   • WLRH-side equipment temporary installation for proof of concept completed on 3 May 2018. Results were poor: 6 Mbit/s link rate in both directions. Conclusion was that WLRH needs to aim better, and possibly go further up the tower to clear a tree. But hey, at least we got link!
   • Installation of redundant equipment was discussed, in order to reduce dependency on a single link.
6. Buy and donate the equipment.
   • Redundant equipment may want/need to be 2.4GHz and/or point to multi point (instead of point to point like the current link).
7. Install the equipment.
   • UAH end of primary link done.
   • WLRH end of primary link in progress.
8. Set up the equipment.
9.  ???
10. Non-profit

Details

Make the offer

It should be clear that the support for the link will come from a Makers Local point of contact, and the rest will be best-effort. It may be worth covering what the needs are, and if non-critical services can use this link while critical services use the existing one. Maybe some sort of failover scheme.