HSMM-MESH (High power WiFi for ham radio)
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Tyrell
Apr 17, 2012, 4:40:36 AM4/17/12
to Reno Linux Users Group
It's been relatively quiet lately... No one's been talking about
projects, no one has been bouncing around ideas... So I figure I will
try to break the silence...
As I'm sure many have gathered, I am a ham radio operator; It's kind
of my passion. It shares many philosophies with the Linux
community: Experimentation, pushing the limits of technology,
advancing the technical arts, etc. It is my humble opinion that more
people around here should get their licenses... If anyone is
interested, just ask... I'm the president of the UNR Radio Pack
Amateur Radio Club, and so I know a bit about the subject ;)
Much of the electronic equipment in your house is labelled "This
device complies with Part 15 of the FCC rules: 1) It must not cause
any interference, and 2) it must accept any interference, including
that which may be considered harmful." Most people don't think about
that much... But in the 2.4ghz band, it basically translates to
this: Part 15 users are secondary users, and Amateur Radio (Part 97)
is the primary users. Basically, ham radio operators can use
standard run of the mill 802.11g equipment with amplifiers and very
high gain antennas and what have you and crank out some ridiculous
range off of that cheap equipment...
OF course, amplifiers are AUTHORIZED (Up to 1500 watts... Compare that
to the 1/10th of a watt authorized to Part 15), it wouldn't be very
nice. Therefore, ham radio mostly uses fancy antennas... Often home
built. But even with off-the-shelf equipment and a decent antenna, it
wouldn't be a stretch to hope for a connection from, say, the top of
Peavine to Mt. Rose.
Part 97 has some restrictions that prevent hams from using this to
gain general access to the internet... Primarily, we can't stream
music, we can't use encryption of any kind, and we have to stay
"Family friendly." That being said, we can still do quite a bit...
Including high speed, city wide networking. Some common applications
include webcam streaming, VoIP, and file transfers.
One exciting project in the field is the HSMM-MESH network: http://hsmm-mesh.org/
The principle is pretty simple: Take basic WRT54G(L) routers and run
a custom (Linux based) firmware on it. The network is a mesh, so
it's self configuring, self healing, distributed routing, and all that
jazz. Given a couple mountain tops, and some well placed nodes
(Maybe the public schools? Maybe the GBIS office? Maybe just a bunch
of people's houses), we could create a high reliability network that
doesn't depend on the internet for it's stability.
Anyway, I have gotten quite long winded for an introduction... But I
hope I was able to stir some interest in someone out there ;) If
anyone is interested in helping me with this little project, I would
love to help you get your ham license (8 year olds do it regularly...
And the questions and answers are openly published... So it's really
not that tough ;) ), and help you get on board with some local groups
that would love to see this get off the ground ;)
I just hope that we can find some more technically minded people to
get involved... And I had hoped that this group would be a good pool
to recruit from!
projects, no one has been bouncing around ideas... So I figure I will
try to break the silence...
As I'm sure many have gathered, I am a ham radio operator; It's kind
of my passion. It shares many philosophies with the Linux
community: Experimentation, pushing the limits of technology,
advancing the technical arts, etc. It is my humble opinion that more
people around here should get their licenses... If anyone is
interested, just ask... I'm the president of the UNR Radio Pack
Amateur Radio Club, and so I know a bit about the subject ;)
Much of the electronic equipment in your house is labelled "This
device complies with Part 15 of the FCC rules: 1) It must not cause
any interference, and 2) it must accept any interference, including
that which may be considered harmful." Most people don't think about
that much... But in the 2.4ghz band, it basically translates to
this: Part 15 users are secondary users, and Amateur Radio (Part 97)
is the primary users. Basically, ham radio operators can use
standard run of the mill 802.11g equipment with amplifiers and very
high gain antennas and what have you and crank out some ridiculous
range off of that cheap equipment...
OF course, amplifiers are AUTHORIZED (Up to 1500 watts... Compare that
to the 1/10th of a watt authorized to Part 15), it wouldn't be very
nice. Therefore, ham radio mostly uses fancy antennas... Often home
built. But even with off-the-shelf equipment and a decent antenna, it
wouldn't be a stretch to hope for a connection from, say, the top of
Peavine to Mt. Rose.
Part 97 has some restrictions that prevent hams from using this to
gain general access to the internet... Primarily, we can't stream
music, we can't use encryption of any kind, and we have to stay
"Family friendly." That being said, we can still do quite a bit...
Including high speed, city wide networking. Some common applications
include webcam streaming, VoIP, and file transfers.
One exciting project in the field is the HSMM-MESH network: http://hsmm-mesh.org/
The principle is pretty simple: Take basic WRT54G(L) routers and run
a custom (Linux based) firmware on it. The network is a mesh, so
it's self configuring, self healing, distributed routing, and all that
jazz. Given a couple mountain tops, and some well placed nodes
(Maybe the public schools? Maybe the GBIS office? Maybe just a bunch
of people's houses), we could create a high reliability network that
doesn't depend on the internet for it's stability.
Anyway, I have gotten quite long winded for an introduction... But I
hope I was able to stir some interest in someone out there ;) If
anyone is interested in helping me with this little project, I would
love to help you get your ham license (8 year olds do it regularly...
And the questions and answers are openly published... So it's really
not that tough ;) ), and help you get on board with some local groups
that would love to see this get off the ground ;)
I just hope that we can find some more technically minded people to
get involved... And I had hoped that this group would be a good pool
to recruit from!
James Washer
Apr 17, 2012, 8:28:40 PM4/17/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Do keep me informed of what you are thinking about. I've done a bit of playing with ~1mile distance setups using Buffalo or WRT54s running wrt
73's de KG7HH
--
- jim
73's de KG7HH
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Clark Milholland
Apr 18, 2012, 12:54:10 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Just set up a ~4 Mile shot across Carson with http://www.ubnt.com/airmax the 5Ghz model, it has been running great for us!
Bob Tregilus
Apr 18, 2012, 1:17:06 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Hi all -
Sorry for the commercial post, but regarding high power WiFi, I have a bunch of 19db gain radios for sale at $15ea.
They come complete with power inserter and so on. The radio is inside the antenna. Here's a link to a picture: http://electricnevada.org/pics/radio.jpg
I would love to get rid of a few of them. Also, I'm willing to discuss selling the whole lot--cheap! I have about 50 or 60 of them.
Here's a link to an installation guide: http://www.maplenet-inc.com/assets/templates/maplenet/support/i19TurbocellQuickStartGuide.pdf
Bob
---
Tyrell Berry
Apr 18, 2012, 1:20:08 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
I would really like to play with the Ubiquiti stuff... I like that it can be taken out of the unlicensed airspace (Less noise...) and that they are amplified... The Bullet series is very affordable and very flexible; Would be pretty neat to set up a mesh with them. However, the HSMM-MESH firmware currently only runs on Broadcom chips... And Ubiquiti uses Atheros. Yes, HSMM-MESH is based on OpenWRT... But I really haven't investigated what changes they made, and what would be required to make it work on Atheros. Finally, even for the cheap prices that the Bullet series is, it doesn't beat the deals you can find at Savers for WRT54G's.
Still... Would be really cool if someone smarter than me would help me figure out how to get the firmware running on Atheros...
--
Tyrell Berry
"Could God create an ice giant with so much HP that God himself could not destroy it with a single critical hit?"
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the engineers and execs at Apple and Microsoft...
Linus Knows"
Still... Would be really cool if someone smarter than me would help me figure out how to get the firmware running on Atheros...
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Clark Milholland <clark.mi...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Tyrell Berry
"Could God create an ice giant with so much HP that God himself could not destroy it with a single critical hit?"
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the engineers and execs at Apple and Microsoft...
Linus Knows"
Clark Milholland
Apr 18, 2012, 1:23:45 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Don't know if you guys are Reddit users but for the ones that have not see this.
Reggie Darden
Apr 18, 2012, 1:24:40 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
At GBIS we use Ubiquiti radios. 3.65GHz and 5GHz. Working alright
but there is a lot of interference with everyone else and their
mother throwing up radios of various types.
Tyrell Berry
Apr 18, 2012, 1:24:59 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Well, in the vein of my last comment...
To meet the rules of Part 97, we must ID at least every 10 minutes. One clever solution to this is to set your callsign as the SSID; Another is to send a ping with your call sign at timed intervals. The first option works well in small setups... But much less well in a MESH network. I'm not sure what HSMM-MESH is doing about the problem, but I suspect it involves the pinging action... Of course, this is easier configured if we can actually control the source... So What chip set are yours running? And how easy is it to get alternative firmware running? I would very much consider buying the whole lot if they were going to get the job done for me...
To meet the rules of Part 97, we must ID at least every 10 minutes. One clever solution to this is to set your callsign as the SSID; Another is to send a ping with your call sign at timed intervals. The first option works well in small setups... But much less well in a MESH network. I'm not sure what HSMM-MESH is doing about the problem, but I suspect it involves the pinging action... Of course, this is easier configured if we can actually control the source... So What chip set are yours running? And how easy is it to get alternative firmware running? I would very much consider buying the whole lot if they were going to get the job done for me...
Tyrell Berry
Apr 18, 2012, 1:28:50 AM4/18/12
to ren...@googlegroups.com
Having access to the ham bands gives me some advantages in this regard... Especially if I WERE to get out of the Part 15 channels. This would qualify as a repeater, and while repeaters are not REQUIRED to get frequency coordination, coordinated frequencies win out over uncoordinated ones when it comes to interference... And if I were to build out a semi-permanant mesh network, I would try to get coordination. The point being, interference isn't as big of a deal when we are the primary users, when we have processes for mitigating interference, and we have a boatload of bandwidth to play with.
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