Internet link is coming....

Discussion in 'News' started by Clive G3GJA, 12 July 2011.

By Clive G3GJA on 12 July 2011 at 09:28
  1. Clive G3GJA

    Clive G3GJA Active Member
    Staff Member Website Admin Chairman

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    The Group purchased two pairs of EnGenius EOC-5611P wireless bridging units after it was found that some loaned units were unsuitable for getting an Internet link to the site. The EnGenius units were supplied by local wireless LAN specialist Solwise Ltd. As detailed in an earlier post, one of the units was fitted to the EYRG tower on the 27th June.

    eoc5611p.jpg
    WLAN unit

    Prior to this I had been busy refurbishing my home telescopic mast and rotator system so that I could use it to mount the other end of the wireless LAN link. It had been out of use for several years and needed replacement of the stub mast, bearings stripping down, cleaning and re-greasing etc. After reassembling the mast, attaching the bridging unit and cranking it up to the full height of 14m the CAT 5 cable was plugged into the laptop and ... nothing!! Not even a trace of the Weedley end of the link

    There were some weak 5GHz signals from and adjacent mast at Weedley used by the wireless broadband company Quickline so I knew that my end was working OK and because the unit is on the rotatable part of the mast I knew I'd got the 290deg heading correct. Over the next week I tried linking to Weedley from a couple of locations where I could park my car and see the Weedley towers using one of the spare units and was succesful.

    On Sunday 3rd July I decided to look at the Weedley end from the ground and re-checked the reciprocal bearing of 110deg. Although not very accurate as I was sighting the angle from the ground, the bearing the antenna was pointing as measured on my compass looked more like 150deg. A call to Richard YTV and Lyndon resulted in a rapidly convened working party at 4pm. We lowered the mast, luffed it repositioned the bridging unit and raised it again within two hours.

    IMGA0972.JPG
    The EnGenius link at 14m at the QTH of G3GJA

    Our efforts were rewarded with a connection with the unit at my home. Checking from home showed that we had got a signal 21dB above the noise floor of -95dBm in a 5MHz bandwidth and a data link speed of 6Mbps. This worked for the rest of the week until Friday night when when the link to Weedley dropped out. Nothing seemed to make it work again. I went to the Weedley site on Saturday evening with the spare unit and that linked OK from the lane. Yesterday, in desparation I lowered my mast and replaced the head unit. As soon as I raised it again I could see a lot more of the base stations used by the two wireless broadband companies in Hull (Quickline and NextGenus). As soon as I rotated the head to 290deg the link to Weedley associated and started passing data.

    I left it running overnight with my laptop pinging the D-Star control unit with 512 bytes of data and it has held up. I've widened the bandwidth to get a faster speed and it now works at 12Mbps which is pretty good over a 9.9km path and is faster than the broadband feed I get from Kingston Comms. At this speed the signal is -80dBm which is still 15dBm above the noise floor.

    So why did the other unit pack up at my end? It was working Thursday night the 7th July, but had failed by the evening of Friday 8th. There was a storm with a couple of quite close lightning strikes on Friday around 7pm and it's possible that was what fried the unit. Further tests are in progress to ensure the link is stable and checks will be made on the unit that seems to have failed at my end. It's still under warranty so if necessary I'll get it changed.

    The next step is to configure the business grade ADSL router I have installed at home to replace the Netgear 834G supplied by Kingston Comms. The Draytek 2830n was chosen because it supports VPN end points (I have a permanent VPN linking to the office) and also allows separate subnets to reach the Internet. That means I can set up a class A subnet dedicated for D-Star use and keep it quite separate from the two class C subnets I use at home and in the office.

    I've also got Kingston Comms to give me a static IP address for my home Internet service; so that's another item on the D-Star requirement list checked off.
     
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Discussion in 'News' started by Clive G3GJA, 12 July 2011.

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