Im an isp in rural alabama. Been in the biz of providing dialup for about 10 years now. We decided to try going wireless to provide broadband to our customers as the phone company is out to kill us with dsl.
Well a company aproached us offering a money back guarantee for one access point and 25 modems for $15,000. We purchased the equipment which they claimed would cover 10 miles without external antennas for the customers and with externals 30 to 40 miles. The equipment they sold us was the canopy 2.4 ghz ap and 25 sm’s.
Needless to say it was a scam to an extent. We got the equipment but 2.5 miles if max range it will do. Basically nol here so it did what motorola claimed it would do but not what the sellers claimed. They also claimed to be liscensed motorola people etc. Well were out 15k. One of the partners of that biz is in prison now on other charges and the other partner doesnt have any money.
Contacted motorola and they never called back.
Anyways what Im hoping to get some help with is how to set the thing up. I recieved no software, no manuals. So I have equipment and no idea what to do with it. I was able to set it up to work with an sm hooked to the office and the ap point being feed by the connected sm then the other sm’s will go thru the accesspoint. I know I have nothing to authenticate with software wise, Ill try crossing that bridge after I can get it set up right.
What I want to be able to do is connect the ap directly to the office switch in place of using an sm there and have the customers sm’s connect to the ap. I cant seem to get it to do this. So any help on this basic problem would get me started at least.
Im guess the problem is routing related.
But again I can get it to route find if I go like this:
Office(isp) > sm > ap > sm(customer)
Works great.
But I need.
Office(isp)> ap > sm(customer)
Were hoping to get a little money out of all this stuff to be able to afford to buy the 900mhz system to replace it with. We just cant afford to come up with another 10 to 15k after being ripped off for this 15k.
Any help would be greatly apreciated.
Also sugestions of what software to buy would be great to. We were told the 15k included all software needed, but we didnt get any.
here is a link to the manuals you will need.
http://motorola.canopywireless.com/supp … on=1&cat=8
There are several type’s of ap’s, 60 degree, omni and the cyclone 120 degree.
The software for the sm’s and ap’s you can get from this forum. Do you now what version you are running? There are several good people in the forum that can help but you need to read through the manuals so you will understand what you are asking? Or they will call you Clueless Jr.
the phone company you speak of is it a “coop” ?
anyways i am not much on 2.4 stuff but you said you had 2 ap’s which is going to cover 120 degrees and the office of yours does it have a tower if so how high?
anyways i will help wher i can but if it is a coop they do not have to abide by any bell rules making them basicially a monoply i am going through the same problem and they will not let you offer dsl either i bet.
also your right dont worry about authinication yet you can turn the eithernet port on and off for now on the nopays.
by the way i am from TN so i know your terrain pretty good. and if it is even close to what it is here your going to have some trouble. In my opinion with out even knowing much more i think you will need to put the ap in the highest part of that area and get some backhauls to feed the ap from your shop unless you have a good size tower.
feed us some more info and and even some pictures or something and we will try to help.
kmeadows
Info-Ed Inc.
I feel for you buddy. It sucks to be ripped off. The good news is that with some planning and some minor modifications, you can make the 2.4 stuff work better than you might think. The trees will be a PITA, however 900MHz is no magic bullet either.
To answer your question, there is no reason why your setup should not work. Check the Ethernet cable from the switch to the AP, make sure there is a link. I think you might need a crossover cable from the switch to the AP.
Canopy should be configured with private IP addresses. We use a 10.0.x.x scheme with 10.0.1.1/16 in the router. We have a Win2003 server with a public and private IP bound to it and remote into the server on the public IP and then manage the Canopy from there.
If you are interested in getting some direction with your Canopy Deployment, I would be happy to assist.
Some Questions for you (and lots of assumptions from me)
- Model # of AP you have (does it have an external antenna connector?)
- Model # of SM’s you have (do they have external antenna connectors?)
- Do you have any of the 27" Reflectors? If not you can order them from Wireless Beehive - you will definately need them.
- Did they sell you a CMM? If so, don’t install it - we may be able to find it a home at another ISP later. You are not going to need it for a long time.
If you put the AP at ground level (your office) you will not get more than a few customers on it due to ground clutter/foliage. You don’t want to have to move the AP once you have users on it. My suggestion is to identify the highest point available - ideally a tower on a hill or a water tower.
- If this tower is in the center of your planned coverage area, you will want to use a 2.4GHz Omni antenna - possibly with downtilt.
- If the tower is to one side of your planned coverage area, you will want to use a 2.4GHz 120deg sector antenna.
Search the forum for the company that modifies the AP so that it has an external antenna connector on it. It’s not alot of $$ and it’s going to be necessary to maximize your investment.
Download the Canopy Operators Manual and start reading the sections on AP’s and SM’s. Ignore everything else for now.
While your AP is getting modified use a power inverter in your vehicle to power an SM and your laptop. Configure the SM’s “Web Page Auto Update” for 3 seconds. Enable the SM’s Spectrum Analyzer and drive around the area and determine what frequencies average the lowest level. Include the AP installation location - you want to know what the AP sees as noise.
When the AP comes back, install it on your selected location - higher is better. Set it to the quietest frequency you found. You will want to place an SM on your building, and use it to feed bandwidth to the AP on the tower until such time as it makes sense to upgrade to backhauls. The AP will be set to generate sync.
Plan on 15miles LOS with distance dropping to 1/2 mile in very heavy foliage - it really depends on your AP location.
We do not use any type of authentication or bandwidth management software. We use the SM to manage bandwidth, and we manually deal with customer authentication.
We had 80 users on a single T1 before it finally saturated (we probably should have upgraded at 60). The SM’s offer bursting capability so you can set sustained for 256k with burst to 1024 or whatever works for you.
hope this gets you started.
We had 80 users on a single T1 before it finally saturated (we probably should have upgraded at 60). The SM's offer bursting capability so you can set sustained for 256k with burst to 1024 or whatever works for you.
Off-topic, but our 10Mbps line saturated on just 240 clients, which is similar to your experience. I guess that isn't bad when you consider that we're running our Canopy gear wide open. :)
i currently have 800+ customers on a 13 meg line…we only run @ 20%~ usage.
we were able to get 80-90 per t1 line before it started to slow.
Ill post the #'s for the equipment when Im at the office.
There was a mention of the software I would need, BAM Im guessing?? being in the forums. Havent located that yet, any chance of a link?
We had it antenna at first on a 400 foot tall tower:)
Looked good up there:)
But range was 2.5 miles. It has an omni antenna on the ap now.
As for a CMM? I dont have anyting but 1 ap and 25 sm’s. 2 Mesh dishes and 1 omni antenna.
Thanks a TON for the information so far. Im guessing the ap isnt meant to be used hooked straight to the switch here. It works fine when fed with an sm.
You can feed an AP from a switch - you just need a crossover cable.
an Omni antennna pattern looks like a pancake.
http://www.solwise.co.uk/images/h-omni- … attern.gif
With it at the top of a 400’ tower it’s too high as most of the signal is going right over the top if your coverage area. Move it down the tower to about 200’ (above the tree line but not too high). Use shielded Cat5 cable.
Was your 2.5mi with or without a dish? If that was without a dish, that’s exactly what you should get. If it was with a dish, it was probably because the antenna is too high.
You don’t need BAM or Prism. You can deploy that later.
At least they did not sell you a CMM - you don’t need it right now.
We use CactiEZ to monitor our network. It’s outstanding and free. Very very powerful graphing, threshold alerts, node down alerts, traffic analysis, and more. http://www.cactiusers.org.