Antenna selection and microwave paths are a topic that could fill a book. The place to start is to do a path survey between the points you are trying to link. This includes doing a check of the RF on the air at each end of the link so you know who / what else is on the air in the location. For discussion, links may be divided between point to point links and “illuminating an area”, with an omni. There are many variations on the themes. If you are in a populated area, you may need to consider directional antennas for links of a mile or more, depending on what else is on the air in your area. For point to point links, we generally recommend horizontal polarization to get 30 dB of isolation from the generally vertical consumer AP units on 2.4 GHz. If you have a dense cluster of nodes in a grid / mesh configuration you can use omnis if the units are close enough. The general concept of a mesh is to use low power radios and have a lot of them close to each other. That way none of the radios is putting out a signal that is much stronger than needed to reach the next node. Consider point to point nodes linking isolated “pocket” mesh networks. When you start you may not have many nodes in your area and most, if not all may be point to point nodes. The description of 11 dB omnis linking at 7 miles was to show what can be done in an area that has almost no RF in the area other than the mesh nodes. You should not expect this range in a city full of thousands of consumer AP units on the air. Directional antennas will exclude a large number of potentially interfering signals from the input of the radio, simply due to the path for which they are sensitive. This is a huge help. The description of the 10 mile link with the 24dB dish and the 14 dB yaggi was over a very densely populated area of Austin, Texas with thousands of AP units on the air, cordless phones, baby monitor wireless cameras on 2.4 GHz and microwave ovens. The path and the high gain antennas allowed us to shoot over the other systems and link without the need for any RF amplifiers. If you have 10 dB of S/N ratio, or more, then the absolute signal level is not all that important. A directional antenna cuts out a lot of “noise” by excluding signals not in its pattern / path. This broadband microwave mesh work is a finesse thing, not brute force techniques. Put your signal where you want it / need it. If you have many close by mesh nodes, all can use omnis to great effect. If you are going for ½ mile or more, consider directional antennas aimed at another node. We discourage putting up an omni with a big RF amp and simply warming the vegetation in your area with QRM. Find a path to another node and pick and antenna that helps you reach it. One “pocket mesh network” can be linked to another collection of mesh nodes (pocket network) with a well placed point to point link. HSMM-MESH(tm) was intended as a rapidly deployable tactical network. It can be used for fixed point to point links or even mobile systems. Several of us in Austin have mesh nodes in our vehicles. That way when we pull up to a mesh equipped location, such as the Red Cross we can join the local mesh from the parking lot and get up to speed with what is going on, without having to enter the building. Mobile mesh antennas are another discussion. -Glenn KD5MFW

Several attempts to load a ver 1.1 wrt54g first four of sn: cdf3. Keep getting install failed. Any ideas? Have a ver 2.0 that worked perfectly.

Thanks for any help or ideas, 73

Doug, W9NWN

I've read on this site that folks have experienced range of 10 miles between a 24 db parabolic and a 14 db yagi. I've also read of 7 mile range when using a pair of 11 db omnis.

Is it difficult to aim two 24 db parabolic antennas at each other accurately over 10 miles? If so, does the effort required to aim and keep the connection make something like a 19 db rootenna a more practical antenna?

I'd appreciate any advice on antenna selection that folks might have.

Thanks & 73,

Mark KV4I

Has anyone done a side-by-side comparison to what these hams in Australia are doing with mesh networks?  If it's sufficiently similar, maybe resources can be pooled to expedite development for the benefit of all?

http://villagetelco.org/

There's a video on what they have done here:

http://arvideonews.com/dcc2011/2011_DCC_The_Village_Telco.html

Here's what a US ham has done with their product for emergency use:

http://villagetelco.org/2011/11/guest-post-adapting-mps-for-emergency-work/

...Dan, K6DPY

I'm preparing to add POE to my Mesh node so I looked at HSMM-MESH.org to learn what HSMM-MESH standards, if any, were in place for POE.

Please forgive me if this has already been covered. I could not find any information at HSMM-MESH.org regarding any POE standards. Are there any?

It seems to me that 802.3af mode B (using the spare wires for DC) might be appropriate since the WRT54Gx family seems to be limited to 100BaseT.

Thanks & 73,

Mark KV4I

Hello, Jim...  Thank you for the help.  Yes, I've tried connecting with node name, node wifi IP, the "nodename".austin.tx.us.mesh...  I am able to send the chat messages with no problems.  However, nothing seems to work for the file transfer.  I do have the port 6667 open on both nodes.(just to be sure)  I can ping the node names, wifi IP's, and full names without a problem.

I am using pidgin and xchat with same results.  File transfer only work when the two computers are on the node with the IRC server installed.  Once I move to the two separate nodes, I can chat fine but file transfer does not work.  Port scan shows the port 6667 is open on both.

Have a nice night!

Mike

The only thing amateur digital radios like D-Star have over this product, with respect to digital communications, is distance (35 mile +).  With Ubiquiti ported, that distance should be in reach.  Right?  Or is Ubiquiti advertising just hype?

It works, but You must read the information very carefully and not omit any key details.Key reference file ... http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/documentation/96-using-the-mesh.html

D-Rats setup info from  Mark, KV4i

Jerome, I installed D-RATS (which includes the D-RATS Repeater AKA RatFlector) on my computer and started the RatFlector which uses port 9000. The only configuration I needed to do was to name the RatFlector, MESH-RAT On my HSSM-MESH node KV4I-100, I established a DHCP reservation for my RatFlector PC and advertised the service. I installed D-RATS on a second computer and configured the radio port to "net:172.27.0.106:9000", the address for my first computer. After both computers were connected to my MESH-NODE, KV4I-100, I was able to connect to the RatFlector MESH-RAT via the node. Saturday, I plan to test the connection from a second MESH node. We've already used D-RATS as an email gateway to forward to the Internet, emails received via RF and originated from a station without Internet access. I like the idea of testing D-RATS on the Mesh as D-RATS can interface with multiple transport mechanisms at the same time. It also provides real-time chat, file transfers, includes a Winlink 2000 telnet client and an Internet email client. 73 Mark KV4I

Mike, Success with connecting my IP camera over the mesh remotely as well!

Airlink101 SkyIPCam250W. 

Key reference file ... 

http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/section-blog/39-application-notes/74-using-an-airlink101-skyipcam250.html

73, Jerome WD4CWG