Wireless LAN page Some descriptions and details of Joe's WLAN activities A few years ago, in 2000, Joe was given the task to set up the Internet access infrastructure for a new Monash University office in Bendigo, Central Victoria. This was located in a temporary location of the local Health Service. It was also long before ADSL was available. The cost of having new dedicated ISDN connections set up appeared too costly and multiple modems to the staff PCs was too slow (although this was set up as a stand-by solution, should other options be unreliable, and to have access to an alternate ISP - just in case). At this point a broadband wireless link was investigated as a suitable and relocatable solution. A local ISP was enthusiastic about participating in this experiment and allowed us to set up a suitable bridge and antenna on his premises. The equipment chosen was a pair of second-hand 2Mbps 2.4GHz Overlan RF-2 bridges and couple of Hills parabolic mesh antennas connected by RG213 cable. This set-up provided excellent service for nearly two years, until the ISP and the successors folded, and the Western Australian firm who took them over closed the premises in favour of a mere POP... but by then ADSL was finally available. However, during this time, all manner of wireless solutions were investigated for a variety of purposes, including a wireless home network in Joe's house. Over a period of time, Joe purchased for his own use a couple of 2Mbps Lucent Technology PCMCIA cards ("White"- 802.11 compatible, no WEP), an 11Mbps Lucent ("Bronze" - 802.11b, no WEP) card, an Orinoco ("Silver" - 802.11b, 64bit WEP), and a Lucent RG-1 residential Gateway dial-up router and ethernet access point. This equipment allowed roaming of several laptop computers throughout the house and garden to remain connected to each other, the ethernet-connected desktop computer and printers. More recently (2002) a project at Joe's work allowed the purchase of a Toshiba e740 WiFi enabled Pocket PC, which integrates nicely in the home WLAN as well as the wireless hotspots at Monash University in Clayton, where Joe works one day a week. At one point in 2002, Joe visited and joined the Melbourne Wireless Network and learnt about community networks using this technology. Later that year, the Bendigo Wireless Network group became active and means to link to its members in the city of Bendigo (12km away) were sought. Some of the meetings of the group identified suitable locations for antennas to start creating a "mesh" of access points which the members could link to, including members' own equipment. Discussions about suitable sources of equipment and experimenting with available equipment was part of the fun. All of the group's meetings included a large component of socialising, of course! The Bendigo group needed someone to manufacture some omni-directional antennas, since commercial options were found to be too costly for the fledgling membership, and Trevor Marshal's design was selected as most suitable for the available tooling (horizontal and vertical milling machines, see photos). The next task was to modify some of the higher gain ex-Austar antennas widely available in the Bendigo area. These are Pacific Monolithic version which contain a down-converter not suitable for transmitting 2.4GHz signals. The modification replaces their internal dipole with a more suitable one for our purpose (see photos). Now the task was to find an antenna tower to mount Joe's antenna above the treetops around his house, to enable line of sight (LOS) to a distant wireless node. An old antenna tower was found, purchased, removed by crane and transported home in two pieces and then reassembled with some minor modifications (new base section and a permanent access ladder). The images show the WLAN antenna (along with a TV antenna) mounted together with a waterproofed D-Link DWL-900 access point, which is powered by an integral home-made power-over-ethernet (POE) system, needing only a CAT5 cable connection. The equipment was tested successfully with a laptop about 50m away from the tower, and again from a temporary node 8km away. Sadly no community wireless network mesh was ever formed in Bendigo and the wireless network group eventually disbanded. The tower and node will be put to good use to share a neighbor's ADSL connection shortly, however.... Last updated October 11, 2004

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