On 10/15/19 11:19 PM, Arlen _G_ Holder wrote: <snip>
<snip>Not a big deal when speaking to lay persons. More of a deal when speaking to other "experts".
Once again, would you trust a doctor who pointed at your head and kept saying you had a fractured tibia?
They're both bones.. Who gives a f*ck, right?
You really are a total asshole. You claim to make these long winded posts, one after the other, so that people can learn. Yet when someone points out things that you have wrong, eg that Ethernet and WiFi are the same thing, then you huff and puff, bitch and moan. And BTW, your claim that Ethernet and WiFi are the same thing, you made as some kind of lame attempt at an attack on me, when I hadn't even brought that or anything like it up. YOU brought it up, you made that claim, trying to attack me with it and it backfired badly on you.
If you asked AT&T and Verizon for the definition of 5G, I'll bet you get 2 different answers. And if you ask their respective marketing departments, you'll likely get even more answers. And if you ask an official "standards committee", you'll get even more answers.
And word meanings morph over time. Sneakernet used to mean hand-carry data on a floppy. Is it still sneakernet if I hand-carry data on a thumb drive?
What say you, Pedant_4?
I say Ethernet and WiFi are defined by and controlled by IEEE 802 specs and they are two different specifications, two different LANs. I say 5G cellular is defined and controlled by 3GPP and they say 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, are not the same things.
Words have meaning, no matter how much some lameos corrupt them. If you buy a device that says it uses and requires an Ethernet LAN and you have an Ethernet LAN, well, you're expecting what you bought to have Ethernet, not WiFi.
Hi Dan Purgert,
THANK YOU for that correction! Mea culpa!
Also, THANK YOU FOR ADDING ADULT VALUE to this thread!
I respond to all purposefully helpful posts, where I _appreciate_ that you found my statement above to be materially wrong (where, if I am accidentally wrong, I admit it as soon as it's pointed out, if not sooner).
It's a characteristic of an adult.
As you may recall, I state that I aim for 100% credibility on material facts, even after decades on Usenet, where you must admit to attain anywhere near that kind of credibility on Usenet for material facts puts me on the level of people like Marek Novotny, rest his soul.
I strive for 100% credibility because I own adult belief systems: a. I base my initial belief system on assessment of facts, and, b. If (and when) assessment of facts change, I modify my belief system Such that my belief system is _always_ based & bolstered, by facts.
You may find that I harp on the trolls, where there are resaons for that o The trolls infest any potluck picnic like gnats swarming around food o The trolls have no intention to add value - they troll for amusement o Hence, once the trolls infest a Q&A thread - the potluck is ruined
I try to swat the trolls ... to make it "less fun" for them to troll o But, as William Unruh astutely noted ... that also adds to the noise Where the hope is that the trolls find some other potluck to infest (Where, the record shows, I don't feed them when they infest other threads)
Trolls like nospam apparently base their belief system on the results of a coin toss (as far as anyone can tell), since they always fail this simple test of their claims, when it comes to asking them for underlying facts: o Name just one
I'm completely different from most Usenet posters (IMHO), Dan, o For one, I avoid idle worthless useless chitchat threads o For the other, I author threads that literally pry fact out (if possible)
To that end, Dan, in terms of valuable adult facts... o You can _always_ ream me with facts - and I will THANK YOU when you do.
Here's a reference, for example, on the Apple newsgroups, about facts: o wrong, by badgolferman > Has anyone here ever admitted they were wrong publicly in the > newsgroup even when proven so? How can everyone always be right? > Maybe some consider it a sign of weakness if they concede a point, > but it's actually a sign of humility and maturity. Notice that "adults" have no problem adjusting their belief systems:
When confronted with mere facts, in general, they respond with hatred. o Why? I don't know why.
I think perhaps it that their belief systems aren't based on facts o Facts scare them (like facts about Santa Claus might scare a child) o Facts instantly DESTROY their belief systems.
This is, IMHO, far more common on Apple newsgroups simply because Apple MARKETING is so far and above Linux & Windows marketing that the difference in the user base (IMHO), is night and day - but we leave that for a separate discussion on what type of people are more swayed by (admittedly clever) Marketing, whereas I suspect the Linux folks are least affected: o What is the most brilliant marketing move Apple ever made?
For me, facts _bolster_ my belief system o More correctly, an adult logical assessment of those facts does
The people whose belief systems aren't based on actual facts o But more so on (admittedly brilliant) marketing Are the ones who, IMHO, are the ones most spouting their bullshit on Usenet (e.g., people like "Snit", and "nospam", and "Chris", and "Lewis", etc.)
But even the Windows newsgroups has these types of people whose belief systems are (apparently) backed up by exactly zero facts, where, they too fail the most obvious of the simplest test of imaginary belief systems: o Name just one
BTW, as a glaringly example of those who prove they can't possibly ever add even one iota of adult value, you may note that Char Jackson just moments ago made some of the most ridiculous claims humanly possible in this post
Hence, I repeat I will ignore the aforementioned trolls in this thread.
Getting back to your on-topic calculations, I will agree that my quick assessment of Paul's data in that sentence of the maximum for point to point must be wrong - where I don't do "point to point" fixed setup design all that often (actually, almost never).
What I do mostly is point to multipoint o For example, I paint the pool or barn or distant driveway gate o Or, I vastly increase the range of a standalone laptop or desktop
Where, all I need to do those tasks, reliably, & legally, are facts.
Hence, what I love is that you reamed me with facts. o You can _always_ ream me with facts - as I love facts.
My belief system is based on facts! o The one fact I'd love to know more about is the typical router power
If we compare these $100 "tranceivers" such as the ones Paul and I refer to as the simple-to-use "Ubiquiti PowerBeam" transceivers ... they clearly can transmit at least up to the legal limit in EIRP (isn't that correct, Dan?)
Luckily the math is easier for these PowerBeam radios since they're essentially a one-part unit, where the radio, physically, is literally the "horn" of the antenna itself, as they snap together into place such that there is no "pigtail" accessible to the user; there is only Ethernet.
So while there _will_ be losses we didn't account for, they should be as minimal as Ubiquiti could have made them for these units, don't you think?
Given the PowerBeams are cheap, light, small, and, most to the point, still vastly more powerful than a typical similarly priced SOHO router, I'm glad Paul picked up on this PowerBeam, as I would like to start by making it the canonical suggestion for people on this newsgroup to start with, who want to increase their range.
I based that mostly on the fact that the price (about $100 give or take) for the entire unit is "about what they pay" for a typical SOHO router, and, more importantly, because the installation is about as simple as it gets (i.e., I assess setup to be about the same as for a typical router).
Just like a router, you sit it on a shelf (or bolt it to a pole), and you plug in the cat5 cable to your computer - and you log in (ubnt/ubnt) to
192.168.1.20 (as I recall), and you set it up:Voila! o You just vastly increased your Wi-Fi range for your laptop/desktop/phone! a. You either plug it into your laptop to get from the pool to the house b. Or you paint the pool from the house so your laptop/phone works far away All with the same router setup ease as what you have with a common router.
Either way (access point for your computer or network card for your computer), for about what people here pay for their puny routers, they get actual power (up to the legal power limit for your country).
BTW, let me ask you, Dan (or others), what's a "good name" to refer to what I said above was a "network card"?
Here's what you're doing at the pool: o You have the PowerBeam plugged into your laptop Ethernet port. o That gives you the maximum point-to-multipoint power available o For about the same price you pay today for a typical SOHO router
What would you 'call' that setup in a colloquial conversation? (Pretty much, that's what most of the people were arguing about.)
Just like we say "aiming an antenna" or "balancing tires", everyone knows what we're talking about, what would you call this setup in a colloquial conversation (i.e., you only get a couple of words to play with)?
As per FCC 15.247("Operation within the bands 909-928 MHz,
This is nice to know about fixed point-to-point operation, where our WISP who works with us need to know and deal with all of that.
While people on this ng 'can' set up a fixed point-to-point arrangement, wouldn't you say, Dan, that the most common obvious usage of this technology, for these computer newsgroups, would be point to multipoint, where, as shown above, they can plop their laptop at the pool, which can be hundreds of feet from the house, and still get good signal strength.
This is very nice to know, Dan, as we "set up" point-to-point radios for our WISP provider all the time - but where we simply use the settings they give us to use. We also maintain the radios (e.g., we update the firmware, and tweak settings, as per the WISP team; but we don't design the setup itself anymore (we did in the past, but, as you can tell from all the spare radios in the grandkids' playroom, we screwed up a lot before we finally ended up with what we're using now on our rooftops.
For this group, I think we should mostly speak about point to multipoint, since I can easily see everyone here possibly having a need to either extend the range of the access points surrounding the house or to extend the range of a single piece of computer equipment such as an Ethernet enabled laptop or desktop.
Thank you Dan, for pointing out a statement I made that I based on an incorrect interpretation of the rules that Paul kindly provided.
I'm always eager to be reamed with actual facts that are materially important.
Adults form belief systems which should be based on facts. o All my belief systems, are therefore, bolstered by facts.
Thank you Dan for pointing that out, which, in the aforementioned reference threads, I saw that Jeff Liebermann also pointed out.
In the case of the Powerbeams though, Dan, it seemed, at first, like it's impossible to exceed the legal limits, since the transceiver is literally part of the antenna (there is no pigtail, for example, accessible to the user).
However, in another post, Johann Beretta found an error in my assessment of the facts, which I agree with, where he provided accurate information which explained the following "can" happen if you wish to "lie" during the setup (where I didn't consider such a bold-faced lie to even be possible).
For the device that Paul mentioned, which is described in this spec sheet:
The router "wireless" setup tab shows two options for the antenna: a. Feed Only (2x2) 3 dBi b. 400 (2x2) 25 dBi
When you select the first option, you can separately set the transmit power to the maximum of 26 dBm, where you can't exceed the legal limits by doing so.
When you set the second option, which is just the feedhorn itself (which, interestingly, will work just fine - but who would bother?) you can increase the transmit power setting only to 12 dBM.
As Johann Beretta noted: > Both options are legal as long as you select the TRUTHFUL option. > It's perfectly legal to run a Powerbeam feedhorn in a standalone situation. > However, why the f*ck anyone would ever do that is beyond me. > Nevertheless that doesn't change the fact that it is legal (if odd) > to do so. However, where you can get into trouble is when Johann noted: > It is absolutely illegal to LIE in the configuration and choose the Feed
So, I stand corrected on my assessment that you can't set up the PowerBeam to an illegal power settings - simply because it didn't occur to me that people could/would lie on the router setup options.
So when people ask "are you buying licensed or unlicensed equipment", I'm kind of wondering "why" they ask that, where, to me, it's sort of like them asking "are you robbing banks" every time you purchase a ski mask.
Sure, you can purchase a ski mask and use it to rob banks, but, let's be adults in this thread with purposefully helpful intent and let's stop wasting our time accusing people of attempting to exceed legal limits.
What Dan Purgert & Johann Beretta proved with facts is that you "could" lie in the router setup, which will enable you to exceed limits - but there's no reason to do so (as far as I can tell), nor is there any desire to do so. (Hence, wasting our time with accusations of robbing banks is something people like "Good Guy" & "Diesel" & most of the apologists do - but adults can generally add on topic value without playing their silly games).
However, this useful corrective discussion points out something useful to share with the groups on this Usenet potluck - which is that this PowerBeam is, perhaps, one of the best suggestions for people on this newsgroup who want to try their hand at increasing their range, for about the same cost they paying today for what I consider to be anemic box store consumer stuff.
Hence...
For the remainder of _this_ discussion, I think we should concentrate on those PowerBeams that Paul happened to astutely pick out of the bunch!
The Bullets are even smaller in and of themselves (also at about $100)
Hmmm... Dan ... I'm ok with deferring to your knowledge, I really am. But that means I must have read Paul's page 12 wrong then.
Can you help clarify why my take on this one line in Paul's reference, is different from yours with respect to this exact situation: o PowerBeam M2 400, max 26dBm, antenna 18dBi
Paul's page 12 is titled "Maximum EIRP in 2.4 GHz", where the chart is for "directional signals", and where line 5 of that chart (in dark blue) shows: o Max Power = 26 dBm, Max Antenna Gain is 18dBi, EIRP is 44 dBm (25 Watts)
The PowerBeam M2 400 on my shelf fits that line perfectly. o Is it that this chart is NOT showing what the legal limits are?
Another point where we seem to differ, although not by a lot, is what the commonly available EIRP is of most home routers that are in this same $100 price range.
My research shows, for example, that the venerable (yet old) WRT54G is a puny 14dBm or 15 dBm (as I recall from a prior post) plus about 2dBi or
3dBi from the omni antennas, which provides paltry range compared to, oh, say, a 600mW bullet and 8 dBi omni attached, which is actually the same size (or even smaller) than the WRT54G would be (although they're different "things" since one has a switch attached while the other does only DHCP over the one RJ45).Note, for about the same price, the difference in range is huge, which, after all, is what we're talking about extending in this thread.
By the way, since this thread is all about adding value as our contribution to share with this Usenet potluck, I thank those below for their answers:
Johann Beretta snipped-for-privacy@nun-ya-bizness.com o Johann Beretta can 'see' visitor center access points 60 miles away
pjp snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com o pjp connects to his Internet over WiFi about 1 kilometer away LOS
Gary snipped-for-privacy@att.net o Gary connects to a neighborhood WiFi about 1/2 block away
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com o He experienced a dozen home in a valley connected to a single DSL o
Gavin snipped-for-privacy@kalifornia.guv o Gavin uses only Ethernet
Frank snipped-for-privacy@frank.net o Frank uses Ethernet because the speed is 3X for him
Terry Coombs <snag snipped-for-privacy@msn.com o Desktop isn't WiFi; but other computers are "right next" to the DSL modem
Cindy Hamilton snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com o Her desktop has no wifi while her WiFi router feeds the house fine
Frank Slootweg snipped-for-privacy@ddress.is.invalid>
o "about 2 metre but sometimes as little as about 5 cm"
Rene Lamontagne snipped-for-privacy@shaw.ca o "exactly 51 inches"
Note: This thread is perfect for two types of people above: a. Those whose desktops do NOT have WiFi (they only need an RJ45 port) b. Anyone who needs far greater WiFi range than what they already have
Since, in this Usenet potluck, we bring our suggestions to share so that a. Those whose desktops do NOT have WiFi (they only need an RJ45 port) b. Anyone who needs far greater WiFi range than what they already have
I agree with both Paul & J.P. Gilliver (John) that: o It's likely more bang for the buck to put a dollar into the antenna dB o Than to put that same dollar into the radio transmit dB Although complexities arise when you get to sensitivity & noise immunity.
What would be nice, by way of shared comparisons, if people would note what the power output is of the current Wi-Fi enabled SOHO router they're using.
As far as I can tell, so far anyway, typical consumer router EIRPs are orders of magnitude lower than the PowerBeam we've latched onto as our suggested unit to increase WiFi range for Ethernet-enabled computers.
Can others share what EIRP we can typically attain with $100 home routers?
<OT>
Like you, and like most here, I'm no noob to Usenet either.
I started with, oh, I guess Masscomp or SunOS, maybe VAXVMS, where we used 'rn' and 'tin', where, even today, I use "vi" & telnet as my "client".
The point to keep in mind is that trolls have always existed o Trolls always prove one thing each time they post
All I have to do is point to what they trolls themselves wrote to prove it o The trolls swarm like gnats at any Usenet potluck to ruin it if they can
Who are the trolls who posted _zero_ value in this thread? o Fox's Mercantile snipped-for-privacy@att.net (more than a half dozen times) o trader_4 snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net (more than 14 posts in this thread) o dpb snipped-for-privacy@none.net (two utterly worthless posts in this thread) o Ed Pawlowski snipped-for-privacy@snet.xxx (two completely off topic worthless posts)
An example of pointing to what these trolls post, look at this: o From: % snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com "i thought he looked like a fake tit"
Clearly these people did not bring adult value to the Usenet potluck o Hence, the question, always, is "can" they (is it actually "in" them?)
Think about these facts when we realize how trolls ruin Usenet o People like Fox's Mercantile can't post a _single_ item of on-topic value o Even after having posted more than a half dozen times (all worthless)
Even as I haven't responded once to trolls from Fox's Mercantile or djb o Yet, like cowardly bullies, they insist on their god-given right to troll
What is an adult supposed to do about this infestation of trolls? o There is always the option to not feed them (which I clearly tried here) o Yet, that doesn't stop them (Fox's Mercantile _still_ repeatedly trolled)
Over the years, I've realized, all these trolls _can_ do .... is troll. o They have no adult value to add whatsoever; to any technical topic.
There are, as I see it, two fundamental use models on Usenet: a. The model I use, which is FAQ style - ask a question & work the answer b. There's the model the trolls use - post nothing of value - for amusement
Since the trolls like Fox's Mercantile & Ed Pawloski & djb are here for amusement, there's really nothing an adult can do - since they trolled this thread, multiple times, even though they were completely ignored.
Nothing can stop the gnats from infesting the Usenet potluck. o I tried to swat them away (e.g., trader_4); but they keep coming.
There are only two kinds of people who posted to this thread: o Those who posted technical value with purposefully helpful intent o And those trolls who prove, by what they post, this is amusement for them
We're having a serious technical conversation, Johann Beretta o And the trolls are consistently posting their child-like drivel.
The problem, with Usenet, as I see it... o Is that the trolls insist on proving they have a God-given right to troll
The good part about Usenet, as I see it... o Is that adults can still share nuggets of useful on-topic tech advice
I appreciate that YOU clearly have adult on-topic technical value to add o As do others like Jeff Liebermann who contributes greatly to Usenet
But unlike the rest of us here, you're like a leaky toilet that just keeps going on and on.
You actually make it more fun.
Adult facts? Like where do babies come from?
Naming them is not ignoring them.
><snip>
Follow-up to my own post.. But I think I nailed that one.. Was speaking to and employee of my competition today (the employee and I go way back and we both worked for Pacific Bell) and he mentioned his boss is at Wispalooza right now and apparently Ubiquiti is demoing their first
60Ghz transmitter... Which is... awesome. I love Mikrotik routers but have never been happy with their radios. So was a bit unhappy that I was going to have to use them for 60Ghz. Their alignment function (for example) is utter crap. Ubiquiti wins that hands-down. Easy to read, easy to figure out.. etc.Yeah I'd probably recommend UBNT. They tend to work out of the box. But this word "common" is.. misleading. The average user needs to fill his house.. Not acres of property. Most folks like in Condos / Apartments / Track Homes. Here in the rural areas there is a need for additional range to be sure. In fact I just installed a Rocket M2 with a couple of
8dbi omnis for a customer today.To be totally fair, the average/common user takes a router out of the box, plugs it in, and that's the end of it. Most folks don't even know that their router has a UI. <snip>
I'd say MikroTik takes the UNIX approach. Separate tools, that each do one thing, packaged together. This, at least partially, explains the stability of a MikroTik router. The fact it's powered by a custom Linux kernel certainly doesn't hurt either.
The spectrum analyzer? Airview is, in my experience, absolutely worthless and I've been gently pushing for UBNT to fix it or discard it. It doesn't work AT ALL. The spectrum analyzer waterfall may/may not work, but the implementation in the AC line of radios is absolutely useless. I've can look at it, see I have a "noise floor" of -106 (on a given frequency), run a site survey and pick up a foreign transmitter at
-60dbm on that exact frequency.
I'll concede that maybe it's only used for "non wifi" transmissions. But they don't tell you that and it's counter-intuitive. To me, any transmission that's not my own is "noise". It's a potential source of interference. So no, I don't rely on it and don't use it as a general rul= e.
<snip>If you're in a rural area, that's fine. But please do remember that every foot you push your signal out is another foot where it's potential noise/interference to someone else. 2.4GHz has exactly 3 non-overlapping frequencies at 20 MHz. That's not a lot. 1, 6, 11. Anything else overlaps another channel. If you're blasting a signal out that goes
10,000 ft beyond what you need that's not good.My own opinion is that none of this gear is for "lay people". It's far too easy to violate transmission limits and there's always the potential of interfering with an operational WISP (unlikely in the 2.4 band, but still possible) and then maybe you're f****ng over dozens of people.
Honestly I'd almost like to see most of this gear require at least a technician's FCC license to install.
Well, as I pointed out in an earlier message, that power is only going to be legal if you're judicious about being totally honest in the configuration.
The term is "wireless bridge" or "wifi bridge". Both are accepted definitions in the WISP business.
And far beyond if one lies in the configuration. But here I'm beating a dead horse.
<snip>No. I refuse to use them. I have... philosophical differences with UBNT delving into the consumer side of things. Ubiquiti became a multi-billion dollar company by making WISP gear. Now I feel as if that side of the business is being shoved into the background as they try expand into the home markets. Same reason I won't buy anything named CISCO any more. Linksys buys Cisco, who were well known for having some of the best routers and switches that money could buy, and then slaps the name CISCO on every cheap piece of shit they could think of. CISCO, in the span of a few years, became a joke. I had purchased a couple of small CISCO switches and what do I find? Yeah.. Linksys internals...
Nope. Maybe later firmware has it, but I tried for over a year and no luck..
<snip>
Well, Bullets are single chain, so... The Rockets are vastly superior.
<snip>
How far away is the pool? C'mon, you'd be far better served by slapping a nano on the outside of the house and aiming it at the pool. Lets not forget that an over-saturated link (too much power) is worse than a signal that's too weak. The latter affects only you, the former affects anyone within several thousand feet or more.
It's this kind of mentality that drives me up the wall. And it's not just you. It's a lot of people. Unlicensed spectrum is a common resources. It doesn't take too many "average joes" with knowledge but no experience to screw up that shared spectrum for miles in any direction. It's not a surprise though. "Tragedy of the Commons" is a phrase that has been around for centuries because it's something that happens time after time after time. I'm sure I was guilty of it when I first started, but experience has taught me.
<snip>This is one of the few things my competition and I actually discuss.. Frequencies. It's just as bad for me to interfere with him as vice versa. If I put a transmitter on a frequency he's using it's going to screw up my transmissions and it will screw up his transmission. Everyone loses. Thus, we communicate as best we can.
My rule of thumb is to avoid his frequencies as best as possible (and he does the same). I'll stomp all over a home router before I'll f*ck up his transmissions. If I can't find a free frequency then we'll talk and see if we can jiggle shit around a little bit. Maybe he moves 5 Mhz up and I move 5 Mhz down (as an example). There is a vested interest in cooperating because if he (or I) do not, then I will stomp on his frequencies if I have to and he'll do the same.
<snip>Many/Most? of those tools are open source. Mikrotik has a few custom tools and has made modifications to existing tools. My one complaint with MikroTik is that they are mostly leeches when it comes to the software. They'll happily take an open source tool, tweak it to be a bit better and then refuse to share those changes with the community (which is required for GPL and LGPL but not BSD licenses). There's been talk over the years of FSF (Free Software Foundation) suing them over it, but it's never progressed much past talk. They may have corrected their practices over the last years, but a decade ago they were downright assholes about it.
<snip>Yep. It was all over the news. Our own electrical monopoly did a similar, albeit much smaller scale, shutdown as well. Luckily I was not in an affected zone.
I decided at the outset to go solar when at all possible. I have only two sites on mains power. The rest are on solar and have battery banks that will power them for up to a week in total darkness. Needless to say, we don't have total darkness for that long in So Cal. Even on a pretty cloudy day the sites will still be generating power as I have oversized the solar panels as well. My goal was to be able to charge the batteries, from near empty, to full in a single day of sunlight. Right now it takes me about 3 or 4 hours to recover after 3 or 4 days of heavy cloud cover. My recovery times for night usage is on the order of an hour or so, maybe 30 mins in the full brilliance of the Summer sun.
You just can't make a post without knocking or denigrating someone. Your superiority complex has to show.
On 10/16/19 8:02 PM, Arlen _G_ Holder wrote: <snip>
No surprise there as it's in a rather dumb location. Interfaces / WLAN1 / Near the top (10th button from the left in my router)
I am fairly curious as to why you have not addressed the point that I have made a couple of times where it's trivial to put a PowerBeam (for example) into a configuration that violates FCC transmit limits.
I apologize if I simply missed it. But in the event I did not, why have you not addressed this?
In the event you did not see it, are you aware that using a PowerBeam M5
400 (as an example) with "Feed Only" on the wireless tab but, in reality, having the feedhorn inside the 400mm dish, and the transmit power set to maximum, will violate FCC transmit limits for the 5 GHz band= ?Do you concede that Ubiquiti has made it trivial to violate transmit limits by allowing a user to uncheck the "calculate EIRP limits" box in the configuration?
Mind you, I'm not advocating these options go away as I can think of a few situations where they could be handy (and legal) to have? Specifically it is possible to build a custom dish for the transmitter that would fall somewhere in between the two options (Feedhorn only &
400mm dish) that would be, at worst, a gray area.Furthermore, not only can one violate limits, but one can do so well inside the DFS bands. Do you concede that this presents a real public safety problem if such a configuration is done near an airport using TDWR radar? (yes I know the word radar is redundant here, but I use it for clarification for lay persons)
Hi pjp,
Most of this thread covered silly semantics, and then the post you responded to covered legal limits, where I apologize for those two:
On semantics, the precise words don't matter when you're trying to get something done - like you just asked how and if you can do it.
On legality, it's like wasting time cautioning everyoine who buys a ski mask not to rob a bank using it ... it's just not the time and place to worry about breaking the law, since you have to TRY to break the law.
Dan showed you "could" break the law, which I appreciate, but that's like saying you could break the law by using a ski mask to rob a bank, which is to say there are a few other things involved after you buy the equipment.
So now to your question ... there are others who can advise you BETTER than I can, so I'll let them trump me ... but to help you where I can... let's clarify the questions, first.
From what you said we know...
The first and most important question, is whether you can visually "see" the RV. Where I live, we can see for scores of miles, so that's not such a silly question. But if you're in dense woods, you won't be able to visually see the RV.
If you can SEE the RV, then certainly all the stuff we're talking about will work. Even if you can't see the RV, we can "make" it work, but, really, "most" of this thread was about Line Of Sight (LOS) transmissions (mostly, although you can go shorter distances through structures since radio waves are really just fluctuations in electical & magnetic fields).
If you can "see" the RV, the kilometer isn't going to be a problem (although we have to look at the "gain", mostly from the antenna, on both ends).
First key question: o From your roof or from a window or from a pole on the ground or from a treetop within a few hundred feet of the house ... can you "see" the RV?
Hi Johann,
Wow. Thanks for that suggestion as, you're more aware than anyone where, that the MicroTik RouterOS must have at least a hundred or more different "menus", many deeply nested, where there could be hundreds overall.
I think with your help, I may have gotten close, although it's NOT intuitive what the steps are to get it to actually work.
By way of comparison, here's the Ubuqiti AirOS align sequence result:
Here's a screenshot I just snapped for you of the RouterOS align result:
Where that was obtained on Windows 10 Pro by running these steps: o Doubleclick on "winbox.exe" & up pops "MikroTik WinBox Loader v2.2.18" o Log in to the RouterOS "WinBox v6.28 on RB411" IP address as 'admin' o Left click on the left panel of menus item named "Interfaces" o That brings up a new window titled "Interface List" with 9 tabs o Those 9 tabs are: Interface, Ethernet, EoIP Tunnel, IP Tunnel, GRE Tunnel, VLAN, VRRP, Bonding, & LTE o In that "Interface List" are 3 items: bridge1, ether1, & wlan1 o Doubleclick on "wlan1" & up pops an "Interface <wlan1>" window with 15 tabs o Those 15 tabs are: General, Wireless, Data Rates, Advanced, HT, HT MCS, WDS, Nstreme, NV2, Tx Power, Current Tx Power, Advanced Status, Status, & Traffic o At the right of that same "Interface <wlan1>" window are 13 "buttons" o Those 13 buttons are: OK, Cancel, Apply, Disable, Comment, Torch, Scan, Freq Usage, Align, Sniff, Snooper, Reset Configuration, & Simple Mode o I click on the "Align" button and an "Alignment (Running)" window pops up. o That window has a pulldown set to "wlan1" & 5 buttons to the right o Those 5 buttons are: Start, Stop, Close, Wireless Alignment Settings, & New Window o In the middle of that window are 8 tabs o Those 8 tabs are: Address, SSID, Rx Quality, Avg. Rx Quality, Last Rx, Tx Quality, Last Tx, & Correct (%)
I must be close, but when I press "Start" or "Stop" the window header definitely changes from "Alignment (Running)" to "Alignment", so, I must be close ... but I don't see where I'm supposed to see the signal strength graphical values (and I don't hear any beeping sounds either).
The radio is "working" because when I press "Snooper", I get a long dynamically changing listing of all the radios it can 'see'.
Likewise, when I press "Sniff", it shows sniffed packets. Same with "Freq. Usage", I see the frequency & noise levels. Also, when I press "Scan" I see a list of access points & information. Even "Torch" does something, although I don't know what I just torched.
Am I close?
I don't know where to look to see the signal strength numbers or graph.
No graph. You just get a single row of numbers
Supposedly you can get audio feedback if you input the target MAC into the alignment settings, but I haven't been successful.
This video is crappy but does a decent job of explaining how it works
On 10/16/19 11:43 PM, Arlen _G_ Holder wrote: <snip>
I should have added, in my previous post, that I have not used WinBox for alignment, so I cannot help there. The few times I've done an alignment (2 or 3 times max) I used the web interface.
On 10/17/2019 12:40 AM, Arlen _G_ Holder wrote: ...
...
Au contraire, good buddy. It's precisely where precision is _most_ important.
Hi pjp,
It's good that you can "see" something at the RV, as this stuff is line of sight (LOS), where the distances are immense LOS, but they suck otherwise.
The way you get LOS in trees, of course, is to mount the antenna on the tree (which we do all the time), and at home, the way to get LOS is you mount the antenna on the chimney (which we also do all the time).
Or on a pole (which we do all the time too).
As long as you can see the antennas, you're good to go, where we can deal with the Fresnel Zone later.
Once you have two antennas pointed at each other, all you do, physically speaking, is connect the home end to Internet via Cat5 cable, usually to a router switch but it could just as well be directly to the modem or whatever you get your Internet from.
At the RV you have a couple of choices depending on what "device" is at the RV, where you don't need anything else if you're going to plug the Cat5 cable directly into, oh, say, a desktop at the RV.
Often, if you're going to go to all that trouble, what we do is find a spare SOHO router lying around (we have tons of them, as you can imagine), and we just plug the RV antenna Cat6 into that "RV router".
That's the best setup, which gives the most flexibility at the RV end.
Essentially, you have the same Internet at the RV as you have at home. a. At the RV, mobile devices can connect to the RV router b. Laptops and desktops with WiFi can connect to the RV router c. Desktops without Internet can connect to the RV router switch etc.
Notice while my original "pool" example is only hundreds of feet of range, so you can skip the second radio in the case of hundreds of feet - your "RV example" is a kilometer, which is likely too far for more mobile devices and laptops to send back to. (There are people here who can do the math since all this stuff is well known to them - where there are web sites which allow you to run the calculation.)
Without even running any calculations, you'll notice I'm suggesting a radio & router on each end, because I know that works in all circumstances if they can "see" each other (i.e., LOS).
There's lots of good stuff in any search where those are the basics:
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