Marlborough Wi-Fi

G in da house

802.11g is up and running as of today. The Marlborough Centre AP has been retired after years of faithful service and replaced with a RouterBOARD 532. Some clients will need to update their gear to the new MAC address (00:15:6D:30:00:4A) to operate with the new access point.

If you still use 802.11b do not worry as we have retained compatibility. So far the the speed increase has shown to work well. There were some teething issues initially with many clients reporting dropped or slow connections, lowering the output power or the SR2 to about 200mW has fixed this.It seems to be a known issue with the cards being overpowered with default settings and 200mW makes sure the EIRP keeps within legal boundaries anyway.

Getting the thing down was a bit of a mission, especially after Murphy makes sure the wind kicks up right after we take out the main bolts supporting it before lowering the pole.

The antenna setup seems to have lasted well. There is a small amount of rust near some of the welds on the pole, and the screws holding the N connector to the antenna itself have rusted badly and needed replacing. Note the 10m run of RG-58/U cable that was seriously choking receive performance in the past.

No, that’s not outdoor-rated Cat5 but seeing this will only be here another six months at the most this isn’t a problem. In restrospect I wish I had used a metal enclosure from Pacific Wireless to house the RouterBOARD to improve shielding and make it easier to pole mount. This one was actually chosen for the hills in order to contain a small backup battery and charger.

A nice radiation warning sticker adds to the touch. The main reason I have started using these is to deter people from tinkering with the box, other people I have spoken to report that it works well. The old RF cable has been replaced with a 1m length of Times LMR400. The connectors are sealed with self amalgamating tape.

Some photos of the end result. The Marlborough Centre has reported the project must be officially moved by October as the theatre roof is being replaced due to leaks (not caused by us of course!).

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 20:05 NZST and is filed under Project News. It has been viewed 778 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.