New hardware - mesh

9 Jun 2013

So, as some of you know, Jenny and myself have invested in the following
hardware:
5 ghz 802.11n hardware:
  4x Bullet M5 HP - 150 mbps - needs external antenna
  1x Nanostation M5 - 300 mbps - semi-directional panel antenna
  1x Nanobridge M5 high-gain - 300 mbps - directional parabolic antenna
2.4 ghz 802.11n hardware:
  1x Freestation 2 - 300 mbps - semi-directional panel atenna
Here are my experiences with the gear so far.
The Freestation OpenWRT image has a bug in it that makes it unusable after
flashing. It should be easy to recover from using the serial console
though.
I've successfully put OpenWRT on one of the Bullet M5s. It's easy to flash
the Ubiquiti gear with tftp. Easier than the flashing the Asus routers.
When testing the Bullet M5s I noticed that the original firmware has a
really cool feature. It's a frequency analyzer for the 5 ghz spectrum that
will allow us to find out which parts of the spectrum are most free of
noise and other signals in different areas. We could mount one of these
Bullets on a pole on a bike with a battery and then bike around Oakland to
create a map of how much interference we'll be dealing with in different
areas! I put some info on it on the wiki:
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Software_tools
I haven't done anything with the nanostation or nanobridge yet.
As a side note, it seems like the Freestation routers might be going out of
production. Some sellers stopped selling them and the price has dropped to
$60 for the 2.4 ghz models and $70 for the 5 ghz models. That's a bit sad,
as they seem like a pretty good deal, but maybe that means we'll be able to
get them for cheap.
I created a wish list with gear for all price ranges, so you can point
people here if they'd rather donate a thing than cash :-)
  https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Wishlist
--
Marc Juul