Wireless network between houses – three years and counting…
Jan0
We have had a wireless network operating between 7 houses for around 3 years. The savings on Internet charges have been large and worth the small amount of pain in setting it up and maintaining it.
I get asked a lot about how it works and what we use so here is a brief explanation.
We have a 2.4ghz standard wifi A/G network setup in a star configuration. The central house has a Linksys WRT54G wireless router attached to a standard ADSL 2+ modem, a very reliable unit which has external antenna connections unlike some other wireless routers, you can get these pretty cheap on Trademe. Attached to that and mounted on a small mast is an omni directional antenna from www.gowifi.co.nz something like this.
Each client house has a Linksys WAP54G wireless access point, these are again solid units and we used them because they can be used in reverse as a client instead of an access point. Note – there is a strange bug when configuring these, you need to use IE or Chrome when accessing the configuration panel as some editions of Firefox do not work with it. These have a directional antenna (similar to this) aimed at the hub. Most of these are inside houses and aimed through a window.
Almost all our failures have been at the modem, either it losing its session and not restoring it properly with the provider or it dying completely. We also have a troublesome shelter belt that has grown up and blocked two houses – the gear is true line of sight stuff.
This has enabled our house to lower its telecoms bill from $100+ to $20 by using a voip provider for the phone. Voip is getting better and better in this application but was inconsistant for the first year – still, we are early adopters and that is what you get.
VOIP system for small business install…in progress..
Aug0
Wanaka Wastebusters has a second hand Samsung analogue PABX that was installed a few years ago. It is relatively reliable (apart from dropping a few calls … hmmm) but the interface to make changes to the settings has prevented any economical evolution to bring it up to a usable solution for the business. This alone makes it worth replacing.
I have been slightly obsessed with VOIP for a while, mucked around with Asterisk on and off and have used World Exchanges VFX service at home for a year or two. I’m not sure why I have this obsession – I suspect because it is such an attractive disruption – voice, and all its features, becoming as cheap and easy as email.
I managed Cactus to start using VFX for it’s main calling line a while back, and now hardware QOS has improved and DSL speed settled down (you can finally get full speed both ways relatively cheaply) it is time to try on a larger scale. The benefits are too big to ignore.
- Hosted PBX – no hardware investment…and features+ like the below…
- Web interface to control the PBX as opposed to semi-blind phone keypad inline programming
- Voicemail to email – email seems to be THE collation point for business communication
- Softphones like X-Lite, point and click phone action! Address books!
- Cheaper calling
- Movable phones – take your latop to the other side of the world and you are still on the same system
I have been working on the implementation plan and have agreement from Wastebusters, I’ll write it up here as it happens.
Clients
