[Commotion-discuss] Picostation mesh with APs
Adam Longwill
adam.longwill at gmail.com
Thu Mar 12 13:52:26 EDT 2015
I concur with this completely.
On 12 Mar 2015 13:46, "Dan Staples" <danstaples at opentechinstitute.org>
wrote:
> I generally avoid using Picos whenever I can, since their hardware is
> quite limited. For outdoor nodes I find much better performance with
> Ubiquiti's Nanostation M or Rocket M since they are both MIMO devices. Of
> course dual radio is even better, as Ryan mentioned.
>
> On 03/08/2015 10:44 PM, Josh Harle wrote:
> > Hi Ryan,
> >
> > Very strange. My setup has been pretty much identical: picos on the
> ground, no more than 200 (between 30-200m), and only 1 or two connections
> to the access points (just turning the AP on caused the mesh connections to
> degrade).
> >
> > Did you adjust the tx output for any of these? I have tried at both 17,
> 20, and 28 dBm, with the same behaviour.
> >
> > Adam Steele suggested that CPU usage might be a contributing factor, but
> this doesn't entirely explain why it happens only when more than one AP
> interface is on.
> >
> >
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> >
> > Dr Josh Harle
> > ____________________
> > http://joshharle.com
> > http://tacticalspace.org <http://tacticalspace.org/>
> > ph: +61 (0)491 155 985
> >
> > On 8 March 2015 at 06:52, Ryan Gerety <gerety at opentechinstitute.org
> <mailto:gerety at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Josh,
> >
> > Yes, the nodes were access points and mesh links.
> >
> > It may have been that having pico stations on the ground (not on the
> roof) at no more than 200 meters apart avoided some of the wireless
> problems that can happen when a device is speaking to devices close by and
> other routers further away. Or, it could be that the number of connections
> to the access points were relatively small (because they were covering a
> small area).
> >
> > I think there needs to be more testing of this phenomena (maybe
> someone knows of some research or would do some testing?).
> >
> > Best,
> > Ryan
> >
> >
> > On Mar 7, 2015, at 3:29 AM, Josh Harle wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Ryan,
> >>
> >> Just confused what your set-up was for
> https://commotionwireless.net/blog/2013/10/30/building-popup-mesh-networks/,
> since I am using the same hardware and presumably similar firmware version,
> and your numbers seem good. I'm imagining that a number of those nodes
> were APs too, since you had clients connecting and testing?
> >>
> >> Kind Regards,
> >>
> >> Dr Josh Harle
> >> ____________________
> >> http://joshharle.com <http://joshharle.com/>
> >> http://tacticalspace.org <http://tacticalspace.org/>
> >> ph: +61 (0)409 771 163 <tel:%2B61%20%280%29409%20771%20163>
> >>
> >> On 4 March 2015 at 01:25, Ryan Gerety <gerety at opentechinstitute.org
> <mailto:gerety at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> We experienced the same issue while setting up a 10 node
> network recently. We turned off the access points on all the rooftop/mesh
> nodes, and connected a cheap access point router (running standard
> firmware). The Commotion node’s LAN port is plugged into the WAN port of
> the Access Point. In many cases this is best anyways -- since you either
> want good internal coverage (dragging an ethernet cable inside) or you want
> to provide an access point for many people outside (so you might want
> multiple access points). Our wireless engineer is currently writing up
> documentation to recommend that people dont use a router as both an access
> point and mesh.
> >>
> >> I agree with Adam that this is just an unfortunate limitation
> of wireless.
> >>
> >> Another option is a dual radio is something like this:
> https://commotionwireless.net/blog/2014/11/05/do-it-yourself-antennas-for-community-networks/
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Ryan
> >>
> >>
> >> _____________________________________
> >> Senior Field Analyst, Open Technology Institute
> >> New America Foundation
> >> 1899 L St., N.W., Suite 400
> >> Washington, DC 20036
> >> +1 202 492 8841 <tel:%2B1%20202%20492%208841> (c)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mar 3, 2015, at 9:02 AM, Josh Harle wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hi All,
> >> >
> >> > I've been installing 20 picostation M2HPs in a town to try to
> set up a mesh network, partially based on the "Building Pop-up Mesh
> Networks" article.
> >> >
> >> > I've found that when I have a handful of mesh nodes, if more
> than just one of them has an access point interface enabled, the ETX goes
> from about 1 to somewhere between 5 and 7!
> >> >
> >> > I've been talking to Adam Longwill about this, who has found
> similar behaviour. I don't understand how to mitigate this. Isn't it
> expected behaviour to have all nodes as APs too? How do I get area
> coverage with WiFi client access?
> >> >
> >> > It seems to impact performance so much to have more than one
> AP turned on in the network that the only thing I can think of is to have
> one Picostation for mesh, connected to one souly for AP on another channel.
> >> >
> >> > I would be hugely greatful for advice on this: I'm in a
> remote Aussie town for just a couple of days trying to troubleshoot this.
> >> >
> >> > Kind Regards,
> >> >
> >> > Dr Josh Harle
> >> > ____________________
> >> > http://joshharle.com <http://joshharle.com/>
> >> > http://tacticalspace.org <http://tacticalspace.org/>
> >> > ph: +61 (0)491 155 985 <tel:%2B61%20%280%29491%20155%20985>
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> >> > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:
> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >> > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> >
>
> --
> Dan Staples
>
> Open Technology Institute
> https://commotionwireless.net
> OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
> Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9
> _______________________________________________
> Commotion-discuss mailing list
> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/commotion-discuss/attachments/20150312/4a10912d/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Commotion-discuss
mailing list