[Commotion-discuss] Picostation mesh with APs
Anderson Walworth
anderson at alliedmedia.org
Thu Mar 12 14:20:09 EDT 2015
At AMP we had a similar issue with 3 Nanostations on our roof (sharing our
gateway to other nodes) but I didn't think to shut of the AP's to
troubleshoot. When we turned 2 of the routers off the ETX came way up to
usable.
I figured it was just the routers blasting each other out. I was going to
put them on different channels but now I will shut off the AP's and see
what happens...
Thanks guys!
On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Adam Longwill <adam.longwill at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 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
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commotion-discuss mailing list
> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>
>
--
Allied Media Projects
Detroit Digital Justice Coalition
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/commotion-discuss/attachments/20150312/3f79e271/attachment.html>
More information about the Commotion-discuss
mailing list