Small WISP setup suggestions

[yow]

I want to provide service in a sub division housing area. <100 clients.
I can (only) get a T1 to start, so no backhaul needed. Questions:

* omni or panels? all clients within 1 mile radius.
* 2 or 5 ghz for range/interference issues.
* Equipment selection, simple please. Router, radios and antennas, CPE's.
* Authorization and billing. Splash page and credit card acceptance.
* best performance criterea based on the T1 feed.

Thanks in advance!

Yow

[WHT]

First question...is there an incumbent cable TV internet or DSL? If there is, it will be very hard to compete. You can indeed go up against them, but it takes years of experience in the WISP business to make that choice.

5.8 Gig will eliminate interference from off-the-shelf consumer wireless routers.

Use a single AP and omni antenna to start. As you add APs, use sector antennas.

Figure on one AP per 30 to 35 active users (downloading web pages), that means you could oversubscribe to about twice that as not everyone will be clicking on links at teh same time. Just watch your bandwidth usage to decide when to add an AP.

Five years ago, a single T1 was good for about 100 casual users, now a T1 will barely support 20 or 30 users.

A Bullet 5 AP and Loco 5 client radios are a good choice.

You'll still about a year or so from any deployment, so you have plenty of time to consider what you need.

[yow]

WHT, nice reply. There is no incumbants, thank goodness, or I would not consider doing it. Why a year? Because I am inexperienced?

Thanks for the good points again.

Yow

[WHT]

It just takes time to absorb all the information. There isn't a step by step procedure, because there are so many variables.

People will often ask "what is the best equipment to use"...well, we could answer that very easily, if you filled out a twenty page questionnaire.

That's why WISP consultants charge several hundred dollars.

[rconaway]

But I could be bought for a Wendy's triple, large fry's, and a giant shake (with whip cream)

[wifimaster]

hey , its easy , use the new MESH500 and a wifi bandwidth manager, doing a national system here in Philippines. send me you email and i will send you the information.[www.hotware.com.tw

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[bobcopro]

On the provisioning and billing software I tested a bunch of different solutions and settled on Sputnik. Best blend of paying by your system size and not giving up a large percentage of your profit. Interface all handled on-line and hardware is handled by the router, no need to have a computer on-site. Seem to be nice, helpful folks.

[wifimaster]

And what bandwidth control do you have between your router and the clients?

[bobcopro]

I'm using the QOS on the router that's running the Sputnik agent under DD-WRT. You have to play with it a little to get the final throughput you want. One of my Sputnik routers has year round clients on it and I allot them twice over what they're guaranteed and the other router handles transients so it is configured much closer to the bandwidth advertised.

[wifimaster]

Really , never saw a Router that could do bandwidth and traffic shaping . send me the model and info, interesting.usually use a cisco2811 and a traffic and bandwidth control software in a server . Like i said i never seen it done in a Router, most small routers under $2000 will crash after about 30 clients in constant use.

[bobcopro]

I have seen that issue regarding small routers. Sputnik (basic account) uses a standard Linksys WRTG54 or NS2 running DD-WRT and they are clear that each "Sputnik" router can only authenticate about 30 users, so the QOS isn't an issue. They have a"Pro" account that uses one of their 720 routers that can authenticate around 100 users and runs DD-WRT. I just got that unit and haven't tested it with that number of users yet (or taken it apart yet) but it appears to be similar to one of the routerstation type boards.

That was one of the things I liked about their service model is it allows you to scale up and pay for your business size. It's $20 per month for each "basic" router and account so as you grow you pay more, but there's no big upfront cost or severe learning curve and it's all managed on-line. Since it runs on Ubiquity equipment it's easy to just swap out the AirOS on a NS2 for DD-WRT and make it a payment portal.

[raytaylor]

I agree with WHT
I am just starting to deploy now after about 18 months of study and am still finding problems - I only have 3 test customers hooked up so far.