Hi all, i know this is off topic but I was wondering what everybody used for an Internet connection for there AP T1 T2 T3?? cable connection from road runner? DSL connection from verizion? im curious? Thanks -Jordan

We purchase our bandwidth from another WISP who we setup a dedicated point to point link with. Their main backhaul is now a Fiber connection.

Has anyone ever tryed to use a residential internet connection like Roadrunner, or verizion? or say a buisness connection with roadrunner or verizion? I am contemplating on what i should use? any help would be great? thanks
-Jordan

Any internet connection will work. You should go with your experiences for your area.
A couple of questions you should ask yourself.
How many customers are you planning on having on it within a year?
How much bandwidth are you going to give your customers?
What do you want your over subscription rate to be?
What is your budget?
What kind of response times would the carrier have it someone runs into the pole down the street and cuts the cable?

and as always you usually get what you pay for.

P.S. How far upstate?

jordantrx -
Never used cable as a backhaul, though I have done a few 'remote' setups with other MT users. Biggest thing is how restrictive they are on the number of connections initiated by your users AND that whatever the first MAC address that comes through the cable modem is usually the one 'they' record and won't let any other MAC make the PtP connection. You can still nat out your 'core' router (if that was the first MAC address seen by cable) that works fine, it is just that you won't be able to switch the nic out without calling them to get the initial MAC address reset.

Verizon dsl, some of the same issues.... Get a business class connection, static IP etc. That will help prevent connection tracking issues. Many providers look at the number of connections from a particular IP (IP block) and limit the number of simultaneous connections, with a 'business class' account that usually is not a problem..... Mail & VoIP - There is/was a movement to disrupt VoIP on Verizon circuits by Verizon...they have pretty much stopped 'actively' doing that but we see it come up from time to time - they sell phone service so they don't help you 'resell' phone service on their data lines... Mail - have seen them tighten port 25 on their data lines...business class may not have that restriction...we have our own mail servers so I can't comment one way or the other right now, I know that port 25 is closely watched on regular residential connections though.

I see what you are planning, the RB112 etc.... Comments if you don't mind....

The RB112 is a great CPE (client side), if you are using it for the 'main AP' I would swap that out for an RB532....
Why did you choose WDS? Are you trying to simulate a mesh network in a smaller area? That's what WDS really works good for, though using OSPF probably works better when setup properly....
15db omni, you know that RF engery from an omni looks like a donut right? So the higher the gain the skinnier the donut. A 15db omni has about a 4 - 6 degree angle - so your CPE antennas would have to be very close in height to the AP antenna otherwise it won't work.... Typically you would use a 9 db antenna - fat donut - and then use narrower beam, higher db, client antennas. Less interference possibilities at the CPE site, better rx/tx at both ends, and generally lower RF power requirements all around.

Just my 'two cents' worth...been doing RF for 30 years, computers for 25..... I am sure there are other opinions as well.... :)

jordantrx -
Never used cable as a backhaul, though I have done a few 'remote' setups with other MT users. Biggest thing is how restrictive they are on the number of connections initiated by your users AND that whatever the first MAC address that comes through the cable modem is usually the one 'they' record and won't let any other MAC make the PtP connection. You can still nat out your 'core' router (if that was the first MAC address seen by cable) that works fine, it is just that you won't be able to switch the nic out without calling them to get the initial MAC address reset.

Verizon dsl, some of the same issues.... Get a business class connection, static IP etc. That will help prevent connection tracking issues. Many providers look at the number of connections from a particular IP (IP block) and limit the number of simultaneous connections, with a 'business class' account that usually is not a problem..... Mail & VoIP - There is/was a movement to disrupt VoIP on Verizon circuits by Verizon...they have pretty much stopped 'actively' doing that but we see it come up from time to time - they sell phone service so they don't help you 'resell' phone service on their data lines... Mail - have seen them tighten port 25 on their data lines...business class may not have that restriction...we have our own mail servers so I can't comment one way or the other right now, I know that port 25 is closely watched on regular residential connections though.

I see what you are planning, the RB112 etc.... Comments if you don't mind....

The RB112 is a great CPE (client side), if you are using it for the 'main AP' I would swap that out for an RB532....
Why did you choose WDS? Are you trying to simulate a mesh network in a smaller area? That's what WDS really works good for, though using OSPF probably works better when setup properly....
15db omni, you know that RF engery from an omni looks like a donut right? So the higher the gain the skinnier the donut. A 15db omni has about a 4 - 6 degree angle - so your CPE antennas would have to be very close in height to the AP antenna otherwise it won't work.... Typically you would use a 9 db antenna - fat donut - and then use narrower beam, higher db, client antennas. Less interference possibilities at the CPE site, better rx/tx at both ends, and generally lower RF power requirements all around.

Just my 'two cents' worth...been doing RF for 30 years, computers for 25..... I am sure there are other opinions as well....

Thank you for all of your responses greatly appreciated, I have not yet setup a mikrotik network, i have been waiting for the 112 routerboard sence october... really pissing me off.
You say that you would swap the 112 with a Rb532, The only reason i didnt do that is because there is going to only be 1 card on it an Sr2 thats it! and were talking a tops of 25 users on this card, more like 20. Yes i understand the patter that an omni antenna transmits in a donut fashion, however my towers are silo's i live on a farm myself and know many farmers with 70 foot silo's i already have a contract with one so i can use his, that is were my 15 dbi omni will be (it also has 3deg downtilt with a 7 degree vertial beam. it is a comet antenna), and this silo is not on top of a very big hill at alllll, i have made an tower on my home silo, the silo is only 50 foot tall, with the tower it makes it 100 foot tall that i will put a 9 to 12 dbi antenna on, because we are kinda in a valley.

MESH! you got it, Thats EXACTLY what im doing you could call it an agricultural "MESH" I can cover 25 square (rural) miles with this setup i beleive, but i do understand that every "hop" you looose half of your connection speed so the amout of hops are limited.
I have 2 other Wisp's in my area trying to do buisness, but not in my area because it is so rural. None of them work apon mesh. This is what i am trying to do.
I have attached a pic of what it looks like ontop of my silo, not a good pic, and not near the direction of the clients, add another 50 foot ontop of this pic and you have my tower, I mite post a pic later. Funky looking thing. Here is a couple pics of my location were i live, i Live in Waddinton NY and yes you can litteraly see Canada from waddington (my location)

1st pic St. lawerence county 2nd pic A pic from the top of my silo.

From your experience Thom would a cable connection 3MB (roadrunner) with Nat on like you said host 20 + customers? or would that be to many connections? IF that dosent work then i would just get a buisness connection with them to get that out of the way... That reply was very helpful though. And sence that one reply of him getting his connection through another WISP, made me think i can possibly do the same with a WISP company i know pretty well. I will take any info about using this type of connection as i can get,this is the type of connection i am trying to setup, And i need alot of help because i am green behind the ears on all of this, i need expereienced help, Thank you all!
-Jordan

jordantrx -
See the quote I pulled out from Letni - do this for your own peace of mind.

From Letni -
A couple of questions you should ask yourself -
How many customers are you planning on having on it within a year?
How much bandwidth are you going to give your customers?
What do you want your over subscription rate to be?
What is your budget?
What kind of response times would the carrier have it someone runs into the pole down the street and cuts the cable?

These are good questions - so ask them of yourself and see what your answers are - this will help dictate what you need to do to provide the service you want to sell....

For your cable - you'll have to call their office and tell them that you have a small business, about 20 computers, will their 'standard' cable connection be ok or do you need a different subscription?

If you go Verizon, then I would use the business class connection - just my experience here on the west coast.

Using another WISP - that could work well for your, traditionally WISPs are generaly a lower cost solution - call and see.....

In regards to the RB112 vs the RB532 - it's all a matter of processor power. An RB112 has almost a third of the raw processing power of a RB532. It has less memory as well.... It's not the number of cards they support it is what are you supporting with the RB? In your case you might just make it with a RB112 for 20 clients, but for the cost an RB532 would be a better bet and give you plenty of 'head room' if your data transmission rates go up, you do more firewalling/filtering, etc.

I have never been a fan of wide area WDS - too flakey for me.... In smaller neighborhoods a central WDS/AP to multiple single hop area WDS/APs works great. More than that never seems to work consistantly with always predictable results.... MT has a new WMM protocol which promises to fix all that in their new ROS - ver 3. This ROS is still in Beta so I haven't tried a lot of the features yet. I will once it comes out of Beta though.....

So, I would say to you, go away from WDS. You can use your 'main' onmi and use routing to send data to the various areas. Once in the outliying areas you jusr repeat the procedure; AP<>Client - AP(same box)<>client

Believe it or not I have been there..... Waddington.....

We use Fiber 100Mbits today for 450 customers ,We have a AS:nr with RIPE and we can alocate 8000 Ip nr:s to our BGP router, And we use MT 5 ghz for backbone and 2,4 Ghz for CPE.

//Rickard

jordantrx -
See the quote I pulled out from Letni - do this for your own peace of mind.

From Letni -
A couple of questions you should ask yourself -
How many customers are you planning on having on it within a year?
How much bandwidth are you going to give your customers?
What do you want your over subscription rate to be?
What is your budget?
What kind of response times would the carrier have it someone runs into the pole down the street and cuts the cable?

These are good questions - so ask them of yourself and see what your answers are - this will help dictate what you need to do to provide the service you want to sell....

For your cable - you'll have to call their office and tell them that you have a small business, about 20 computers, will their 'standard' cable connection be ok or do you need a different subscription?

If you go Verizon, then I would use the business class connection - just my experience here on the west coast.

Using another WISP - that could work well for your, traditionally WISPs are generaly a lower cost solution - call and see.....

In regards to the RB112 vs the RB532 - it's all a matter of processor power. An RB112 has almost a third of the raw processing power of a RB532. It has less memory as well.... It's not the number of cards they support it is what are you supporting with the RB? In your case you might just make it with a RB112 for 20 clients, but for the cost an RB532 would be a better bet and give you plenty of 'head room' if your data transmission rates go up, you do more firewalling/filtering, etc.

I have never been a fan of wide area WDS - too flakey for me.... In smaller neighborhoods a central WDS/AP to multiple single hop area WDS/APs works great. More than that never seems to work consistantly with always predictable results.... MT has a new WMM protocol which promises to fix all that in their new ROS - ver 3. This ROS is still in Beta so I haven't tried a lot of the features yet. I will once it comes out of Beta though.....

So, I would say to you, go away from WDS. You can use your 'main' onmi and use routing to send data to the various areas. Once in the outliying areas you jusr repeat the procedure; AP<>Client - AP(same box)<>client

Believe it or not I have been there..... Waddington.....

How many customers are you planning on having on it within a year? on each AP 20 for the first year untill spring comes it would only be around 20 25
How much bandwidth are you going to give your customers? Plans are 256/128Kbps for 25$, second plan 512/256 35$, 756/256 for 45$, and 1meg/256 for 55$
What do you want your over subscription rate to be? Im not sure what he means by this question? if i quene them to those limits how could i over subscribe?
What is your budget? Not much!! 2000 dollars. But we have to start someweres. One AP a time and slowly make more money and expand.

And i think you are right about using you method of repeating the signal, it requires of second CPE unit but im sure for the aggrivation it will save me is well worth it!

Why in the heck you way up here lol? Going to canada? Sence you have been here you know the ruralness of my area....

I will definetly look into Using a already astablished WISP connection, I know one of them use verizon and it is t1... They say t1 can only withstand like 100 users? Not sure what connection the other one uses though....

What do you want your over subscription rate to be?

This is also called "Contention ratio". Lets say you buy a T1, which is roughly 1.5 megabits. You sell 6 256k accounts, 4 512k accounts, 2 768k accounts, and 1 megabit account. Total that up and you have about 6 megabits worth of bandwidth you have sold if everyone were to use it at the same time. That would be an "over subscription" ratio of 4 to 1, meaning you've sold 4 times as much bandwidth as you bought.

The more bandwidth you have coming in, the easier it is to have a higher ratio. Right now, we have 3 megabits, and that gets us around a 10:1 ratio. Some ISP's can get away with 50:1. It depends on who your users are and how they use their connection. If you're looking at college kids who use a lot of P2P, your ratio goes down the toilet. Older folks and farm areas are usually lighter users and make it a lot easier to oversell.

Hopefully that answers your question.

What do you want your over subscription rate to be?

This is also called "Contention ratio". Lets say you buy a T1, which is roughly 1.5 megabits. You sell 6 256k accounts, 4 512k accounts, 2 768k accounts, and 1 megabit account. Total that up and you have about 6 megabits worth of bandwidth you have sold if everyone were to use it at the same time. That would be an "over subscription" ratio of 4 to 1, meaning you've sold 4 times as much bandwidth as you bought.

The more bandwidth you have coming in, the easier it is to have a higher ratio. Right now, we have 3 megabits, and that gets us around a 10:1 ratio. Some ISP's can get away with 50:1. It depends on who your users are and how they use their connection. If you're looking at college kids who use a lot of P2P, your ratio goes down the toilet. Older folks and farm areas are usually lighter users and make it a lot easier to oversell.



Hopefully that answers your question.

I understand now, It would be a 25:1 ratio, like you said alot of people out here just browing the web, and im sure some p2p.

How many people do you have on your 3 megabit connection?

Also if anyone knows this what is the standered connection limit on most residential or buisness high speed internet connection's? Roadrunner? verizon FIOS..
Thanks -Jordan

we use cable and DSL in our main network
using disabled routes to manage manual failover if needed. backhaul is 900mhz SR9's (were they work anyway)

on our smaller networks though we use business DSL, 6 clients pays for the connection easy. typical is 20-30 however. rural prairie area.

we use cable and DSL in our main network
using disabled routes to manage manual failover if needed. backhaul is 900mhz SR9's (were they work anyway)

on our smaller networks though we use business DSL, 6 clients pays for the connection easy. typical is 20-30 however. rural prairie area.

Awesome, how much is your bandwidth? 3megs 10 megs?? Also do you have any troubles with connection limits? What you are doing is what i wish to do... 20-30 user per AP, Maybe more later if i connect 2 AP's together need doubled the speed/connections, and depending on users. If you could go a little bit more into detail on how you do it I would be greatful.
Also with cable how do you get around Mac address in the modem? nat? clone? how do you do that? What do you suggest i setup for 20-30 users and late later on into 50-75 users? Thanks fcwireless

Awesome, how much is your bandwidth? 3megs 10 megs?? Also do you have any troubles with connection limits? What you are doing is what i wish to do... 20-30 user per AP, Maybe more later if i connect 2 AP's together need doubled the speed/connections, and depending on users. If you could go a little bit more into detail on how you do it I would be greatful.
Also with cable how do you get around Mac address in the modem? nat? clone? how do you do that? What do you suggest i setup for 20-30 users and late later on into 50-75 users? Thanks fcwireles

our DSL is 3 up 6 down
our Cable is 4 up 10 down

@ our office location we push all customer IP's out & in the cable connection, we use the DSL as a failover for the cable connection and for primary server connection (ie. hosted services, office traffic, email, etc...) the failover is manual

haven't had any trouble yet with connection limits, ALL our customers are statically assigned as most of them are p2p links between a base and the roof of their house. We have a lot of rural connections and make most of our business in providing the 'last mile' vs. being just an alternative to DSL/cable. With customers being mostly static assigned vs. pppoe, we typically just hide the ssid, default deny and use mac authentication since their CPE is provided by us and we can typically trust it. This way we can set the tx/rx limits on the access list for each customer.

I think we clone the mac address from the cable modem, i'm not sure, my associate set that up and I haven't had a chance to check it all out yet.

for 20-30 users per AP in a spoke design I'd probably setup this way:
RB532 at the internet connection location, internet to ether2
POE to ether1
high capacity backhaul to each remote spoke location (branching out like a wagon wheel from the main internet location)
a 2.4 b/g card @ the internet location

a 2.4 b/g card, a SR or XR9 card + backhaul interface cards + antennas @ each remote location.

we typically use a 10.x..../26 net everywhere and still statically assign routes. We're experimenting with the routing protocols right now. We DO NOT assign every customer a public IP. We assign a private and then order our publics in blocks of 5 from our ISP for each connection site and use the firewall/NAT on the main internet connection to do the forwarding/natting. It's a big dog & pony show with what we do in terms of routing and firewalling.

from my experience, for your casual internet consumer I'd recommend no more than 50 per AP and that's dependent on your main net connection and your backhaul links.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it good luck... PM me if you wanna talk more about our setup and experience thus far. We shouldn't hijack the thread.

Awesome, how much is your bandwidth? 3megs 10 megs?? Also do you have any troubles with connection limits? What you are doing is what i wish to do... 20-30 user per AP, Maybe more later if i connect 2 AP's together need doubled the speed/connections, and depending on users. If you could go a little bit more into detail on how you do it I would be greatful.
Also with cable how do you get around Mac address in the modem? nat? clone? how do you do that? What do you suggest i setup for 20-30 users and late later on into 50-75 users? Thanks fcwireles

our DSL is 3 up 6 down
our Cable is 4 up 10 down

@ our office location we push all customer IP's out & in the cable connection, we use the DSL as a failover for the cable connection and for primary server connection (ie. hosted services, office traffic, email, etc...) the failover is manual

haven't had any trouble yet with connection limits, ALL our customers are statically assigned as most of them are p2p links between a base and the roof of their house. We have a lot of rural connections and make most of our business in providing the 'last mile' vs. being just an alternative to DSL/cable. With customers being mostly static assigned vs. pppoe, we typically just hide the ssid, default deny and use mac authentication since their CPE is provided by us and we can typically trust it. This way we can set the tx/rx limits on the access list for each customer.

I think we clone the mac address from the cable modem, i'm not sure, my associate set that up and I haven't had a chance to check it all out yet.

for 20-30 users per AP in a spoke design I'd probably setup this way:
RB532 at the internet connection location, internet to ether2
POE to ether1
high capacity backhaul to each remote spoke location (branching out like a wagon wheel from the main internet location)
a 2.4 b/g card @ the internet location

a 2.4 b/g card, a SR or XR9 card + backhaul interface cards + antennas @ each remote location.

we typically use a 10.x..../26 net everywhere and still statically assign routes. We're experimenting with the routing protocols right now. We DO NOT assign every customer a public IP. We assign a private and then order our publics in blocks of 5 from our ISP for each connection site and use the firewall/NAT on the main internet connection to do the forwarding/natting. It's a big dog & pony show with what we do in terms of routing and firewalling.

from my experience, for your casual internet consumer I'd recommend no more than 50 per AP and that's dependent on your main net connection and your backhaul links.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it good luck... PM me if you wanna talk more about our setup and experience thus far. We shouldn't hijack the thread.

I cant seem to find the spot to pm you? maybe its just me, I would love to talk more about this my e-mail is jordanb88@gmail.com if you send me a small message there i can respond with questions, One of them being how do you hookup CPE units to your AP I dont understand the encription process, i have wpa preshared key. And as you i suppy the cpe units. when i put the preshared key into the cpe unit it dosent authroise with the AP... I have a ydi proxim CPE unit a demartec unit, and 14 smartbridge radio's with 15 dbi directional antennas, i have not yet worked with the smartbridge radio's yet because i need to reset them all and the remot reset "powershot" is on the way. But in the mean time i cant seem to hook up these cpe units? help? Thanks -Jordan