WiFi at AirVenture (was:Does your airport WiFi?)

In a previous article, "Juan Jimenez" said:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field? WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

The Linksys WRT54G wireless access point/router supports (at least it does
if you get the Sveasoft firmware, and believe me, you don't want it
without it) a mode where each WAP can relay traffic for all the other WAPs
in its range, so you can chain a bunch of them together wirelessly with
only one connected to the cable/dsl/fat pipe. You can also turn up the
power on them and increase the range.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
"Man in the tower, this is the man in the bird, I'm ready to go, so give me
the word." "Man in the bird, this is the man in the tower, you sound funny,
delay's an hour." - Rod Machado

The Linksys WRT54G wireless access point/router supports (at least it does
if you get the Sveasoft firmware, and believe me, you don't want it
without it) a mode where each WAP can relay traffic for all the other WAPs
in its range, so you can chain a bunch of them together wirelessly with
only one connected to the cable/dsl/fat pipe. You can also turn up the
power on them and increase the range.

Ha. We tried the "repeater" method at the hotel, in an effort to adequately
cover two 3-story buildings.

It turned out to be incredibly unstable. All it would take was a 2 second
power outage, and the repeater "lost its mind" and would not recover -- a
completely untenable solution in a commercial application. Other times it
would lose its connection for no apparent reason at all, and have to be
"rebooted" from scratch -- a time consuming, aggravating affair.

Our solution was a separate DSL line and network in both buildings. A bit
more expensive, but rock-solid.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:41:06 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

The Linksys WRT54G wireless access point/router supports (at least it does
if you get the Sveasoft firmware, and believe me, you don't want it
without it) a mode where each WAP can relay traffic for all the other WAPs
in its range, so you can chain a bunch of them together wirelessly with
only one connected to the cable/dsl/fat pipe. You can also turn up the
power on them and increase the range.

Ha. We tried the "repeater" method at the hotel, in an effort to adequately
cover two 3-story buildings.

It turned out to be incredibly unstable. All it would take was a 2 second
power outage, and the repeater "lost its mind" and would not recover -- a

That's why they make UPSs.
My tower gets hit by lightening about three times a year. The last
time, the lights went out, The alarms on the UPSs sounded, the network
rebooted (probably went down from the voltage spike - It's hard wired)
and other than the couple second pause on the network everything kept
running. Other than being slow, wireless should be just as reliable
even using repeaters. There are repeaters and there are the WAPs.
which are quite different animals and I don't know which you tried.

I have the wireless equipment but it was just too slow for my
application. Backing up a 100 or so gig with four computers at even
100 Base T is agonizingly slow. OTOH defragging a computer with 500
plus Gig in EIDE drive capacity total in three drives plus two 200 Gig
SATA drives in a spanned and stripped array seems to take forever.

completely untenable solution in a commercial application. Other times it
would lose its connection for no apparent reason at all, and have to be
"rebooted" from scratch -- a time consuming, aggravating affair.

It sounds to me like you had an interfering signal, or some bad
noise. Even another system near by can some times do it.

A friend has/had 2.4 gig phones, a 2.4 Gig X-10 web cam and a 2.4 Gig
wireless network. He found the phone would trash the network and the
signal from the web cam. Those in turn would trash the signal from
the phone. He now has 5 gig phones and the rest of the system is
happy.

With wireless, I'm waiting until they get the speed up for my network.
For Internet connections you don't need anything faster than 10 Base T
and most wireless networks far surpass that with 802.11g being almost
as fast as 100 Base T in most installations. With 4 large computers
and over two terabytes of storage, I'm now on a gigabit network. That
means the drive I/O is the limiting factor on most file transfers.
Even the SATA RAID isn't that fast.

But wireless is getting there. although I'd suggest using a name
other than default for D-Link, or Linksys for ... well...LinkSys :-))
which I'd bet over 60 to 70% of the users are doing and they are doing
it without encryption enabled..

Good Luck,

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Our solution was a separate DSL line and network in both buildings. A bit
more expensive, but rock-solid.

Juan Jimenez wrote:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field?

Pick a spot. It doesn't have to cover the whole field.

WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

I don't think the infrastructure is *so* expensive just to provide a hot spot,
if you don't try to cover the whole airfield. The local coffehouse can afford it.

I don't think the infrastructure is *so* expensive just to provide a hot
spot, if you don't try to cover the whole airfield. The local coffehouse
can afford it.

It's not. We covered our entire hotel -- two 3-story buildings, plus the
pool area -- for a grand investment of maybe $225. (Not counting the
monthly DSL line charges, of course.)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"
"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114696520.125471@sj-nntpcache-5...
Juan Jimenez wrote:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field?

Pick a spot. It doesn't have to cover the whole field.

WiFi will get you about a 300 ft radius, maybe a bit more if you get
fancy with the antennas. You then have to deploy an infrastructure to
which you can connect the access points. It takes money, and all for 1
week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors, volunteers, etc.

"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114696520.125471@sj-nntpcache-5...
Juan Jimenez wrote:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field?

Pick a spot. It doesn't have to cover the whole field.

WiFi will get you about a 300 ft radius, maybe a bit more if you get
fancy with the antennas. You then have to deploy an infrastructure to
which you can connect the access points. It takes money, and all for 1
week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors, volunteers, etc.

I don't think the infrastructure is *so* expensive just to provide a hot
spot, if you don't try to cover the whole airfield. The local coffehouse
can afford it.

Which one? You can get coffee at a gazillion places at Airventure!

Personally, I bring my own brand, Wake Up The Dead. If you can see the
bottom of the cup and the spoon won't stand up unassisted, it's not coffee,
it's tea.

Juan Jimenez wrote:

Personally, I bring my own brand, Wake Up The Dead.

I like Disobedient Donkey (AKA "bad ass"). I gave serious thought to raiding my
401K to set up a franchise. Of course, what I don't know about retail would fill
several books.

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

I spent some time scouting for WiFi last year at Oshkosh with my Ipaq
PDA. There were several networks in each of the four conference halls
but none of them were publicly accessible. EAA apparently charges
exhibitors big bucks to access the networks. At the "member center"
there were a couple of rows of PCs set up for public web browsing. I
asked the hostess there about WiFi and she looked at me like I had two
heads.

-R

In a previous article, "Rob" said:
exhibitors big bucks to access the networks. At the "member center"
there were a couple of rows of PCs set up for public web browsing. I

Any chance of plugging your own laptop into their network? I don't like
typing in passwords on public terminals, because of people sticking
keystroke loggers on them. If I use my laptop, all my communications will
be using ssh and nobody can sniff them.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Sign on door of computing lecturer: "If your project is 90% right,
I have to give you a distinction, your employer will fire you."
-- Zebee

Paul Tomblin wrote:
In a previous article, "Rob" said:

exhibitors big bucks to access the networks. At the "member center"
there were a couple of rows of PCs set up for public web browsing. I


Any chance of plugging your own laptop into their network? I don't like
typing in passwords on public terminals, because of people sticking
keystroke loggers on them. If I use my laptop, all my communications will
be using ssh and nobody can sniff them.

If I understood John Theune's post correctly, there were wired ethernet ports
available.