My New Tower

[dremd]

Originally Posted by McTimson

How much did it cost to put up?

Tower sections $25 (scrap yard FTW!)
Bolts for tower sections $15
Cable $50
Concrete $40
3x 1'x10ft schedule 60 pipe $ unknown(went with steel order)
Time 1 billion hours
$130+

+ WRT54GL $60
+ Parabolic Grid $Already had
+ Ammo Box $ 12
$72
$202 +for my end ? + an unbelievable amount of time + energy

Originally Posted by McTimson

Is there enough wind there to make a windmill out of it?

Wind isn't very good on the tower; i'm only a few feet from the top of a very large oak tree about 30 feet away.


Windmill is in the works; but not very soon, nor on this tower . . . .
I do wish

[jcp123]

Damn you had to go high for WiFi. We only went up 12ft I think

[dremd]

Originally Posted by jcp123

Damn you had to go high for WiFi. We only went up 12ft I think

Well; the origional plan was to steal internet from 1/2- 3/4 mile away from existing access points.

If I knew my final setup; I would have done lower; however I am just above 3 trees that I would have to go straight through if I had only done 50 feet. . . . .

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by dremd

I always forget how huge of a performance hit WEP takes on a marginal link (almost 50%)

Does it take a lot more bits to use WEP vs using Open mode??
I have a buddy across the road who has a very weak signal, resulting in
a lot of slowness. We are using WEP, which I understand is very easy to crack now..

Would my 'user' do better without WEP??

[dremd]

Originally Posted by Xringer

Does it take a lot more bits to use WEP vs using Open mode??
I have a buddy across the road who has a very weak signal, resulting in
a lot of slowness. We are using WEP, which I understand is very easy to crack now..

Would my 'user' do better without WEP??

I totally don't know.
If it were me I'd test with security off, test with differant security settings, and if all fails upgrade radios/ antennas.

[Clev]

WEP is essentially useless. It can be cracked offline in 60 seconds using easily-available tools. If you're looking for security, use WPA or WPA2. A powered directional antenna at the AP can make up the speed difference. (I'm sure it's only 10-15% anyway.)

Without WPA, anybody within range of the antenna can capture packets unnoticed and see what's going on, or even use ARP spoofing to do man-in-the-middle attacks.

[Xringer]

WEP might not even be needed in this neighborhood. My stock antenna is located in
such a shielded location, it's just about invisible in all directions but one.
My buddy picks it up weakly with his laptop, but it's slow unless he comes outdoors.
A hacker would need to park at the end of my front sidewalk, unless he used a 12' dish.

Maybe I could get away just using a MAC filter??

[Clev]

Originally Posted by Xringer

WEP might not even be needed in this neighborhood. My stock antenna is located in
such a shielded location, it's just about invisible in all directions but one.
My buddy picks it up weakly with his laptop, but it's slow unless he comes outdoors.
A hacker would need to park at the end of my front sidewalk, unless he used a 12' dish.

Maybe I could get away just using a MAC filter??

MAC filtering and SSID hiding are also ineffective against a hacker, although they work against neighboring PCs that "accidentally" grab your signal (Windows is famous for this.)

If you can't get a signal outside of your property line, then turn off WEP and fuhgeddaboutit.

[Xringer]

I'll switch to MAC filtering to keep the random laptop from trying to connect to the wrong system.

There is no line-of-sight to anywhere from my router..
It covers the inside of the house just well enough. My Roku box located
back in the den is just able to do HD.. Good nuff..

[dremd]

As clarification my setup is running in WDS only mode, with no SSID broadcast, with MAC address filtering on (no reason, but might as well), and with a randomly generated WPA key.

That gives me about a 15-20% performance hit. WEP is what actually puts the BIG hurt on my link.
Bear in mind

remote end (with DSL) wireless is broadcasting at 80 mw through a patch panel (15dbi?) and is receiving from my tower at -80dBm with a -97dBm noise floor for a "quality" (strength above noise floor) of 17dBi

Tower end (my house) is broadcasting at 25 mw through a 24 dBi parabolic grid
and is recieving from the remote site at -75dBm with a noise floor of -95dBm for a "quality" (strength above noise floor) of 20dBi

The resulting link gives me about 8 Mbps from remote site to my tower and about 3 Mbps from my tower to my remote site in good weather. I drop to about 3 Mbps down and 1 Mbps down in severe weather. All of which is irrelevant because I can only get 3 Mbps DSL which is typically 2.5Mbps down and .4 Mbps up.