Don Horner
04-26-2007, 05:14 AM
When we travel in the Sprinter RV, we try to find wireless internet sites so we can keep up to date with email, banking, etc. Many RV parks have wi-fi available, but often they are poorly installed and don't have good signals in the park. Other times, we may be parked near facilities with unsecured access and can log on. These sites have varied from McDonalds with wi-fi, several county courthouses, nearby motels such as Comfort Inns and others with hi-speed wi-fi, and even private businesses which haven't bothered to set up secure access. There are also many homeowners and businesses who deliberately share access.
I also have some property in Okeechobee, FL where I am planning to build a house. My daughter lives next door and if I park in the right spot, I can share her wireless DSL service.
The problem is, I'm depending on the built-in antennas on my and my wife's laptops, which are not really effective if the signal is weak, or we can't park in the right spot
After a considerable amount of research, most of which gave me a headache because I have white hair and I really don't understand this stuff, I came to the conclusion that I needed an external antenna, a piece of equipment known variously as a "bridge" or "CPE" (customer premises equipment), and a wireless router inside the RV so both my wife and I, and anyone near us, can also surf the web.
I consulted with an outfit at wirelessnetworkproducts.com and ended up ordering a Tranzeo HD24123, which is an AP/CPE/Bridge (depending on how it's configured) with an 802.11b/g radio operating at 19 dBm (whatever that is) and with 90 miliwatts of power (90 something, I'm not sure of the units). The key is that it's a lot more powerful than the typical bridge offered by, say, Linksys (WET54g) at not much more money -- $159 versus $89 for the Linksys. Tranzeo makes more powerful radios, but they are more expensive, and this seemed like the best bang for the buck. Best of all, this unit uses the same n-connector as the antenna, eliminating the need for a $20 to $25 pigtail to adapt the antenna.
I also ordered a 7 dBi (?) mobile omni antenna on a magnetic base with 12' of cable. The antenna was $60 and the magnetic base was $60. I probably could have found them cheaper, but this outfit spent a total of about an hour and a half on the phone with me, plus a couple of hours of research and consultation among themselves, before we settled on a solution -- their services are worth their price.
Their best guess is that I should be able to pick up and transmit to access points between 1/4 and 1/2 mile from the van, perhaps more in ideal conditions.
These items should be here on Friday, and I'll get them mounted over the weekend. The real problem will likely be configuration, I'll give it the old man's college try, but I'll probably end up on the phone with wirelessnetworkproducts again on Monday -- they offered their help.
The CPE radio will communicate via the exterior antenna to the remote access point, and will then pass the signal on to a wireless router via a CAT 5 patch cord. Our laptops will communicate with the router. I already have a spare D-Link 802.11b wireless router -- I replaced it with 802.11g equipment. The 11b specification is fine for the RV, because all we'll use it for is internet -- which at the fastest is usually no more than 6 megabits, and is usually 1.5 or lower, well within the 11 megabits of the 11b unit.
The D-Link will let us use our laptops with a couple of hundred feet of the RV, great for sitting at a picnic table, for example. Also, any other RVs withing a couple of hundred feet will be able to hook up through our access point if they are suffering from the same poor connections as we have in the past.
I mounted the D-Link on the cabinet wall where the TV is mounted, and ran the power cord up through the same hole in the cabinet as the TV power cord, to an inverter. The factory mounted a 400W inverter in that cabinet to run the TV, and I've been running the satellite receiver from the same inverter, but it's right on the edge of the power. I had a 700W inverter hanging around (picked it up cheap on Ebay), so I mounted it to handle the TV and satellite receiver, and will use the 400W inverter for the D-Link and the Tranzeo. When the Tranzeo unit arrives, I'll install it in the same cabinet as the satellite receiver; at 10"x13", it's about the same size. The Tranzeo unit is actually designed to be mounted outside on a pole, but there is no problem with it being inside. The inside unit was a lot more money and needed a pigtail for the antenna -- so would have been about $100 more.
I'll have a little more than $300 invested when I'm done, but it's a one-time expense, and I expect I'll be able to pull up many more internet access points than most people expect. I'm told this is the same type of rig that a hacker might use when driving around neighborhoods looking for networks to hack into. I wouldn't know, I have neither the knowledge or the desire to hack in to anyone. Unsecured internet access is something else; most of the time it's intentional, and even when it occurs because someone was too lazy or unknowledgeable to set up security, it does them no harm -- one more user doesn't slow them down or cost them anything.
My own wireless system at home is deliberately unsecured so anyone can share my dsl service; my computers are firewalled to block anyone but a dedicated hacker, and those guys can break WEP or WPA security if they really want to.
I suspect some of the young whippersnappers on this site will have better solutions for what I did, and my only regret is that I jumped before I mentioned it here. I don't think I'll be sorry.
I'll post some pictures when it's all together.
I also have some property in Okeechobee, FL where I am planning to build a house. My daughter lives next door and if I park in the right spot, I can share her wireless DSL service.
The problem is, I'm depending on the built-in antennas on my and my wife's laptops, which are not really effective if the signal is weak, or we can't park in the right spot
After a considerable amount of research, most of which gave me a headache because I have white hair and I really don't understand this stuff, I came to the conclusion that I needed an external antenna, a piece of equipment known variously as a "bridge" or "CPE" (customer premises equipment), and a wireless router inside the RV so both my wife and I, and anyone near us, can also surf the web.
I consulted with an outfit at wirelessnetworkproducts.com and ended up ordering a Tranzeo HD24123, which is an AP/CPE/Bridge (depending on how it's configured) with an 802.11b/g radio operating at 19 dBm (whatever that is) and with 90 miliwatts of power (90 something, I'm not sure of the units). The key is that it's a lot more powerful than the typical bridge offered by, say, Linksys (WET54g) at not much more money -- $159 versus $89 for the Linksys. Tranzeo makes more powerful radios, but they are more expensive, and this seemed like the best bang for the buck. Best of all, this unit uses the same n-connector as the antenna, eliminating the need for a $20 to $25 pigtail to adapt the antenna.
I also ordered a 7 dBi (?) mobile omni antenna on a magnetic base with 12' of cable. The antenna was $60 and the magnetic base was $60. I probably could have found them cheaper, but this outfit spent a total of about an hour and a half on the phone with me, plus a couple of hours of research and consultation among themselves, before we settled on a solution -- their services are worth their price.
Their best guess is that I should be able to pick up and transmit to access points between 1/4 and 1/2 mile from the van, perhaps more in ideal conditions.
These items should be here on Friday, and I'll get them mounted over the weekend. The real problem will likely be configuration, I'll give it the old man's college try, but I'll probably end up on the phone with wirelessnetworkproducts again on Monday -- they offered their help.
The CPE radio will communicate via the exterior antenna to the remote access point, and will then pass the signal on to a wireless router via a CAT 5 patch cord. Our laptops will communicate with the router. I already have a spare D-Link 802.11b wireless router -- I replaced it with 802.11g equipment. The 11b specification is fine for the RV, because all we'll use it for is internet -- which at the fastest is usually no more than 6 megabits, and is usually 1.5 or lower, well within the 11 megabits of the 11b unit.
The D-Link will let us use our laptops with a couple of hundred feet of the RV, great for sitting at a picnic table, for example. Also, any other RVs withing a couple of hundred feet will be able to hook up through our access point if they are suffering from the same poor connections as we have in the past.
I mounted the D-Link on the cabinet wall where the TV is mounted, and ran the power cord up through the same hole in the cabinet as the TV power cord, to an inverter. The factory mounted a 400W inverter in that cabinet to run the TV, and I've been running the satellite receiver from the same inverter, but it's right on the edge of the power. I had a 700W inverter hanging around (picked it up cheap on Ebay), so I mounted it to handle the TV and satellite receiver, and will use the 400W inverter for the D-Link and the Tranzeo. When the Tranzeo unit arrives, I'll install it in the same cabinet as the satellite receiver; at 10"x13", it's about the same size. The Tranzeo unit is actually designed to be mounted outside on a pole, but there is no problem with it being inside. The inside unit was a lot more money and needed a pigtail for the antenna -- so would have been about $100 more.
I'll have a little more than $300 invested when I'm done, but it's a one-time expense, and I expect I'll be able to pull up many more internet access points than most people expect. I'm told this is the same type of rig that a hacker might use when driving around neighborhoods looking for networks to hack into. I wouldn't know, I have neither the knowledge or the desire to hack in to anyone. Unsecured internet access is something else; most of the time it's intentional, and even when it occurs because someone was too lazy or unknowledgeable to set up security, it does them no harm -- one more user doesn't slow them down or cost them anything.
My own wireless system at home is deliberately unsecured so anyone can share my dsl service; my computers are firewalled to block anyone but a dedicated hacker, and those guys can break WEP or WPA security if they really want to.
I suspect some of the young whippersnappers on this site will have better solutions for what I did, and my only regret is that I jumped before I mentioned it here. I don't think I'll be sorry.
I'll post some pictures when it's all together.