[MLB-WIRELESS] GHO-South

[Dan Flett]

Hi All,

As you may all be aware, we currently have three wireless interfaces up at
Node GHO.  They are GHO-North - pointed at the Northern Suburbs, GHO-Mobile
which is an Omnidirectional antenna, and GHO-South, which is pointed at the
Southern Region.

At the moment, we in the Southern Region are having trouble even getting a
sniff of the GHO-South interface.  We're not sure if this is a hardware
issue - possibly water damage - or if it is simply due to the interface
being overwhelmed with too many clients.  We need to work out what the
problem is so we can re-establish the link to the Southern Region.

I will shortly be "locking-down" GHO-South by restricting access.  I want to
see if it is possible to re-establish the link to the Southern Region by
reducing the number of clients on GHO-South.  Sorry to anyone who this may
disadvantage, but the ugly fact is that 802.11b has it's limitations,
especially in long-range, outdoor applications.

If it is indeed the case that GHO-South is suffering too many clients, I
will look at ways to allow multiple clients - such as RTS/CTS and/or
Frottle.  This will require that each client meet certain conditions to be
allowed access.  The general idea is that GHO is supposed to be a backbone
node, not a general-access node - people that access GHO should be looking
to share their GHO connection in their local area.  As new clients are added
I will monitor the impact on throughput.

Of course, the short-term result may be that kicking people off GHO-South
may not re-establish the link to the Southern Region.  If this is the case I
will still keep the interface locked-down and try to find the source of the
problem.  If and when we fix the problem I'll look at re-introducing other
clients to the GHO-South interface.

Cheers,

Dan

-------------
View my blog:
http://freenetjazz.blogspot.com