[MLB-WIRELESS] finally a triumph on the northern front !

[Tony Langdon, VK3JED]

At 09:21 AM 5/16/2007, Rohan Malhotra wrote:
>well i'd like to run a linux box for 3 reasons: improved performance 
>and stability on the old pcs (Damn small linux), because its free 
>and legit and because i want to improve my skills on the linux front.
>however im happy to use either which one ur comfortable with.

All good reasons, and there is another side effect of tinkering with 
Linux that I discovered 10 years ago - it might even land you a job 
if you're looking!   :-)


>yeah in the very near future im thinking i'll probably stick a 
>router or an accesspoint up there with the canopy connected and then 
>port that into my server, but for now i only have a crappy netgear 
>router with stock antenna (i'm doubting whether even i wll be able 
>to listen to the device from within my house with one of those 
>crappy stock antennas) and no weather proof box so its not so much 
>of a solution. so basically for the time being itll go, canopy, 
>server, cat5 to netgear router within my house, this way i need no 
>weather proof boxes and i dont have to get a higher gain antenna to 
>propogate the router further.

I'll probably go the point to point route.  I have a R100 that I 
could load up OpenWRT or Friefunk on (haven't decided which yet) and 
use that for one site (probably Laverton, where I'll probably be just 
a client node and need only one radio).  The other at Preston, being 
near the top of a decent hill, I'm considering going the WRAP route, 
so I can have an uplink radio and another radio to service local 
users.  I can then use an existing Linux PC as a firewall between the 
wireless network and my internal LAN, as it will be in an ideal 
physical location to see my own AP and runs 24x7 for a ham radio VoIP 
application anyway.

As for weather proof boxes, there are some nice ones on the market now.

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com