A Glimpse on the Access Point at an Internet Service Provider

An Access Point at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is normally located high on top of the tower. Henry Syarifuddin’s team installs this particular setting.

A closed up picture shows the SmartBridges (http://www.smartbridges.com) Access Point install on top of the tower. The coaxial cable connecting the Access Point to the Antenna is kept short to minimize the loss. An omnidirectional antenna is used. The bottom side of the antenna is visible in the close up.

My Home Installation

Shown in the figure is my home gateway for 24 hours Internet connection to my neighborhood. It is a Pentium I 166MHz with 128Mbyte RAM.

Linux Mandrake 8.0 is used as the operating system. In normal operation, it runs in text based mode with no Graphical User Interface (GUI).

External antenna is located on the roof top above the ceiling clamped onto a 2 meter plumbing pipe that buried into the wall. It is a 19dBi parabolic antenna, much to large for reaching my access point at 1 km distance.

The Pentium I gateway has additional card connected to local LAN. Shown in the figure is my workplace at home with many PCs connected to the gateway through the LAN. All PCs can simultaneously access the Internet through the wireless gateway.

Building Neighborhood Point Of Presence

Shown in the figure is a typical configuration for neighborhood network. A single gateway with 24 hours wireless connection to the Internet connected to local UTP LAN through its second Ethernet.

Distance & environment proofing would be a major headache in implementing Neighborhood network. It would be easier for office network or Internet café, which normally run within a building.

A normal UTP line would reliably run for 100-150 meters, we need to put another hub as uplink for repeating the Ethernet signal for longer distance. I know, this is not a good practice for getting the maximum performance for the network. Fortunately, such architecture cost us quite cheap to build a neighborhood network.

Practical Installation of A Neighborhood Network

Most of the example shown in this section is taken from my friend, Michael Sunggiardi (Michael@sunggiardi.com) at his neighborhood network installation that connects about 80 houses in his neighborhood, which run at US$15 / house / month for 24 hours Internet access.

Shown in the figure is the hub for repeating the UTP cable into longer distances inside a box for outside installation. Shown in the figure the UTP cable is enclosed inside the pvc plumbing for environmental protection.

Shown in the figure is a picture of the equipment inside the box enclosure. It is basically a Hub with its power supply and UTP cabling.

To protect the system from lightning strike, it is advisable to put a lightning protector for the electric cord before it enters the equipments as shown in the figure.

The UTP cables inside PVC plumbing is normally run across the drainage systems in the neighborhood for trouble-free installation.

Speed bump across the road is a common method to run the UTP cable across the road as it would be bureaucratically difficult to dig a hole into across the road.