On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 7:00 AM, 44net-request@hamradio.ucsd.edu wrote:

http://www.scc-ares-races.org/mesh/preso/Basic_WiFi_Net_Planning_v140516.pdf

That's a really good document. This really needs to be in the wiki, or else no one can find it. It can be dangerous for total newbs to read this, because it suggests the process is fraught with danger, which of course it's not. We all agree that it's actually completely trivial to put up an AP and connect to it from miles away.

rmonline is also a good tool to quickly check links for LOS. There is also some Android app as well. http://www.ve2dbe.com/rmonline.html

I don't do link calcs any more - there's just no need to. A pair of Nanobridges will work real well over a huge distance provided there is line-of-sight. Really, this stuff is point-and-shoot trivial now.

A really important consideration with an 802.11 ham network, is keeping the snake-oil protocols separate from the ones that actually work! Viz, don't run mesh on an AirMax channel. AirMax can push a huge amount of data, even on a busy channel.

Advice I'd give to a group of total newbies who want to build a network, is ignore all the tech talk and go buy a 2.4GHz AirMax sector access point, install on a nice high line-of-sight location, and just play with connecting to it from all around the place. There's nothing complicated about it at all. The tricky stuff does come later, but you'll get to that once you see the network up and alive, and your enthusiasm starts to take off. Newbs giving up early because it looks too hard is an avoidable tragedy.

Steve ZL1BHD