Cape Town Wireless User Group

This is the latest thing i have done so i suppose it should be my first post.

I recently decided (Last Week Wednesday) that i was now going to join the Cape Town Wireless User Group or CT-WUG for short.
So to start things off i went to Google and typed in ctwug and hit search...which lead me to http://www.ctwug.za.net.
On the home page of this site is a link to a web based IRC client connecting you to all the CT-WUG admins, this was very useful as this is where i got all the much needed advice on what hardware to buy and which High Site i could connect to.

Another site i found was http://www.wug.za.net which allowed me to plot my location in Google Earth and then download a the .kmz file which when added to Google earth shows the locations of the High Sites in Cape Town. Updated ctwug.kmz
This allows you to start planning where on the roof of your house you are going to mount the unit.

So next i got on the phone with Scoop Distributions and checked that they had the hardware i was looking for, I decided to buy the 5.8GHz 19dBi CPE RB-411 R52 PS PoE as this was the laziest way to get up and running, for those that know me i tend to try and do as little as possible to get the most out of something, which seldom works but hey that's me.
Another thing i did which i now regret was not buy a pole to mount it on because i thought i would be able to mount it inside the roof, this of course would be easier than climbing onto the roof and drilling holes and what not and NO it will not work inside the roof.(Tried and Tested, i have the bump on the head to prove it)

Next i pick up the CPE and head off home to try it out only to discover that i don't know how the hell to connect to the thing to configure it, so again i hop onto the IRC channel and chat to the guys, they provided me with a link to download Winbox and the console manual.

Now able to connect to the CPE i could get up onto the roof and scan for the CT-WUG High Sites.
What i did to make things easier was run the network cable from my room where the switch is though the roof to the outside, the CPE uses Power over Ethernet so its just the 1 cable.
I have a spare Dlink wireless AP lying around wich i setup to to alow me to sit on the roof and connect to my network witout having another cable to the roof.

Next i climbed onto the roof with the CPE in 1 hand and my notebook in the other, i connected the CPE and waited for about 20 seconds the CPE Beeps twice when booting.

OK so now i was ready to start scanning for a CT-WUG High Site so i ran the Winbox.exe which i downloaded earlier and and connected to the MAC address as the IP is still blank, the user name was admin and the password was password but this could vary.
Once all the packages were downloaded from the router Winbox finally opened and i could sart my scanning.

I initially did a scan by clicking on the interfaces, clicking on wlan1 and running a scan, i found nothing usefull, no ct-wugs anywhere. I started getting worried that i had now spent all this money and i cant see any of the High Sites so i went back to the IRC channel and chatted to the guys again, i found out that i had to set the country to Austria on the CPE. i ran the scan again with the new settings and i finally picked up the CT-WUG, i was jumping up and down like i had just discovered Gold in my back yard. Back to the IRC Channel to spread the good news but i was in for a surprise!

I found out that having a signal strength of -85 is bad and that -78 is better, mine was -90 at the time so back up onto the roof with the notebook to allign the CPE in the correct direction, this took a lot of fine tuning but once i found the right spot wich i got -84 i drilled the holes and mounted the CPE directly to the houses outer wall.

Now having and ok signal got a hold of the High Site Admin wich was very helpfull in adding my MAC Adress to the High Site and giving me a new IP Range as well as talking me through adding the IP's and routes to my router to allow me access.

I was now connected and ready to start Gaming which works really well when the WUG is quite, i have now come to the conclusion that i need a pole on the roof and i need too mount the CPE higher to get a better signal as the -84 just isn't good enough, at peak times i cant even ping the High site.

Check back next week for the next installment where i will be installing the Pole, which i still need to buy by the way.