So like many things in life, the answer to what is HamWAN is complicated. There are actually two or three definitions and all are completely valid.

Transcription

1 HAMWAN KU7M So my name is Kenny Richards, KU7M. I ve been a ham for nearly 30 years now. My interest have covered many aspects of our hobby, but I do tend to gravitate to VHF/UHF/Microwave things and all stuff digital. I m currently a Technical Program Manager at Amazon in the AWS division, but I have also worked at the other big software company on the east side. 1

2 So like many things in life, the answer to what is HamWAN is complicated. There are actually two or three definitions and all are completely valid. And confusing. I am going to try and give you some basic building blocks and then put the whole thing together. My talk today isn t meant to be highly structured, I hope to have lots of questions along the way. I just might ask you to hold a question until I get to the another slide, so I can answer it better. 2

3 Home Wifi Lets start with something everybody is familiar with, your home Wifi network. There are three main parts of this system, but with the integration of WiFi, you don t see all of them them now. 3

4 Home Router So most people are familiar with this box, it is the home router. But it actually is several different components all rolled together. Its a router, which is a specialized type of computer that takes network packets (typically IP packets) and figures out where they should go between the different networks. In this case you actually have 3 networks, the LAN (the RJ45 connectors on the back), the Wifi network and the Internet. The WiFi side includes the radio and the smarts for handling all the radio protocol translations. There is also a pair of antennas. 4

5 WiFi Radio Inside your laptops, tablets and smart phones is a wifi radio and some sort of antenna. The antenna size/shape depends on how much room is available in the device, but they are all small and not terribly effective. These devices are typically programmed to be client devices, which has a special meaning in WiFi. It can only be talking to one device at a time. Where as the device in your router is in access point mode and can talk to several radios at the same time. 5

6 HAMWAN DEF #1 Home WiFi Shelf/Desk in House Access Point Antenna (omni) Laptop WiFi Radio Antenna (what will fit) Router HamWAN Mountain Top Access Point(s) Antenna (sector) QTH Wifi Radio Antenna (dish) Router So lets compare and contrast something we are familiar with to our first definition of HamWAN. HamWAN is a wireless network, it has access points and routers located on mountain tops with high gain antennas. Instead of using the wifi radios built into our laptops to connect to HamWAN, we use external radios and even higher gain dishes. So lets look at some of those pieces up close 6

7 HamWAN Client and Sectors So lets walk through the pieces that make up a HamWAN network, comparing to your home wifi. The radio is actually the same on the client and mountain top setup, they are Mikrotik 5Ghz radios, that can be configured as either AP or client. Designed to be mounted on the antenna in the elements. PoE is fed up cat5 cable to the radio. Radio has male N connector. There is the typical client antenna, a Poynting (30dbi gain) dish. On the mountain top side you have several sector antennas. 7

8 Sector Antenna So quick summary of a sector antenna. To get the coverage to make system practical, you want to use high gain antennas, which typically means directivity. For the client side, using a dish is obvious, since you are only trying to connect to one other station. But the mountain top wants to connect to lots of stations, so the antenna compromise is using a Sector antenna, which provides gain 15dbi gain and has a 120 degree radiation pattern 8

9 HamWan DEF #2 Which leads us to the second definition of what HamWAN is. HamWan is a set of standards for building a wireless network using ham radio frequencies. It defines things like the frequencies used for each of the sectors, the channel sizes and how to configure the radios. This means any properly configured client radio can be pointed at any sector and they will associate. 9

10 HamWan DEF #3 The last definition of HamWAN is just the group here in Seattle which started this whole crazy thing. They are the group which defined the original standard. They formed a 501c Non-Profit to build out the Seattle HamWAn network, which is all funded by members and donations from various groups in the area. 10

11 HAMWAN FACTS HamWAN Seattle has seven sites today Capital Park, Capital Peak, GoldMnt, SnohDEM, Baldi, Haystack & E.Tiger PoP - Westin (downtown Seattle) & Tukwila Seattle not only HamWAN group MemHamWAN, HamWAN-Tampa, NM-HamWAN & HamWAN-South (Plus Victoria BC) Client Cost ~$200 MemHamWAN - Memphis, Tennessee. HamWAN-Tampa, Florida NM HamWAN - Albuquerque, New Mexico HamWAN South, Georgia. Are any sectors installed? 11

12 HamWAN (Seattle) Coverage Map Coverage map and location of sites around area 12

13 Client Install This a picture of Bart AE7SJ setup (slightly different dish than the standard, but Bart plays with all of them) 13

14 KU7M Setup Here is another setup, which is my own. I have my disk mounted to the same mount as a 3 band vertical, located on a peak of my house. The view on the right is what I have to connect through to get to Capital Park site. As you can see, there is some biological matter in my path, which is why I don t have great connectivity. 14

15 Questions? 15

16 HamWAN Seattle STUFF Mailist: IRC: channel #HamWAN on irc.freenode.org 16