Ted Patrick > { Events & Community } > Adobe Systems

I live in Kingston, Jamaica, not exactly the tech capital of the world. Although here innovation abounds, as local businesses and individuals must work around poor infrastructure and power outages on a daily basis. It is typical for us to have the power drop 2-3 times a week, I currently own 10 UPS units and every piece of gear is attached.

When I arrived (May 2002), I found that the internet access was less than ok. I searched high and low for anything faster than a dial-up connection to the internet. Having come from an office with 2 T1's, I had been spoiled by fast unlimited internet.

Weird as it sounded then, wireless internet was taking off here. Skipping over the antique infrastructure of Cable and Wireless, was required to provide fast internet to business. There were 2 wireless providers that could supply a 1,028 Down / 256K Up connection wirelessly, although at a very high cost! The problem was that I was out of range of the service by 3 miles and was 7 miles from the base station. I am not one to accept no for an answer, so I worked with the provider to attempt to extend the range of the service via hardware. Here is what we did:

1. Add large directional antenna to boost signal reception. This worked really well as we were just able to get the equipment to receive a faint signal. We also worked to get a clear parabolic line of site or wireless line of site that was clear of obstruction. We mounted the antenna on the house and once it was mounted, we optimized the antenna until we got a connection with few dropped packets. At the end of this stage we were running 14K, not exactly high speed.



2. Add an external amplifier to the antenna cable. This worked like magic as once it was installed we were operating at 73K without any adjustments.

3. Add silicone to all antenna connections. This was a practical item but it improved signal quality by 10-15% overall. It is amazing how much of the signal is lost in cable transmission.

4. Tune the radio signal via the radio receiver. We worked to optimize the radio settings to achieve a very reliable connection rate. These settings included boosting the radio output and optimizing for packet loss. At this point we were at 143K over 7 Miles, two way.

5. Boost the source antenna range by adding an amplifier. This was by far the most expensive part of the process as the carrier equipment is much more expensive than the end user gear. The company boosted their signal strength in Feb of this year and I am now receiving 256KBPS 2 way over 7 miles.

It is very clear to me that the last mile will come as a wireless solution in the near future. Although the WIFI trend in the US is taking off for LAN and proximity WAN access, it is being deployed as the last mile in the 3rd world.

My ISP emailed me the other day and asked if I wanted to upgrade to 802.11g. It will provide 3,500KBPS and only requires a new radio. I said yes.

Cheers,

Ted ;)