Sydney WiFi Extends to The Sutherland Shire

Today we have achieved our first stable link to the Sutherland Shire, making a link from Bay Street Brighton-Le-Sands to Sylvania.  Our friends Bob and Michael at Sydney Storm Pumps have provided us with their rooftop as our newest access point location which is on the Princes Highway at the South end of Tom Ugly's bridge.

From this location the network now makes wireless coverage with free internet access available to two marinas and hundreds of boats on swing moorings in the Kogarah bay area, as well as Sylvania, Sylvania waters and the Eastern end of the Georges River.

From here we hope to get more people from the Sutherland Shire interested in the wireless network.

We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Michael and Bob on the opening of their new shop and gratuitiously plug their business. Sydney Pumps specialise in supply and installation of pumps and rain water tanks in the Sydney area. They are experts in green environmentally sustainable water solutions including the Davey Pumps Rainbank solution. The guys are also solar experts and are helping the network become power efficient using solar solutions.

If you click the image to see the high resolution picture, you can see the dish on the rooftop mounted mast that links to the network. Over the next couple of weeks we will be putting two waveguide antennas on the mast to redistribute the network, making this our first access point in the Sutherland Shire.

Technically speeking, the link receiver is a Linksys WRT54G running Sveasoft software and a 19 Db grid antenna supplied by Wifi Tech - we will be using this installation to review the antenna. Over the next week we are going to compare the operation of the WRT54G to a Minitar MNWAPB. this location is a great tester for access points and antennas because it's a rather marginal connection to the network, leaving us plenty of room to test for optimal equipment.