So Cal Free Net.org

Coverage in the "Courtyard" building across from La Cresta (between 24th and 25th St and Broadway) has always been less than ideal. The building construction appears to deaden the signal substantially so the far back apartments had poor coverage except right by their windows.

This is now all fixed. Coverage should be strong throughout all the apartments, though until we get resident reports we won't know for sure as we didn't have access to all apartments to verify. (Add a comment if you're a resident and let us know!).

How?

Two months ago, several volunteers spent several hours at Courtyard to work out the best way to provide better coverage. We tried powerline ethernet, we tried a repeating AP and we tried a mini-relay. The mini-relay worked the best and for once luck was with us, and there turned out to be a perfect place to put it - inside the gate archway. There was power there, it was dry there and it provided a perfect place to cover all the apartments. We just needed some draw wires and extra cabling to complete the job.

The equipment we used was a standard kit like those available at Influx, a Netgear MR814 version 1 with detachable antenna and a Hawking Hi-Gain 15dBi directional antenna. The kit picked up the signal from over the road, the Netgear sent it out again, and the directional antenna concentrated coverage of the Netgear into the courtyard apartments.

Initial throughput testing shows that full network speed was available, despite the extra "hop". We look forward to reports from people using it!

Many thanks to local resident Drew who completed the install solo last Saturday, as well, of course, as the friendly folks at On the Hill Rentals who paid for the gear.