Connecting Rural Ohio

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CRO Deployment

In each Connecting Rural Ohio location, Internet connectivity is supplied by wireless signal. The first three projects – in Vinton, Chesterhill and New Straitsville – received connectivity from a satellite, while the most recent installations – in Crown City and Canter's Cave – receive connectivity from a terrestrial wireless source.

The satellite installations receive a radio signal from the Americom-4 (AMC-4) satellite at the rate of 400-Kbps downlink and 256-Kbps uplink, with a potential of 1.5 Mbps (equivalent to a T-1 connection). Satellites such as the Americom-4 send and receive (relay) data streams through on-board devices called transponders – transmitter/receiver devices that transmit signals automatically when they receive pre-determined signals. Tachyon leased a specific frequency range on this satellite to support Internet connectivity in each town.The AMC-4 Satellite is stationed in a geo-synchronous orbit at 101° West Longitude, slightly to the east and directly overhead of the middle of the United States. The AMC-4 serves subscribers in both North and South America.

A land-based, point-to-point wireless signal, rather than a satellite connection, feeds the Crown City network. This connection, supplied by wireless service provider ConnectLink, uses 5.4 GHz frequencies sent from West Virginia, bounced off of a local cell phone tower and finally received by an antenna on the roof of the village hall. The link has much lower latency then any of the previous sites and is capable of up to 6 Mbps bidirectional transmission rates. At deployment, Crown City has opted to buy pay for a 3 Mbps bidirectional link, representing twice the download and 6 times the upload of previous communities.

While each of the CRO sites uses wireless technology to connect back to the Internet, the rest of the architecture and the installation process have been customized in many respects:

• Canter's Cave
• Crown City
• Vinton
• Chesterhill
• New Straitsville

Canter's Cave

Deployment Photos

The wireless network for the Canter's Cave 4-H camp is provided through a 1.2-meter satellite dish. This dish is installed at a fixed location on the main lodge building and utilizes an auto-aiming system to allow the dish to lock onto the proper satellite. The camp pays for the service for this dish through iDirect, with a download speed of 2 Mbps and an upload speed of 768 Kbps, with no date transfer cap.

Teletronic's TT900 radios were used to interconnect four main camp buildings to provide the network backbone, the main lodge, the Harrison Powell dormitory, the Nature Center and the Leadership Center. These links utilize two channels in the 900 MHz unlicensed spectrum. A single indoor Engenius EAP-3660 was deployed in each building. Each of these provided complete coverage of the building it was placed in, as well as some coverage around the outside perimeter of the building. Finally, in each building a 16-port switch was deployed to allow for an expansion of the network as needed.

Crown City

Deployment Photos

Installation began in Crown City on Feb. 28, 2008.In addition to housingthe connection to the Internet, the village hallhouses the local wireless gear and the community learning center. Each of the three sector antennas covers a 120-degree arc of the town. These antennas are each fed by a single 802.11b/g radio to provide seamless connectivity from the majority of the town to the Internet.

Seven computers at the village hall were directly connected to the network via Ethernet. Six of the computers were purchased under grant funding from the Governor’s Office of Appalachia and installed solely for use as a learning center for the community. The seventh computer was connected in the mayor’s office for village business.

Local partners were supplied with a wide array of customer-premise equipment to demonstrate to community residents during house calls. At a minimum, a resident would need a wireless-enabled computer. For those with poor line-of-sight or simply at a greater distance from the tower, the most complex configuration would mirror the bridge on the town hall. Once the appropriate equipment for a particular site was determined, the resident was provided with an equipment list and the instructions for deploying the equipment upon purchase.

After the initial deployment, it was determined that a dozen or so
homes situated in a nearby valley could be provided wireless coverage
by installing two repeater stations. The first station of the Phase II
deployment was installed on a building near the lower entrance to the
valley. It will consist of a radio to connect back to the town hall
and another radio to re-transmit the signal up the valley using a
highly directional antenna. The second station was located on the
chimney of a local resident's home and will be used to receive the
signal with a one-directional antenna. Using a second radio at this
point, we will rebroadcast the signal with an omni-directional antenna
to reach the nearby homes.

Vinton

Deployment Photos

A Tachyon Satellite transceiver dish was professionally installed March 19, 2007, at the base of the Vinton village water tower. A climate-controlled enclosure was mounted inside the footprint of the dish base. This enclosure houses all of the electronics for the town’s network system. A thermostat heats and cools the equipment to keep temperatures within operating specifications. Over the rest of March 19 and March 20, three wireless access points and three sector antennas were installed on the top of the water tower. The final activity of the trip was the installation of a wireless bridge on roof of the town hall to provide the entire building with wireless connectivity.

Each of the three sector antennas covered a 120-degree arc of the town, and they collectively provide signal in all directions from the water tower. These antennas were each fed by a single 802.11b/g radio to provide seamless connectivity from the majority of the town proper through the satellite link and to the Internet.

The above-mentioned bridge on the town hall building consists of a radio and directional antenna known as a Yagi. The yagi antenna was aimed back at one of the sector antennas on the water tower to maximize the signal strength it received. Configurations were made to the attached radio so that it acted more like an endpoint than an access point. That is, it simply translated between wireless signals and wired Ethernet signals. The Ethernet signals were leveraged as the source for a wired LAN inside the town hall. Seven computers were connected to this LAN, six of which were purchased under grant funding and installed solely for use as a learning center for the community. The seventh computer was connected in the mayor’s office for village business.

Local partners were supplied with a wide array of customer-premise equipment to demonstrate to community residents during house calls. At a minimum, a resident would need a wireless-enabled computer. For those with poor line-of-sight or simply at a greater distance from the tower, the most complex configuration would mirror the bridge on the town hall. Once the appropriate equipment for a particular site was determined, the resident was provided with an equipment list and the instructions for deploying the equipment upon purchase.

Chesterhill

Deployment Photos

Chesterhill’s network was completed in two phases; the first phase took place in June of 2005. This initial phase involved the professional installation of a Tachyon Satellite transceiver dish on a pole behind the Chesterhill branch of the Morgan County Library. Cabling was routed into the interior of the structure, where the electronics for the system were housed. A wired LAN was established inside the library, feeding network connectivity to library staff computers and several machines slotted for library patron use. Additionally, two access points were deployed on this date to create a wireless hotspot inside and outside the library. The external access point was connected to an omni-directional antenna with the goal of supplying the nearby area with broadband connectivity.

Phase two of the network deployment in Chesterhill took place in April of 2006 and involved the expansion of the outdoor wireless network to cover a greater portion of the community and to provide a community-learning center. As the budget allowed for the purchase of only two access points, it was decided the town water tower – with its height and location at the edge of town – would serve as a good source point for the wider distribution of the wireless signal. The first step following this decision was to beam the signal from the library to the water tower. In order to avoid interference with the rest of the town wireless, an AvaLAN outdoor 900-MHz point-to-point link was deployed. This provided wired Ethernet at the water tower, which was connected to an 802.11b/g access point that fed a 120-degree sector antenna aimed down at the bulk of the community. Finally, the last access point was deployed at the community center in bridge mode to provide an indoor, wired LAN. Donated computers were installed to create a networked learning center on the second floor of this building.

New Straitsville

Deployment Photos

A Tachyon Satellite transceiver dish was installed in April of 2003 on the roof of the Southern Perry Business Center (SPBC) located in the old Masonic Lodge on Main Street. The Transportable Satellite Internet System (TSIS) team installed a Wireless Access Point and a high-gain omni-directional transceiving antenna and connected it to the Tachyon dish.

The antenna installation provided a transparent connection to the Internet via satellite. The TSIS team then connected the satellite system on the roof of the lodge to the LAN inside the building. More than a dozen computers in the SPBC were connected to the Internet via the satellite system. The staff and students who work and train in the SPBC utilized this satellite Internet system for continuing education and workforce development training.

The radiation pattern of the omni transceiving antenna is uniform in azimuth, but highly concentrated in elevation, along the horizon. It transmitted throughout the town a wireless network fed from the space-based satellite network. The signal is concentrated 360 degrees on the horizon, with a beam width of about 10 degrees that extends approximately two miles, unless interrupted by hills, buildings, trees, etc. The antenna provided good coverage up and down Main Street (see diagram A) for places that were at least two blocks away. For places closer than two blocks, the antenna beam passed overhead. There also was no coverage for the municipal building directly across the street from the lodge. To address this problem, engineers tilted the antenna on the roof of the Lodge toward the street to lower part of the beam. This action provided a signal to the Municipal Building across the street, as well as to the water tower up on the hill (see Diagram B), but still not to several other buildings in the business district.

The omni high-gain antenna was not perfect for this application not only because of the problems stated above, but also because much of its radiation was wasted by shooting into the steep hill directly behind the lodge and in the other direction by shooting across the unpopulated valley and into the slope of another hill. Therefore, the TSIS team created an expanded Wireless Neighborhood Wide Area Network (WAN) beyond the downtown area. A major component of the expansion project required placing additional telecommunications equipment on the town’s 125-foot-high water tower in order to help expand the wireless coverage to other locations, including the local police, fire, and emergency medical service, city government and other test locations. Engineers had initially installed a panel bridge and an omni antenna on the water tower in order to pick up the signal from the omni antenna on the roof of the lodge.

The panel antenna on the water tower easily picked up the signal from the lodge. The panel received the wireless signal and translated that onto an Ethernet cable. This Ethernet cable fed the access point and a wireless antenna that transmitted 802.11b wireless over the town. Once the Main Street and water tower sites were fully operational, end-user PCs automatically selected the best signal in that location. The lodge and the water tower used different 802.11b frequency channels, separated as far as possible, so they did not interfere with each other.