Now whats that ctwug thingy I keep hearing about

[pmurgs]

30dBi? Lee, how long connection do you want to make?

Yeah, 30dbi is serious. My link is only 32dbi and its the longest and most failure prone on the ctwug due to the sea. But then again I do have high powered radio cards and 32dbi understates my link due to using dual antennas each side. With that dbi value... are you buying Ubiquiti gear? If so... I doubt you need a Rocket Dish, just get a Nanobridge M5 for anything under 15kms.

[SlipperyDuck]

It's location, location, location.....

I'm unfortunately in a small valley dip, facing away from he "mainstream" Dwug" where my closest neighbor station is 20Km+ pointing mostly to the South Coast.

So, I'll be likely that I also become a Middle-Station for some other people in future who are also in the "dark zone"

But I'm still pondering it all, since I may decide to move in the next 6 months - nothing is 100% certain yet.

[flycatchr]

just had a look see on the jawug - there are over 100 peeps (NODES) within 10km of me

btw - is it better to be closer to a node or with better LOS?

[pmurgs]

Depends... but los is los... either you have it or you don't pretty much. Closer node probably means better signal, so more reliability and perhaps a little bit better speed.

[Skouperd]

I ran some ping tests for us. The ping was originating on my network

(http://wind.ctwug.za.net/wind/?page=nodes&node=2448)

and pinged pmurgs

http://wind.ctwug.za.net/wind/?page=nodes&node=2521

The distance is ridiculously long and contains numerous hops. I should have ran a pathping but never go around to it.

Any way, the minimum ping was 6ms, the maximum 43ms, with an average of 16ms. This was done during gaming time so all downloads on the network would have been blocked. Bearing in mind that this is most likely a worst case scenario in terms of connections, no wonder several people are quite happy to game on the WUG.

[Megageth]

Skoups if you have time can you scope out the gaming servers and give us an idea of:
What servers are available?
How many players are on?

We need some rich philanthropist to network all the major city WUGs.

[pmurgs]

To give you an idea of the power of the Mikrotik devices running RouterOs... here is a slightly outdated network map I made to keep track of how my network is linked up. I could not manage a complicated setup like this without Mikrotik RouterOs devices. My 750G is the centre of my network managing internet accesses for the people linked to me which are allowed out on my 4Mb line. It also keeps my brother-in-law and sisters laptops as being able to connect to anything on my home network, but keeps them apart from my ctwug wireless links.

Red lines are wireless connections. Black are cabled connections.

The Yellow circles are my Ubiquiti wireless devices that link my friend Dave 700m from me into my network so he can access ctwug and the internet through me. I'm getting a second link here to another guy in the Fish Hoek valley later this week, and the 750G will prevent the new guy but allow my friend Dave to get out to the internet. I am expecting a third person in the Fish Hoek valley to link in here in the coming weeks as well.

The green RB-433 box in the bottom left is where my link to the main ctwug group over False Bay is connected. This is where I plan to add another couple links in the future.

Hmm, time to rearrange my network map... running out of space and its going to have to show a couple more links soon. It's also missing a couple links that I've put up in the last week.

[pmurgs]

Geth, heres a link to some of the ctwug services (like game servers) that are available. I don't think its an up to date list though. Plus games like COD MW2 which don't use dedicated servers work on the wug (special wug version of the game).

http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/Ctwug_servers

You are welcome to host a server for people to connect to, if you are linked to ctwug Static ip's ftw on the wug. Upload and download speeds usually equal on the wug, no 4Mb down, only 512Kb up. No data costs either.

[Skouperd]

Murgs, what is the 250G doing there?

[pmurgs]

Just another switch in the network basically.