Chapter 25: What’s the Point (to Point)

It seems like the longer I wait to write these, the further I get behind with all the news in the broadband industry. Between AT&T trying to relive its glory days of a total monopoly of the wireless telecommunications market and the government finally figuring out that CenturyLink was smarter than they were, it’s been interesting times. It is hilarious to watch CenturyLink completely corrupt the concept behind the RUS and then surprise the industry with a massive takeover move. If Cox and Comcast hadn’t thrown it in the face of the RUS, the RUS would still be feeding money through the various shell companies CenturyLink used to hide their activities. I wonder how many more proposals from CenturyLink subsidiaries are stilling pending on the desks of the RUS and what they plan to do about them. It’s been strangely quiet over there.

The growth of CenturyLink was partially funded on government ineptitude. I applaud CenturyLink for figuring out the best way to play by the rules (if it really was legal), no matter how much the taxpayer got screwed and how unethical it appears to be. If it was legal, they won and heads should roll. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall when CenturyLink announced they were buying Qwest after growing like crazy partially on the $1.7 Billion dollars they weasled out of the FCC under questionable pretenses. Of course, using the local companies CenturyLink hid behind in rural areas must have made it hard for the RUS to figure it out since nobody there must be capable of looking at a corporate filing. Somebody at that division should either be fired for incompetence or outright stupidity but probably according to government union employee rules, neither is a valid reason for termination. Of course, if they couldn’t figure out Bernie Madoff or that drug cartels moved $350 billion dollars through CityBank over several years (for which nobody has been prosecuted nor will be), why should we expect the government to watch out for a measly $1.7 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money? As Comcast and Cox adroitly pointed out in their letter, private industry isn’t going to invest or compete in areas where the federal government is propping up their competitors. Of course, Hughes and WildBlue also come to mind against the WISP community but at least they are training the next generation of inexperienced users that have more than one option of what not to buy. But then again, Ford could use the same argument when Obama paid off his union cronies by giving them billions of dollars and the majority of the stock in GM. Jimmy Hoffa would be proud since he never owned a President as completely as the United Auto Workers do now with Obama.

But let’s not dwell on the continuing story of government incompetence and corruption and move back into the realm of real wireless projects. After all, that’s what these articles started out as. I’m in this industry because almost every project has something unique and challenging. 

My latest product is a simple Point-To-Point link (PTP). I’m currently working on a project between 2 buildings that needs a leased tower location as the relay point. The tower is located about 10 miles from the taller building and less than a mile from the shorter building. Bandwidth needs to be at least 40Mbps or more and it’s fairly rural so 5.8GHz unlicensed isn’t going to be an issue in terms of interference. The only challenge is that the longer range link is going to require that the antennas are at least 250’ in the air.

There is nothing special about this project and many of you have done similar installations. Normally you calculate the link path, which in this case would be work great with a pair of 2’ 30dBm parabolic antennas. However, the crimp in this equation is that we get charged on the tower based on antenna size. The base charge is roughly $300 for but each additional foot of diameter of antenna costs roughly an additional $100. If the base is a 1’ antenna, then a 2’ parabolic dish antenna costs $400 per month, a 3’ parabolic dish antenna $500 and so forth.

I’m sure you can see where we are going with this. It’s our building on the other side of the 10 mile link to the tower so it’s possible to put up the Seti array if we wanted to on the building as long as the link path antenna gain equals or exceeds 60dBi. I calculated that a pair of 2’ parabolic dish is sufficient for the link but if we use a 1’ flat panel on the tower and a 4’ dish on the building, we can save $100 per month. Since we are using redundant links, meaning 2 antennas, that actual savings is $200 per month. The calculated antenna gain with the 2’ dish was 60dBi for both antennas. It so happens that Ubiquiti manufacturers a 25dBi flat panel radio/antenna that is 14” across with a 25dBi gain. On the other side we can use a 34dBi gain antenna which comes close enough to our link budget for government work.

So, what is the drawback to this idea? Well, considering we are using a lower gain, less directional flat panel antenna 250’ in the air that means the noise figure on the tower is going to be higher than it would be for the 2’ parabolic. That also means that the S/N ratio is going become more of a factor and has to be considered. Assuming you don’t think the noise figure is going up significantly, then there are no issues. On the other hand, the tower climber will hug you since he only has to deal with 5lbs of equipment instead of 60lbs.

I mentioned the redundancy to the link so let’s discuss that. Since the radio costs are so cheap compared to downtime, we can afford to put 2 of the antennas on the tower. Yes, that adds another $100 per month but compared to the cost of downtime and tower climbing costs, it’s relatively cheap insurance. That also means that we have to mount two 4’ antennas on a building for the other side of the link. Running the numbers again shows that we could cut down the gain on the antennas and use a second flat panel on the building side and still get close to the same performance or a slightly. Since the secondary link is only there for backup purposes and the radio on the primary link can be replaced in 30 minutes or less, then if the secondary link has a slightly slow modulation rate such as MCS(12) instead of MCS(15) rates, then it’s not a big problem. That also means that the backup radio can be another flat panel instead of the 4’ dish since it only has to operate a short time while the radio is replaced on the back of the dish. That reduces the cost and the size of the roof mount on the building size also.

On the tower side, we have now limited the wind load to two 14” flat panels for redundancy. Redundancy can be handled many ways. The easiest is to power up both radios and use something like OSFP, STP, or RSTP to maintain redundant links. Another alternative it is to use something like an IP based power switch from Digital Loggers http://www.digital-loggers.com/lpc.html which can be programmed to power off one radio and power on another radio if there is a failure. I have used both methods in different projects. In this case, because towers are more susceptible to lightning hits, I’m more inclined to go the power switch route. The power switch basically turns off the power to the radio, thus disconnecting it from the power lines in case of an indirect hit. A direct hit to the tower probably fries both radios, regardless of whether it’s powered up or not. I can attest from personal experience that unpowered radios will get fried also when that happens. Although 8 unpowered radios were fried, 1 unpowered radio survived so you take your chances. A good strategy and this was the only thing I can attest this to, was that the unpowered radio was also several feet below all the other radios. I’m covering both bases with this install. This will also be the strategy on the tower with the two flat panel radios.

I mentioned early on that the tower was a relay point for the link which really means 4 radios. If we were using 2 more radios for the link, then we are adding to the wind load and thus the costs of the monthly rental fee. However, what if we can reduce the size of the radios so that their footprint doesn’t add to the cost? Since the second link is only ¾ of a mile, then we can use a very small footprint, Ubiquiti NS5M, which literally at 3” wide, is thinner than tower legs themselves. That means that it adds no cross section and even if there is a small charge, it probably will be very minimal. Again, we are going to use 2 radios for redundancy and these will get mounted towards the bottom where they pretty much become invisible against the legs.

PTP links don’t need to be symmetrical. Antenna gain takes into account both sides, not just one. If you are paying for tower footprint by the square footage, it makes sense to reduce the antenna size as much as possible. Obviously there may be some additional costs on the other side but usually Esmits minor compared to tower rental costs.

Chapter 24 – The Grass isn’t always Greener on the other side of the Contractor Fence

Being a small company with a wide variety of technical needs that vary from project to project, I use a lot of contractors. For example, I couldn’t bend a pipe without more dents than a Honda in a hailstorm. However, WISP operations and many different types of projects like video surveillance, access control, or even VoIP projects means that I had to bring in other people with special skills that I don’t have. However, a recent event in being the sub-contractor on a project with EarthCam has made me rethink how I’m going to treat my contractors in the future.

A friend of mine who does sub-contracting through a bid site was recently in a bind the night before he did a project that EarthCam desperately needed done. Since it was late at night, I told him I would take care of it the next morning for him so his bid status stayed positive. The project was to simply hang 2 cameras on a wall. These cameras are simply high-resolution still image cameras that upload the pictures to a website over a data connection. These images are then monitored by the clients and contractors to keep track of the construction process and probably to create a build movie at the end. Nothing special there and something most of us could easily build for between $500 to $2500. In fact, we will cover that later in the article for anybody that wants to do the same thing and save as much as $10,000 or more, depending on the cameras.

The contract provided by EarthCam is not much different than most of us use. You bid a job for a fixed cost until completion. That should have been my first clue to walk away from this project, favor or not. I have never used this type of contract and pay most of my contractors hourly. The problem with EarthCam is their definition of a completed project comes from the Enron book of business definitions. Apparently, the installing the camera on the wall and the techs tell you they are receiving pictures doesn’t constitute a completed project. A week later, when they realize that there are some problems with the installation, they expect you to sit for 4 hours waiting for a shipment they failed to get on-site in time for a 6am installation, and then move cameras around a couple times because they marked them incorrectly, and you should do all of that for free or at half rate after a significant discussion.

I hope that all of you who use contractors treat them better than EarthCam does with their contractors. If a contractor takes a project for a fixed bid and completes the project, any problems they have after the initial installation should have additional appropriate compensation. In my case, putting up EarthCam cameras isn’t my business nor will I ever take a call from them again other than to let them know I’m filing in court for non-payment of my invoices. I think they must have used the same accountant Bernie Madoff used.

I’ve got tower projects that are coming up and in every case; I’m paying the climbers daily rates. That’s fair to them since they aren’t going to be able to do other projects, even if they get done early. It’s up to me to estimate their time on the project. If I make a mistake, it’s on my dime. Ethical business practices should be the cornerstone of every business whether dealing with clients, contractors, or vendors. The few dollars you may save on the project will never fix your reputation and may financially damage your company. Surveys have shown that every unhappy customer will tell 10 people. Nobody wants that as part of their business as it’s a lot harder to convince someone you are now ethical after you have demonstrated otherwise. In addition, in this day of instant worldwide communication, the word gets around that your business doesn’t deal with its contractors fairly and nobody wants to do the work for you.

If you have ever been to Disneyland and visited the exhibit right inside the front gate showing you the history of the happiest place on earth, then you now know what EarthCam does. They place regular digital cameras of various high-resolutions in locations to take pictures of long term projects such as building construction for historical and management review purposes. The camera is basically programmed take snapshots at set intervals such as 1-5 minutes or longer. The camera is then attached to a router that connects to the internet and each snapshot is then stored and added to the previous pictures to create a simple stop action video.

With all the web enabled devices out there today, this is a relatively easy task to do. There are many low-resolution video cameras that can do that now. However, other than construction monitoring, why would you want to do this? I have 2 words, forensic analysis.

Let’s say you set up a video camera to monitor a public park. The camera is watching a fairly large area such as a skate park. Some vandalism occurs overnight and you review the video in the morning to catch the villain. Unfortunately, the villain looks like an extra from “The Man With No Face”. The reality is that even a 2MP video camera at 100’ is going to make it difficult to have enough quality for a jury to determine without a doubt who the culprit it. However, if you supplement the video camera or use a 10MP camera or higher shooting every 30 seconds, there is a good chance that you will be able to zoom the image enough to see if the vandal is still using Clearasil.

The speed cameras that Janet Napolitano slammed in under executive order for Arizona before bailing out from wrath of the voters of Arizona, work just like that. For those of you who don’t know, speed cameras are automated ticket issuers installed along the freeway that instantly snap your picture when you drive by them at some preset trigger speed above the posted speed limit. If you are caught, then they automatically send you your picture in the mail along with your license plate and a very nice letter telling you to pay the fine. One little detail all the politicians left out (Is an omission of fact a lie? I can’t imagine any politician ever doing that.) is the devices were actually video cameras recording all traffic until a car was caught speeding. At that point, a second camera would shoot a high-resolution picture to supplement the video stream.

Regardless of your political position on this device (do you seriously believe I’m going to let that statement stand without mentioning that I thought it was a cowardly act by the woman now in charge of defending our borders, IMHO of course), the technology was sound. In order to see the quality of the video, I got one of the tickets for research purposes (okay, I got it because they were smart enough to place the cameras where the freeway drops from 65 to 55) and I will tell you that it picked up the fact I needed a shave at 1am in the morning in pitch dark through a dirty windshield.

So, if you want to take your video surveillance system to the next level, supplementing the video stream with a megapixel snapshot isn’t a bad way to do it. Keep in mind that storing video snapshots can be significantly less storage that the video stream itself. There is a lot of software that lets you do that easily. Software such as “Canon Remote Capture”, http://download.cnet.com/Canon-RemoteCapture/3000-18489_4-199150.html, lets you even run the camera remotely through the USB port. You might also need a USB over IP converter but there are many ways to do this. The only question is what to do if the camera is placed in an area that doesn’t have an internet connection.

Assuming you don’t have some type of close Internet access, the next step is a cellular router/modems. Skyroute 4000 series modems/routers look pretty good for that although there are a lot out there. However, you have to be careful here because many of the internet cellular data plans have bandwidth caps. If your 10MP camera is shooting uncompressed pictures across the internet every couple minutes, the plan could cap out and cost big time. Assuming a 12MB image every 5 minutes, that’s 60MB per hour or 1.32GB per day. Over a month, that’s almost 40GB. Considering that cellular carriers are already capping things, unlike BP, I’m guessing that your cellular bill will start rivaling your mortgage. So, if you use this method, keep this information handy. If you get the right camera and router, they should all fit inside some type of standard outdoor video camera case.

So let’s start putting in video systems that when the bad guy is shown on the 6 O’clock news, his momma can recognize him and apply proper justice. With inexpensive cameras and software, anybody can do the EarthCam thing and make sure we catch em’ all. And tip your contractor, or at least pay him for an honest day’s work, especially if he is doing your company a favor at great inconvenience to himself after your company dropped the ball. You really don’t want him complaining that your company (Did I mention the company is Earthcam?) takes advantage of contractors and then nickels and dimes them for their efforts. Who knows, they might even write a column telling people that yours is not the company they should be doing business with.