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10.09.2008
Another needle in a haystack located. After a long and gradual downhill slide into mindlessness, the AP backhaul radio which serves Little Young and Brown Hill access points was determined to be the cause of deteriorating connections off those APs. It was replaced and the 500mw amplifier it used was replaced with a 1000mw model. Smiles from the remote north of Sandwich.
Since these older BreezeCom backhaul APs carry traffic 24/7 they run fairly warm-OK-hot. After a couple years of this they start fading off frequency. Not a sudden death unfortunately. The funeral procession would be hard to miss. More like dying of old age.
02.09.2008
Google releases the beta version of it’s Chrome browser. Read the comic strip write-up at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
These guys went outside the box for this one-and scored big time.
30.08.2008
Replaced the venerable old BreezeCom Pro 11s on the Ossipee backhaul link with new Deliberant B/G radios after the BreezeCom bridge radio failed up on top of the mountain.
The backhaul links from Brown Hill, Little Young and Brown Point will follow suit as finances allow.
15.08.2008
msnbc.co-BREAKING NEWS spam replaces the CNN Alerts. Same malicious thing. Don’t follow the links.
Monday night the 11th the main fiber optic line running from Concord to Laconia was cut affecting phone and data communication for a large area-our network included. Service was restored 24 hours later on Tuesday morning. A deja vu of the Valentine’s Day outage earlier this year. See the 14.2.2008 post.
09.8.2008
Beware of bogus CNN Alerts and Daily Top 10 spam emails flooding your inboxes. Following the links will install malicious code on your machine.
06.8.2008
Due to even more rainy, dismal weather, everyone is driven indoors and the network traffic hits an all time high of 6.1mbps sustained throughput from 3:00-4:00PM today.
20.7.2008
All traffic from the 4 wireless networks that run through Diamond Ledge-Brown Pt/Burleigh Farm, Little Young/Brown Hill, Ossipee and Diamond Ledge AP are now being routed. A QOS implementation called PCQ (per connection queuing) is also being used. This prevents any one bandwidth hog (you know who you are) from dominating an access point to the detriment of other users. Its aim is to maintain connectivity and reasonable data throughput for each connection even during times of heavy traffic.
Lightning continues to be a problem this year. The best way to protect your equipment is to unplug the power from any internet device that is connected to your house wiring ie: radio, router,computer. This isolates that equipment from your house wiring and makes it a much less inviting path to ground for lightning induced surges. It will likely save you money for repairs and spare me a lot of frantic running around fixing things after lightning storms.
30.6.2008
So I guess all it takes to bring on devastating lightning strikes is for me to leave town. Makes for a real nice vacation. I love my job.
14.6.2008
I see that I haven’t reported any news for almost 2 months. My mentor and good buddy Thom Lawless of Rapid WiFi checks this page regularly to keep tabs on our network and brought this lapse to my attention today. So, to make up for lost time-a tech update and a rant.
The dedicated RDC radio on Red Hill decided to roll over and die for no good reason(other than overwork and fatigue) on June 8th. It had been losing its mind for quite some time, but I was usually able to kick it around enough to make it sit up and take notice. I rerouted their traffic through Brown Point>Diamond Ledge>Library> T-1(like the good old days) and had them reconnected in good time. Then, a couple days later, our first major thunderstorm of the season rolled through. Not a direct hit, but the electrons were grouping enough to make the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Never a good sign. The next morning, after checking all network connections off the APs, everything semed to have survived very well. Then the support calls started to come in. 3 of the 15 900Mhz clients off Red Hill were dead even though the AP up there showed their radios as being connected. Later that night, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that I’d better reboot the router at Red Hill to unscramble any ESD induced anomalies. Well-the reboot button on the web interface is right next to the shutdown button and due to yours truly being way over tired, I accidentally hit shutdown. Great. Now there’s no path for traffic to DSL in Meredith at all. I did an emergency rerouting of ALL network traffic out the T-1 line. Red Hill hike-oh boy.
Up on Red Hill the next morning I took apart the MikroTik router and replaced the RDC radio card. I also discovered the reason for the failed original Red Hill>Meredith link this last winter. A connector(very small and fragile) off the radio card had partially popped off, which was just what I theorized had happened but couldn’t confirm without a complete disassembly. Note to self-hot glue all u.fl connectors to the board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.FL The MikroTik and its 3 radios were reassembed and powered up before noon.
Back at ground zero, I routed traffic back through Red Hill and switched RDC back to its dedicated link. 3 of the 900Mhz clients still could not connect. This proved to be blown ethernet ports on their MT boards as a result of the lightning storm. Recommendation- if you have a remote 900Mhz client unit, unplug the POE line going out to your unit at the slightest hint of an impending lightning storm. It appears that it doesn’t matter if the unit is grounded or not-one of the smoked units was and two were not. The storm also tripped many GFIs and blew several power supplies.
The remaining networks coming into Diamond Ledge-Ossipee, Brown Point/Burleigh Farm and Diamond Ledge AP itself- will be readdressed and routed soon, so expect some random downtime while I switch them.
And now-bear with me-the rant.
Teenagers. Unlike my generation, they grew up with internet access and soon took it for granted. Now don’t get me wrong here. It’s absolutely essential for teens to be able to use the internet efficiently and productively. This will be true for generations to come. Teens are typically more tech savvy than their parents and I’ve encouraged them to lead their struggling folks out of the woods on many occasions. BUT-teenagers are absolutely clueless about the impact their favorite apps have on a small network. People of my generation are happy that a search for Apple Brown Betty will produce 10,000+ results in .67 seconds and opening the page with the prize winning recipe takes 4 or 5 seconds. Ahhh-the miracle of the modern internet. Not so with teenagers.
A typical teen these days may have 5-10 Facebook pages loaded and opened, running Limewire file downloads in the background, have multiple IM windows open and active-and wonder why the Youtube video they just clicked on is taking soooo long to play. They are totally clueless about how much bandwidth they are burning up-or how it impacts other users-or who provides it and how it’s being provided. ISPs all over the world are being faced with exponential growth in bandwidth demands-caused for the most part by the apps teenagers typically use. Comcast caught holy hell for shaping bandwidth and throttling certain types of traffic. Time Warner just announced that it will begin instituting data throughput caps and per meg surcharges on usage exceeding their limit in certain areas. The bottom line is that building out infrastructure to increase bandwidth and keep all users happy is very costly and is not an overnight process. Demand is simply exceeding available supply. On a small network such as ours, overuse by a few can have a disastrous effect on many. I just had a suggestion from a Cyberpine member that for every 2 hours of X-Box online use, that person should be required to mow a Cyberpine member’s lawn for 2 hours. Not a bad idea.
So-parents-educate your teenagers on bandwidth usage. Remind them that they are on a non-profit co-op network. As in COOPERATIVE. If they don’t know what that means-have them look it up. In the dictionary. The paper version that’s gathering dust on the shelf. End of rant.
27.4.2008
As of this afternoon, Brown Hill, Little Young and Brown Point are running on their own backhaul links back to Diamond Ledge. Even though traffic is going through a switch and is not being routed, the connection speeds for customers on the outlying APs has increased substantially with far fewer collisions and retransmissions. This also means that customers who access the original Diamond Ledge AP directly are no longer competing with traffic from the other access points. This was a network improvement a long time in the making. OK-so I’m a little slow.
17.4.2008
Another milestone in Cyberpine network improvements. Your VP, Pete Hoag, and I installed the new backhaul antennas on the Diamond Ledge pine. This is the first step in segmenting the network and routing traffic through the bottleneck there so we can take advantage of the increased bandwidth on the other side. We also dressed up the old “Cyberpine” with a new equipment box and rerouted the coax .
Expect some outages in the coming week as new radios are hooked up and routing is put in place. These should be of relatively short duration unless yours truly really screws up.
14.4.2008
Ed Maheux sends the first email from the Red Hill Fire Tower.
Now he can check the radar maps to see what’s bearing down on him before it’s too late!
27.3.2008
Our IP address was re-listed on Monday with the CBL and other major blocking lists due to an infected machine spewing out spam email. As I warned everybody previously that draconian measures would be implemented if this bad behavior continued, all outgoing port 25 mail is being dropped unless it is destined for mail.cyberpine.net. To repeat, you MUST have a Cyberpine username and password and authenticate outgoing mail with same AND the outgoing mailserver on your email account has to be mail.cyberpine.net. We will not be acting as an email relay for mass mailing trojans!
Please scan your machines regularly. If you are running Win XP or Vista, turn off System Restore before running scans and then turn it back on after you know your machine is clean.
Link to turn off System restore in Vista or XP:
http://www.pchell.com/virus/systemrestore.shtml
11.3.2008
Hiked up Red Hill and bent the Sandwich backhaul antenna back into alignment. It was pointed to the area between Barville Pond and the Sandwich Beach. Not the best area for transferring data out of the Library. The North side of the fire tower is subjected to some pretty extreme icing and wind. Makes me wonder how the AP on Ossipee survives.
09.3.2008
Ed Maheux reports that the 2.4Ghz antenna on the fire tower that links to Sandwich got jarred 90 degrees out of alignment. I had noticed the signal strength drop and was hoping that was the cause and not a radio problem. Fixit trip on the next decent day.
04.3.2008
NHVT mailserver goes down. This too has passed.
29.2.2008
Service area map updated
23.2.2008
Since I get asked how reliable our network is all the time, and you might get the impression from reading previous posts that there are constant outages, here are the 1 year uptime stats for all the access points:
Red Hill- 100% (knock on wood)
Library AP- 99.8%
Diamond Ledge- 99.7%
Burleigh Farm- 99.6%
Brown Point- 99.4%
Young Mtn.- 98.4%
Brown Hill- 97.9%
Ossipee Mtn.- 96.7%
Not bad considering the ice and snow, wind and lightning our equipment is subjected to.
20.2.2008
First clients are connected to the 900Mhz access point on Red Hill.
The results are much better than even I expected.
14.2.2008
Ohhh...how nice! Someone was thinking of me on Valentine’s Day. Did I tell you how much I like Brown Hill as well?
I think the Eskimos have a few dozen different words for “snow”. I have a few more than that, but only “crusty” and “powder” are printable here.
It was a crystal palace on Brown hill. 1/4” of ice on everything. After slogging my way up and feeling a good deal of sympathy for the deer and moose doing the same thing I was doing-but without the aid of snowshoes-I discovered the outage was caused not by a power failure as is usual, but by a 6” diameter branch that snapped off from 20’ up the tree. It hit the solar panels and equipment box. The panels amazingly did not break, but the coax cable coming into the box was bent at a sharp 90 degree angle, breaking the backhaul link.
Not having the right parts to repair it, I hiked back up at 3:00PM and fixed it, only to discover upon my return that a major Verizon fiber optic line had been cut in 2 different places, knocking out both our T-1 line in Sandwich and the DSL in Meredith, as well as land lines and cell feeds.
There’s apparently no redundancy in their system for our area. Very reassuring.
12.2.2008
Attention! Our new DSL IP has been listed in the Composite Blocking List because there is a spam-bot infected machine behind it. All people running PCs on our network MUST run the scanning tool which can be downloaded at:
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/tools/sc/
Hunting down the infected machine is taking way too much of my time so I am relying on you to take the responsibility of tending to your own machines. If it isn’t cleaned up soon I’ll have to resort to fairly draconian measures as this is causing everyone on the network email problems.
10.2.2008
Ed Maheux hikes to the fire tower and scrapes 75% of the snow and ice off the solar panels. Who said solar doesn’t work in New England?
The Library and Library AP customers are now routed out the T-1 line. Everyone else is being routed to Meredith via Red Hill.
08.2.2008
Two round trips up hills in the same day.
Pictures of the Brown Hill trip here.
Pictures of the Young Mountain trip here
You might have to double click the the picture to see it full size if it displays to fit the page. I don’t get this web stuff. It’s too complicated.
07.2.2008
Brown Hill AP-the first and still the best access point- bane of my existence. I see “ordeal” might be over used, so I’ll omit it. Today was one for the books.
Shovel out the snowmobile trailer, chip the snowmobile free of the trailer, do a sliding puzzle shuffle to get the jeep, truck and trailer all pointed down the driveway in the correct order, pack up the generator, snowshoes, battery charger, gas, and shovel, drive over to the Brown Hill trail in the jeep to scope out the situation, collar Ted Adriance and ask him if he’d blast a hole through the snowbank so I could get the snow machine onto the trail, he can’t make it up Brown Hill Road, collar Nancy Collins with her John Deere, she makes it up after stalling out multiple times and scoops out a hole, go back up to my house to swap the jeep for the truck and snow machine, take Pease Hill Rd. to Brown Hill to avoid certain misfortune on Brown Hill Road, unload the machine and strap on the generator, charger and snow shoes, run the snow machine through the beautiful hole that Nancy cleared, get all of 50’ up the trail, bottom drops out, machine on its side mired in snow, shovel it out, wrestle it 180 degrees in the trail and drive back to road, put on snowshoes and hike to the top of the hill, panels iced up and covered in snow, scrape them off, do a manual reset of the radios knowing full well they won’t even make it through the night, snowshoe back down baby step stomping the whole way to pack a trail, get to the bottom and turn the snowmobile 180 degrees again and head up, machine slides off track onto its side multiple times so decide to walk beside it to keep it upright, get to the last steep uphill pitch and have a rare occurrence of good judgement and stop, unpack the generator, charger and.....oh damn, the snowshoes fell off somewhere, trudge up to the top through knee deep snow carrying the charger and generator, fire it up, AP lights up, head back down, decide to leave the machine at the top until tomorrow as I have no energy left.
7000 calories burned, 2000 in stock. Anyone want to join my fitness club?
Finally make it home at 7:00 PM and guess what? I can’t get my boots off.
What a totally insane...er...good old fashioned winter we’re having! I thought being a WISP was sitting at a keyboard and punching in wrong numbers.
Do you suppose an extra panel and battery are in the budget?
06.2.2008
That was a non-stop uphill battle, but the network is finally being routed out to DSL in Meredith by way of Red Hill. I was really beginning to wonder if I’d see it in my
lifetime. Next phase is to get downtown Library AP clients back onto the T-1 line, segmenting and routing traffic off Diamond Ledge which remains the choke point, hooking up clients to the 900 Mhz AP on Redhill, breaking off Rockywold onto their own connection, swapping the 2.4 Ghz Library AP for a 900Mhz access point, upgrading customer equipment, and eating a cheeseburger.
Thanks to T Parsinnen at NHVT for tracking down a buried typo in a core router and Thom Lawless at RapidWiFi for mangling your packets enough so they knew where we wanted them to go.
03.2.2008 22:02:00
How ‘bout them Patriots?
wtf?@pats.com
01.2.2008
Wow. What an ordeal. Haven’t had a massive coronary like that in a long time. Right on the heels of totally losing my hard drive. The network outage was caused by condensation in the RJ45 POE connector in the main backhaul radio on the Library. All but 13 customers were affected. Thanks to Pete Hoag who provided his bucket truck with no advance notice.
The DSL circuit has been installed at Meredith Harley and will be given a trial run soon. If it works as expected, all wireless traffic off Diamond Ledge and beyond will be routed to that line. The Library and Library AP customers will continue to use the T-1.
23.1.2008
Hiked up Red Hill and replaced the malfunctioning brain with a new perfectly functioning one. Relatively painless operation. I may have to try it myself. The Library to Meredith Harley link was reestablished, paving the way for hookup to DSL feed on or around Jan. 28th.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to run the scan on their machines. The infected machine still has’t surfaced so I may have no other option but to drop all outgoing email packets destined for anywhere other than mail.cyberpine.net. If you are a Cyberpine subscriber, your outgoing mail must be authenticated with your user name and password. Email relaying will not be allowed. Synching of webmail accounts (such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Earthlink etc.) with your local email client (Outlook, Outlook Express) may present some difficulties which I will deal with on a case by case basis.
22.1.2008
Our public IP has been relisted in the CBL (composite blocking list) after I had it removed on 1/19, so there is still an infected computer on our network.
Here is an excellent scanner to run and it only takes 3-5 minutes.
PLEASE download and run it and call me if something is found on your machine.
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/tools/sc/
19.1.2008
For those of you who want to scan your machines for a mass-mailing virus/trojan/worm, McAfee has a downloadable stand alone scanning program which can be found here:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
17.1.2008
New MikroTik 532-A/564 core router is installed at the Library, replacing the venerable Cisco 4500/Nokia/mOnOwall combination.
Not too many people think about this, and it has only recently become a hot topic in the networking world, but every packet of information that moves along our infrastructure requires a certain amount of energy to move it to it’s destination. We’re fortunate, from an energy usage perspective, that half our access points are solar powered. The old equipment just replaced at the library used a relatively constant 300 watts. The new MikroTik does the same amount of work and uses about 12 watts. for a savings of about 35.00/month.
And while we’re on the subject of energy usage, it will both save energy, money and help your computer last longer if you simply shut it down when it’s not in use. The added side benefit is that a shutdown and reboot will flush the memory and clear out various snippets of software sludge that inevitably build up. Before I step down from my soapbox, I’d like to alert all of you to the fact that there is an infected machine on our network that is sending out spam. I can’t possibly clean everyone’s machine, so I’m asking that you voluntarily start up in safe mode sometime soon and run a whole system virus scan. If I detect the fingerprint of a mass mailing machine in action, I’ll make one courtesy call, but after that your cord will be cut until you have a clean machine to put online. Thanks.
14.1.2008
Elation turns to despair in a matter of 4 short days when it’s discovered that the new MikroTik installed on Red Hill has lost it’s wireless interface and 2 of its 3 ethernet ports. Which means-no- I can’t even type it-let’s just say more work and yet another delay. Feets don’t fail me now.
10.1.2008
OK folks. I apologize in advance for this long news post. This is THE BIG DAY in my typically mundane blog. Snowmobile halfway up Red Hill today, walk (no snowshoes needed) the rest of the way due to many exposed rocks and ledges (climate change disbelievers please join GW in Crawford, Texas and go cut some brush with him). Replace the 2.4 Ghz dish with a 5Ghz dish and point it by eyeball toward Meredith Harley. Add a new MikroTik router/R52h radio combo and connect it by ethernet to the existing MikroTik 532 with 3 radios in it.
Run a new aerial Cat5 POE line from the Library to the Sandwich MikroTik router/radio to replace the direct burial Cat5 laid by Asa Berg and me in the fall which was severed by who knows what (spring will tell).
Hook into Red Hill from the Library and, here, in painful detail, are the stats:
Red Hill to Meredith Harley Rx signal: -67 db, Tx signal: -66db
Signal to noise: 28 db
Bandwidth test: Receive from Meredith, TCP: 14Mbps
Send to Meredith, TCP: 15.9 Mbps
Tx/Rx CCQ: 93/98%
Library all the way to Meredith Harley: Rx-11.7Mbps, Tx-11.1Mbps
What this all means in English is that this Sandwich/Meredith link is now running and it will easily support the DSL fat pipe which runs at 7Mbpsdown/1.1Mbps up. WooHoo! What a long and painful haul it has been. But not without some very valuable help.
First and foremost, Thom Lawless of Rapid WiFi on Whidbey Island off Seattle for his patience and absolutely critical expertise in IP addressing/routing/nat’ing; Cathy Graham for putting up with”Gunnar’s World” and keeping things glued together; Ed Maheux of the Moultonborough F.D. who has accompanied me and assisted me on every trip up to the Red Hill fire tower; Pete Hoag for his fearless and on a moments notice assistance in all emergencies and some pretty scary antenna installation on top of the Red Hill tower; and of course to all you subscribers who have put your faith in a cabinetmaker to maintain your life line to the world at large. There is some higher speed light at the end of the tunnel after all.
09.1.2008
Take the SkiDoo up Little Young at 9:00AM on it’s maiden voyage to find out why it blinked off after Gary’s good charge on Sunday and at 2:45PM in good sun on Tuesday. A faulty charge controller is to blame. 10’ visibility at the top in dense fog. Trail is slushy and the machine gets stuck in washouts several times. Good thing it’s really light. Screw from the ring gear falls out at the top and jams locking up the engine. Dislodge that and come back down in the rain. So much fun-so precious little time.
08.1.2008
Hoping for an automatic reset of Brown Hill in bright sun which doesn’t happen, lose patience and snowshoe up for a manual reset at noon
06.1.2008
Gary does a preventative battery charge on Little Young.
05.1.2008
Cyberpine purchases a 1986 SkiDoo for winter maintenance duties.
05.1.2008
Gary Floyd does a manual reset and checks for ice and snow build-up on the solar panels on Little Young.
03.1.2008
Snowshoe up Brown Hill at 8:45. 5 below zero. Absolutely the most beautiful snow I’ve seen in years. The panels were indeed 75% covered with ice and snow. Scraped them off and service restored at 9:30. Love that Under Armour.
02.1.2008
Snow refuses to slide off the solar panels on Brown Hill and the photons couldn’t get through. It gives up at 5:00PM. Rod Weinberg reports that over 48” of snow fell in December- a 35 year record breaker.
28.12.2007
First 900Mhz CPE (customer premise equipment) constructed and test linked successfully with the 900Mhz AP on Red Hill.
28.12.2007
Gunnar hauls generator and battery charger up Brown Hill by sled and snowshoes. Quite fun. Even more fun hauling it back down. Ever had a generator on a sled run over the backs of your snowshoes as you’re scrambling to get out if the way? Great visual. Looney Toons has nothing on me.
24.12.2007
Note to self: Don’t go “walking” up Brown Hill in the winter without snowshoes. Service restored at 1:45 PM. Is one day of bright sun too much to ask? Merry Christmas to you all.
23.12.2007
Gunnar snowshoes up Brown Hill and does a manual reset. Service restored at 11:30 AM. Load cuts out again at 4:30 PM due to low voltage. Anyone else tired of winter yet?
22.12.2007
Brown Hill and Little Young Mountain die from lack of sun and no winter vacation. Gary Floyd makes a total of three round trips to the top by snow machine, the last one after dark to swap out the battery charger that wasn’t working. Thank you Gary!
21.12.2007
Rich Moren does some kind of voodoo magic on Gene the radio station engineer and gets a helicopter trip up the mountain. He said it was like landing in a cotton field of rime ice. Generator is started, panels cleared, service restored at around 2:30 PM. Thank you Rich and Gene.
19.12.2007
It’s decided that the only feasible way to repair the power problem on Ossipee Mountain is to go up on the radio station’s next maintenance trip by helicopter. Rich Moren will try to move that trip as early in January as possible.
14.12.2007
Replacement equipment destined for Red Hill tested successfully at Meredith Harley. Dedicated link to Rockywold/Deephaven off Red Hill also passed with flying colors.
14.12.2007
Haul generator and battery charger up Brown Hill via ATV. Service reconnected at 10:50 AM. This will be the last trip possible for the ATV given Sunday’s expected 6” of new snow. Does anyone know of a cheap but dependable snowmobile for sale?
13.12.2007
Brown Hill shuts down at 1:00 PM
12.12.2007
Brown Hill shuts off at 11:30 PM. Resets in partial sun automatically at 10:30 AM
11.12.2007
Brown Hill shuts off at 6:20 AM. Hike up to do a manual reset . Back on at 11:45 AM. Where’s global warming when we need it?
09.12.2007
Ossipee Mtn. loses power at 10:30 PM.
09.12.2007
Little Young Mtn. loses power. Attempted charging trip by ATV proves impossible. Gary Floyd takes the generator and battery charger up by snowmobile and leaves it running overnight.
08.12.2007
The 2.4 Ghz antenna and equipment box are removed at Meredith Harley and a 5Ghz antenna and 350 mw radio installed.
08.12.2007
Ossipee Mtn. loses power. Rich Moren is able to start the generator remotely.
05.12.2007
Due to ice build-up then snow on the solar panels, Brown Hill loses power. Batteries are charged and service restored at 11:00AM.
01.12.2007
Realizing the painful yet obvious fact that yet another trip up Red Hill is necessary, Gunnar orders a new MikroTik 532-A and R52H radio and replacement 5Ghz antennas for the Red Hill to Meredith link, avoiding the crowded 2.4Ghz channels found on the initial scan done at Meredith Harley. Word is also received from Rick and Roger Heath that using the hardware store as an alternate endpoint antenna would be a workable possibility.
30.11.2007
A test radio is programmed to match the Meredith Harley radio and taken to Greg Berry’s Castle, the top of the intervening hill with the cell tower. The radio links up, but signal strength off Red Hill proves to be extremely weak. The test radio was setup at a point on Rt. 25-B 2 miles closer to Red Hill with similar dismal results.
27.11.2007
Gunnar contacts Rick Heath about the possibility of mounting the endpoint antenna on Heath’s Hardware roof, which has an almost identical shot to Red Hill as the Library-Red Hill link.
27.11.2007
Gunnar meets with T Parsinnen of NHVT at Meredith Harley. After much troubleshooting it’s determined that location won’t work. Even though NHVT doesn’t have DSL equipment in either the Center Harbor or Moultonboro COs, it’s decided to find a Center Harbor location for the endpoint and lease the DSL line from Verizon.
26.11.2007
The Meredith end of the backhaul link is constructed at Meredith Harley. Red Hill only appeared on a scan of networks sporadically and a with a very weak signal strength. Many competing frequencies and an intervening hill 3 miles out is determined to be the most likely cause. A scan from Red Hill does not pick up the Meredith radio.
20.11.2007
The Library endpoint of the DSL backhaul link is installed and communication with Red Hill is established at an average throughput of 16mbps.
14.11.2007
Gunnar finishes programming the MikroTik router for Red Hill with valuable technical help from Thom Lawless of RapidWiFi, installs it and powers it up.
11.11.2007
Cyberpine holds its second Annual Meeting at the Benz Center. The new Board of Directors is elected (Fred Bickford, Dale Mayer and Gunnar Berg) and the by-laws are officially posted on the website here
05.11.2007
Pete and Gunnar install the 900Mhz omni antenna and hoist the storage batteries on the fire tower
04.11.2007
Cathy and Gunnar construct and install the backhaul and Rockywold antennas on Red Hill.
30.10.2007
Gunnar and Asa construct the solar array on Red Hill.
24.10.2007
Moultonborough Planning Board accepts Cyberpine’s site plan as drawn.
17.10.2007
Moultonborough ZBA grants Cyberpine a special exception to allow commercial use of the Red Hill fire tower
24.09.2007
Ed Maheux of the Moultonborough Fire Dept. hauls the equipment up to the fire tower and Jim Hambrook surveys the top in preparation for the Moultonborough ZBA and Planning Board hearings. Meredith Harley agrees to allow Cyberpine the use of their location for the DSL demarc and transmitter.
21.09.2007
Gunnar speaks at the NH Telecommunications Advisory Board Meeting on the nature, successes and obstacles in creating a rural wireless network in an underserved remote area.
27.08.2007
Representatives from NH DRED and Executive Councilor Ray Burton make an official presentation of the matching grant to Cyberpine at the Sandwich Town Hall.
17.07.2007
Cyberpine receives a draft contract from the LRCT allowing installation of the necessary equipment on the Red Hill fire tower
01.07.2007
Cyberpine receives a matching grant in the amount of 3000.00 to help construct the Red Hill access point from the NH Division of Economic Development through its Telecommunications Advisory Board.
28.04.2007
Don Jones, former owner of the Sandwich Radio Network and valuable advisor, dies of a sudden heart attack.
01.04.2007
Don Jones draws up a new network plan incorporating a new backhaul link to DSL in Meredith through Red Hill and recommends scrapping a totally bridged network in favor of a routed one.
28.03.2007
Toby Eaton resigns after 1 1/2 years serving as Treasurer. Carroll Bewley volunteers to serve as treasurer. Jocelyn Gutchess invites LRCT President Don Berry for tea and reinforces the importance of high speed access for local businesses and residents, with emphasis on the critical role an access point and relay on Red Hill would be in Cyberpine’s ability to provide service.
25.02.2007
Cyberpine office constructed at Sandwich Cabinet Shop
01.01.2007
Cyberpine Cooperative, Inc. registered as a non-profit consumer/rural electric co-op with the NH Secretary of State’s Corporate Division, replacing Cyberpine Internet Service Provider, Inc.
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