Chakaroff

Further plans for the network project

Wireless re-coverage

As I mentioned in “Materials and techniques” I started reading about wireless and the wireless solutions provided by the internet service providers. I read for various devices, but those who impressed me the most were Ubiqiti and Mikrotik Routerboard devices. I wanted to cover all the building with reliable wireless connection. The main idea was using internet connection everywhere in the building and nearby – easily.

Soon I realized that the air environment is way harder for building reliable connection then the copper medium. There were vast amount of factors which one should consider, moreover this initiative would be way too expensive for a small project like this, and the result couldn’t be predicted at 100%.

Load balancing

My network had 60Mbps connectivity to from the ISP trough a gigabit connection. Behind the server the connection was 100Mbps and I was using only 60… So I wanted to know how to gain more speed and even more reliable connection. I wanted to have two different ISP’s – one main and the second playing as backup if the first fails.

After investigating the possible options the best turned to be using two entry interfaces from the same ISP (in my student hostel it was impossible having internet from another ISP) and combine their speed. So I thought that I would have 120 Mbps. Now I know that the speed will be limited to 100Mbps, which in fact is still A very very good speed. I installed pfSense on a test PC and started to experiment with various techniques. During the research, due to explainable reasons I had to stop the project.