Background
So I'm apparently the resident tech guy around here. My friend Rik and his wife just bought a new boat and were planning on sailing her the 1000 miles home this spring. Now there's never a shortage of Wifi at yacht clubs and marinas but often the signals are too weak to pick up on a mooring far out from the shore. So Rik picked up Ubiquiti NanoStation2 on some advice from folks over at Sailnet. The device is actually a CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) which is used by telcos who are providing wifi to the home. But of course its has a very powerful feature set, and can be used for many things. After fighting with it for several weeks, he handed it off to me once he returned home to "make it simple for the average sailor". My goal was it figure out how to make it as simple to use as a home gateway/router. Read on for the details. This is written in a sort of HOWTO style. I'm going to make the basic assumption that you know your way around your computer. If you've managed to get your GPS talking to your computer you'll probably be fine reading this.
List of Equipment
For this project you'll need the following parts:
- A laptop with an ethernet (RJ-45) port, instructions are for XP but are similar for Vista
- A NanoStation2
- The NanoStation2 Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) Injector
- The NanoStation2 Power Supply
- 2 lengths of ethernet patch cable (RJ-45 on boths ends)
- Discovery Tool - Downloadable from Ubiquiti's Web Site
Hook up the Wires
Before we begin, hook everything up:
- Ethernet from the NS2 to the POE Injector (POE Port)
- Ethernet from the laptop to the POE InJector (LAN Port)
- Power to the laptop (batteries are great but this could take a little while)
- Power to the NS2 POE Injector
Inital Setup
Before doing anything, Turn off the wifi on your laptop!. This will save you much pain and suffering.
You'll need to configure your ethernet adapter's TCP/IP settings in order to talk to the NS2 for the first time.
- Download and Run the Discovery Tool. In the list of Discovered Devices you should see a NanoStation2 with an IP address listed. This will be the address we'll connect to configure the NS2. We'll need to setup the laptop to an address in the same subnet as the NS2. If you don't know what a subnet is, don't worry. The NS2 should default to the IP 192.168.1.20. I'll assume that is the address Discovery Tool has shown you.
- Go to Control Panel -> Network Connections
- Right-click on your ethernet adapter and select Properties from the menu. The adapter will probably be called Local Area Connection
- Select Internet Protocol TCP/iP from the list and click the Properties button.
- Click the radio button for Use the following IP address and fill in the following information:
IP Address 192.168.1.10 Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway (Leave this blank) - Click OK
- Click Close
Once the IP settings are made you should be able to connect to the NS2.
Configuring the NS2 as a Router
NOTE: Depending on the firmware level of your NS2 the screens will be slightly different that what I'm describing. I'm using firmware 3.4. You may want to upgrade your firmware as the first step.
- Open a web browser to http://192.168.1.20. You should see a login box.
- Enter the username/password for your NS2. Default is 'ubnt' for both.
- Click on the Network tab.
- Change the Network Mode from Bridge to Router
- Set the WLAN IP Address to DHCP. Leave the rest of the WLAN settings at their defaults.
- In the LAN Network Settings setup the following information:
IP Address 192.168.1.20 Netmask 255.255.255.0 Enable NAT Checked Enable DHCP Server Checked Range Start 192.168.1.100 Range End 192.168.1.200 Enable DNS Proxy Checked - All the other settings can be left as defaults
- Click the Change button at the bottom
- Click the Apply button at the top of the page
Now that you've setup your NS2 as a router you can put your laptop's ethernet settings back to the defaults. This way if you happen to take it someplace else it will still work correctly.
- Go to Control Panel -> Network Connections
- Right-click on your ethernet adapter and select Properties from the menu. The adapter will probably be called Local Area Connection
- Select Internet Protocol TCP/iP from the list and click the Properties button.
- Click the radio button for Obtain an IP address automatically
- Make sure that the radio button for Obtain DNS server address automatically is also selected
- Click OK
- Click Close
- Once the Network Connection properties box closes, wait about 30 seconds for your laptop to obtain an IP address from the NS2
Connecting to a Network
You should now have an IP address assigned by the NS2. Go back to your web broswer and enter the address http://192.168.1.20, and login if necessary. Now we need to establish a link to a remote wirless network. The best place to do this for the first time is at home. That way you can be sure that the network you're trying to connect to will accept your connection. Depending on the security settings on the remote network you may not be able to connect. Remember that in some places it is illegal to use a wireless network you do not have permission to use! To establish a link to a remote site do the following:
- Click on the Link Setup tab.
- In the Country Code drop-down pick the country that you are in. This is important so that you have access to the correct channels and that you don't exceed the Regulatory Power restrictions. The NS2 can transmit up to 26dBm but most access points aren't going to transmit above 17dBm so there's often not a lot of point in increasing the transmit power beyond that anyway.
- Next to the ESSID field click the Select button.
- From the list of networks that appear, select the network you want to use. Remember the following:
- Signal dBm is better closer to 0. A -32 dBm signal is better than a -79 dBm signal.
- Noise dBm is bette farther away from 0. A -96 dBm noise is better than a -70 dBm noise.
- Networks with WEP or WPA encryption will require a network key to access them,
- Even networks without encryption may not be accessible because of MAC address restrictions.
- Click the Select button at the bottom of the window. The window will close and the ESSID field will be filled in with the name of the network you selected.
- If you need to provide security information, eg: network keys, fill that out in the Wireless Security section at the bottom of the page
- Click the Change button,
- Click the Apply button. The device will reload the configuration,
Adjusting the Antenna Position
You're almost done! Now we'll try to adjust the antenna to get the best signal possible
- Click on the Main tab. Note the signal strengh. Remember we're trying to get this number closest to 0 that we can.
- Click on the Tools dropdown and select Align Antenna. The Align Antenna window will open.
- Adjust the antenna position to get the signal strength as high as possible. If the little signal bars fill most of the signal meter, increase the RSSI range so that you can have more signal meter space to deal with.
- When you have the signal has high as possible, close the window.
If all went well you should now be able to browser the Internet. Give it a try!