On Fri, 13 Dec 2013 01:48:52 +0000, Danny D'Amico wrote:

UPDATE:

After many hours of trying to get the settings just right, just now
I was able to tremendously extend the WiFi range of my laptop, as a test,
simply by connecting a Ubiquiti NanoBridge M2 feedhorn (sans dish antenna)
to the Ethernet port.

Here is my signal strength at the feedhorn, as seen through the laptop:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2869/1...ab5e1de1_o.png

Notice the noise is a tiny at -99dBm while the signal strength is huge
at -44dBm (with a SNR of -44 - -99 = 55, if I did the math right).

This gets me 130Mbps between my Linux laptop & the home broadband router.

Here are the network settings that were necessary to make this work:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2854/1...139418fd_o.png

And, here are the access-point specific wireless settings to make it
connect to my home broadband router's SSID:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3733/1...45bef4c0_o.png

With the dish antenna, that Nanobridge M2 has a gain of 41dB (i.e.,
23dBm transmit power + 18dBi antenna gain), which is far too powerful.

Since that calculates (if I did the math right?) to over 12 Watts, I
had to lower the gain by removing the dish ... which dropped the gain
down to 23dBm + 3dBi, or 26dB (which is a 0.4 Watts).

Even that was far too powerful for use in my house, so I dropped the
transmit power of the feedhorn radio down to 6dBm, so with the 3dBi
feedhorn-only gain, the screenshots above are at 6+3=9dB (0.008W) EIRP.

Even with the gain reduced as low as I could make it, I still got
a connection strength of -44dBm and a connect speed of 130Mbps, so,
it's at least a proof of concept that this is one way to extend the
WiFi range of your laptop.

My goal will be to try to connect to my home broadband router from a
mile or two down the road... so that's what I'll try next.

PS: Jeff Liebermann should be proud of me!

Here's the howto I wrote up ... (it can also be used at coffee shops!)
BEGIN: How to use a Nanobridge M2 as your laptop wireless NIC!

0. I reset the Nanobridge M2 radio to default settings as per this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-h48wELJtw

I connected the POE to the Nanobridge M2.
I reset the Nanobridge M2 back to factory defaults by holding the reset button down for 10sec (until all LEDs flashed)

1. I set the Nanobridge M2 to be the Linux laptop wireless NIC as per this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIRHEwDOD5g

2. I turned off the wireless NIC inside the laptop with the hardware switch.
Note: I could just as well have run this command on Ubuntu 13.10:
$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

3. I set the IP address of the laptop to be on the 192.168.1.XX subnet.
$ sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.99
$ ifconfig (make sure eth0 is 192.168.1.something & that wlan0 is not up)

4. I physically connected the Nanobridge M2 to the eth0 port of the laptop.

5. I pinged the Nanobridge M2
$ ping 192.168.1.20
PING 192.168.1.20 (192.168.1.20) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.572 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.460 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.286 ms
etc. (control C to escape)

6. I logged into the Nanobridge M2
$ netscape 192.168.1.20 (ubnt, ubnt)

7. I set the "Network" tab as follows:
AirOS:Network
Router (default is Bridge)
WLAN Network Settings-DHCP (default is DHCP)
LAN Network Settings-IP Address-192.168.10.20 (default is 192.168.1.1)
[x]Enable NAT
[x]Enable DHCP Server
Range Start=192.168.10.100
Range End =192.168.10.200
Change-Apply

8. I rebooted the Ubuntu PC (with the wlan0 card still turned off)

9. I set eth0 to be on the same (new) subnet as the Nanobridge M2:
$ sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.10.101

10. I pinged the radio:
$ ping 192.168.10.1
PING 192.168.10.1 (192.168.10.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.10.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.15 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.10.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.255 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.10.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.310 ms
etc. (control + C to escape)

$ ping 192.168.10.20
PING 192.168.10.20 (192.168.10.20) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.10.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.71 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.10.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.308 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.10.20: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.242 ms
etc. (control + C to escape)

11. I logged into the Nanobridge M2:
$ netscape http://192.168.10.20 (ubnt, ubnt)

12. I set up the "Wireless" tab to connect to the home broadband router SSID:
AirOS:Wireless
SSID-Select (I sorted the signals by signal strength & encryption)
I selected my WPA2-PSK encrypted network SSID.
I scrolled to the bottom & hit select.
Change-Apply

Note: I also had to set the DNS server by turning off DNS proxy
Primary DNS server = 8.8.8.8
Secondary DNS server = 4.4.4.2

Voila!

Once I set up DNS (which wasn't described in the video), I was able to
connect to the Internet, and, in fact, am using this connection to type
this up to help myself (in the future) and others.

END OF: How to use a Nanobridge M2 as your laptop wireless NIC!