I am purchasing a wisp with 47 customers with the option of expanding to about 100. Here are the questions I have

Would you buy a block of ip's for your customers to use or just masq them? It will make things much easier/cheaper if we just masqarade everything but am worried about Calea complience.

The wisp is currently using breezecom access points with canopy back hauls between the 3 towns. They are currently using static addresses. And use an internet provider that is sub par. This being said I will be switching isps and most likely will not get to keep the class C and may not even want to . I just want as simple as a setup as possible because I dont want to have to babysit this network as I have a full time job that keeps me busy enough. I am thinking a linux box running squid for proxy and mrtg just to keep tabs on everyone. I dont think I need a radius setup because I will not be adding or rejecting lots of users. I am guessing I can just add and delete users as needed at the ap they associate to. Just looking for other perspectives. Thanks to everyone that replies.

I will be keeping some of the customers on the breezecom network and routing them through my RB Ap and slowly roll all them over to the new equipment.

I should add that I will have an x86 RouterOS core router to the internet and all RB433AH aps. I have been using Mikrotik for about 3 years with simple 5 mile ptp links so I do have experience with the OS.

I should add that I will have an x86 RouterOS core router to the internet and all RB433AH aps. I have been using Mikrotik for about 3 years with simple 5 mile ptp links so I do have experience with the OS.

No radius? How are you handeling your billing, Also make sure you use the Dude good network managment tool, using it as we speak, alerts me when anything is down, I also plan on having a network of around 100+ But plan on loosing the side job once im that size, I masquerade all of my IP's. Good luck.

You raise some interesting points.

In my opinion you should always seek to have an entirely routed network and seek to deliver Public IP addresses to your clients.

To save on public IP addresses you can subnet them and route those public IP subnets over your private IP network.

For e.g. you allocate a /30 public IP to your client and deliver that over your network which uses say the 10.0.0.0/8 private IP block. This is why:

You want a network that is low overhead as far as your time goes. Therefore you dont want users who end up spamming and causing your main public IPs that you are masq. them on to get blocked and so effect other users who call you up middle of night to complain.

I have found that squid is great for web proxy. Use the parent proxy feature in ROS to transparently divert your traffic to the squid server. YOu could also use that server to run some radius and billing options, though the Mikrotik User Manager works really well for me to add, delete and suspend users.

The Mikrotik Dude software as jordantrx says, installed on your core Router is a winner for network management, alerting and documenting.

Good luck!

Alex

Thanks guys for both of your replies. Most of my clients will buy in for 6 month blocks or are billed quarterly so I am not really worried about billing. I will have them all rate limited and setup on MRTG graphs to keep an eye out for what could be problems with their traffic. My last plan was running internal addresses and setting up static nat for each customer then no one will get access out of the network until I setup their masq. I will be running a squid server to cache traffic and am a big fan of it also. I also have played with the dude but have not got too far under the hood.

I hate to do this on the forum but I am really thinking of using the NanoStations as cpe radios. I did buy a micropoynt but think they look really cheap. I have been using ubiquity radios for years and am a believer in their reliability.

Has anyone used this antenna? I am debating between this because of its size and ease of installation where we will have our equipment.. Grain legs and elevators

http://store.wisp-router.com/itemdesc.a ... 15&eq=&Tp=

Either I am going to use this antenna or I am thinking of putting up two horiz pol omnis. I want to keep my users per radio below 25.

I will also be getting from the current owner 6 Motorola canopy dish units they are using for some of the connections between towns. Are there any advantages/disadvantages to these units? What kind of traffic can they push? I was thinking I could use these for my ptp links, save rf/radio spaces for future expansion and route them through one of the ether ports?

As for the nanostation, I do find it an effective CPE, and it works great with the MT Base Stations I have. Still you cant beat the manageability of the Mikrotik gear. The option to use Nstreme right up to the CPE and also compression are great.

The NS2 and NS5 come prebuilt and ready to go in a tiny unit..... Very nice. The software isnt bad either and is a simple interface that even some clients can figure out how to set up. But this limits some manageability...

Regarding the Motorola Canopy, just be aware of some interference issues between Canopy and other ISM band devices. I have canopy and mikrotik together and havent had any problems, but others have.