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 Organization Name: ​
Engineers Without Borders/Learning Planet DHAWA.NET Organization Contact: ​
Andrew Chu Date began:​
February 2015 Date ended:​
April 2015 Overview: ​
Andrew Chu, a network engineer for Engineers Without Borders was stationed in Nepal to expand a network in a growing village. He used our products to help get the job done. Pre­Trial: Post­Trial: Network Set­up and Concerns:​
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Engine Network(s) Size: ​
40 nodes, 1000 registered users, 100 users simultaneously at peak. Geographic Area(s): ​
25 sq. km Range(s) to be covered:​
up to 3.5km Usage:​
Education and Healthcare providers are the primary users, with 5 Schools and the Village Health post currently connected. Each school is additionally a community centre. MetaGeek product(s) to be tested:​
InSSIDer Office Purpose of product use: ​
to optimise the network nodes in terms of channel usage and to guide network expansion. Previous products used: ​
InSSIDer for Home (InSSIDer 3) and Wifi Analyzer for tablet are both being replaced with InSSIDer Office and Wi­Spy Mini. What are the biggest problems with WiFi troubleshooting and analysis you have? Currently it is very difficult to identify individual nodes which are being affected. Using the opensource SECN 2.0 system means that network visualisation is drawn through individual analysis of the outputs from the BATMAN algorithm. The ability to check individual nodes relies on cross­checking MAC addresses with BSSIDs and then against a list of the node locations. What do you hope to achieve with this product? The network will soon transition to a 2 channel system, before using all 3 non­overlapping channels in the 2.4GHz range, and long term incorporating a 5GHz backbone to link similar community setups. This product will hopefully allow a local administrator to easily identify failures in any of the nodes, as well as optimise channel allocation and the placement of new nodes for best effect. I hope that InSSIDer Office will prove easy to learn and to teach so that there will be more community ownership of the project in the years to come ­ eventually becoming a purely community run service. How often did you use the product? We used this product at every site for baseline measurements, and then each time we set up a new site (3 sites added). This allowed us to optimise the positioning of the sites. We also did a fair bit of troubleshooting through the inSSIDer app, as we could see when nodes in the mesh had failed, even if the network itself was still functioning. What did this product solve for you? What did it not solve for you? The product was really useful in assisting us with positioning on site. This is particularly true of the Wi­Spy mini, which we used to inform moving one of our sector antennas from the ‘obvious’ location to a less obvious but much better one (I think it was being affected by a nearby microwave installation). I had hoped that the product would be able to help me in planning the network. I have been using the open source RFMobile application to do this, but inSSIDer did allow us to confirm the plans on site, which was much better than trying to do this by establishing a site and using the graphical interface to show us the signal strength. It was much faster to deploy (1 day down from 3 days of trial and error!) Will you list: Biggest benefit to you from inSSIDer Office: Definitely ease of use, knowing what positions gave us visibility of the most other nodes was useful in terms of node deployment for maximum redundancy, but also allowed me to consider which channels would be most suitable, and then re­measuring to appreciate the effect of new nodes on the RF environment. Channel Analyser ­ brilliant tool Favorite & useful features: ­inSSIder Office’s channel analyser has been a huge help! ­A visual output (the channel graph) has been really useful for the locals, rather than using the open source text outputs that I was using before! Ease of use & ability to train others: This product was great in terms of training others, particularly locals who didn’t necessarily understand it all. Being able to teach them to analyse the network simply by counting the entries in the list, or looking for the biggest peaks in the graph is really a game changer compared to what I had before! Overall opinion on product: This product would be really useful for people in developing countries as they roll out community­led connectivity. It is easy to use and quite intuitive, so people with limited technical expertise can be empowered towards running a network themselves. MetaGeek. Visualize your Wireless Landscape. www.metageek.com 208­639­3140