DCARA Members,

Many of you have been asking for information as to which antennas and equipment I've purchased to go along with my Ubiquiti Rocket M2. For the sake of simplicity I am compiling the list here:

Ubiquiti Rocket M2 (many vendors available, purchase through club and we will have connectors and cable available soon.)

2.4 GHz 25dBi Yagi: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RP-SMA-2-4GHz-25-DBi-Wireless-WLAN-WiFi-Antenna-For-Yagi-Modem-PCI-Card-Router-/111329400253?pt=US_Directional_Network_Antennas&hash=item19ebbfd5bd

2.4GHz 12dBi Omni Directional: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TP-Link-2-4GHz-12dBi-Omni-Directional-Outdoor-Wireless-Vertical-Antenna-WIFI-/230933790877?pt=US_Directional_Network_Antennas&hash=item35c4ba009d

Sorry image link is not cooperating.

N-Maile to RP-SMA 24" Cable LMR-400 Ultraflex: http://www.l-com.com/coaxial-n-male-to-rp-sma-plug-400-ultra-flex-series-assembly-20-ft

All said and done with a little hunting I've only spent around $200 on the complete package. 

Here are the images I just took for screen captures off our Anritsu SiteMaster S332E. This is using the antenna that is labelled 25dBi for 2.4GHz purchased from eBay. (NOTE I AM NOT AN EXPERT WITH THE SITEMASTER.) I did not have the software installed to make actual images from the screen so these are just iPhone shots.

I am in no way an expert with the SiteMaster, so these images may be useless. However, here they are for reference. My initial impression with the plots is that it is not 25 dBi gain like the claim, however the coax is pretty small and it does not have designators to reference so it could be very lossy there. 

Dont forget that with the Ubiquiti equipment they only have one RJ45 port. This means you'll need a managed switch that supports 802.1q VLAN tagging if you wish to connect it to your existing home network.

The cheapest one I've been able to find is around $50, here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127450

I'm new to VLAN stuff so this is definitely a learning experience.

I finally got the VLAN stuff setup and working properly using the D-Link switch I linked in my previous post.

For anyone that's having issues or wishes to duplicate my settings, once I assigned the switch a static IP address to use the management console from, I setup the 802.1q VLAN settings as follows.  Port 1 on the switch is the uplink port to my Internet gateway.  Port 2 on the switch goes to the Rocket.  Ports 3-8 are not currently used but will pull an IP address from the Rocket via DHCP (so they're effectively on the HSMM node's LAN) when connected.

In the management console, I created a new VLAN with an ID number of 10 since 1 is reserved for BBHN-WAN. I also created a VLAN with ID 2 but I am not currently using it since I do not have more than one node.

The VLANs are assigned as follows:

• VID 1 (BBHN-WAN)
• Untagged: port 1
• Tagged: port 2
• VID 2 (BBHN-D2D)
• Not used in my implementation
• VID 10 (BBHN-LAN)
• Untagged: ports 2-8

Here's a screenshot of the switch's VLAN management settings. Click here for the full-size version.

I set the node up to have NAT on the LAN side (with DHCP enabled) and a static IP on the WAN side.  The LAN side of the node is on a different subnet from the rest of my network. It's also separated by a firewall from the main portion of my network (the 254 subnet).

Here's my network topology:

Now all I need is a node within range to connect to and I'll be good to go.

Glad to see you got it to work!  Other switches I have had good luck with is the Netgear GS108E (8 port) or the GS105E (5 port)

Clint, AE5CA