Gerhard Potgieter

Gee, a network admin on a power trip. Who would have thought?

So what do you get when you have a bunch of network admins each having their own plan for running a community network? CHAOS!

This is suppose to be a community network guys, you have been chosen by the members to make sure things run smooth on all the highsites, not to use it as a testing ground for all your scripts and methods you think could work. I personaly think if you think you need to run or test anything on a highsite it should be voted in by the users. You may think you have the power that be, but be warned a simple majority vote by members and you’ll have no power at all.

Perhaps all admins should have a read through the code of conduct and constitution again just to be reminded what they may and may not do. And if you feel something is degrading service heavy run your sollution by all the members not just a certain PRO group. Every member is part of this community not just a certain group.

Heck, this network is heading in the way the majority of game servers on the internet is ran; all ran by power-tripping morally-lacking morons, and that is not what we want.

So to put it simple, step up and start doing things the right way or just step down.

So lately some peeps cant seem to get the hang of connecting to a irc server, luckely i stubled across a nice thing called mibbit. Users can now connect to the CTWUG channel with the push of one button. To check it out or use it follow the CTWUG IRC link at the top of my site. Happy irc’ing noobs.

After moving about a month back, I decided that I would need to get signal to my new place. Lucky for me it was only about 1km from my parents’ and los was great towards my new place.

So I modified the kit a bit, and now broadcast with a 14dbi panel towards Bellville Larochelle area.

This weekend 2 members had great success in connecting to the site, one is a brand new member and the other one just moved over from bot so pings and speed will be allot faster for him.

So if you are in that area feel free to scan and if found do the right thing and connect.

In a country like South Africa where Telkom dominate the local telecoms market, local communication is extrodinary expensive. That was untill a group of local citizens had enough and started their own wireless based network called a WUG (Wireless User Group).

The first WUG started out in Johannesburg, and then spark interest in other provinces where users started their own WUGS aswell. Recently JAWUG (Johannesburg Area Wireless User Group), PTAWUG (Pretoria Wireless User Group) and PWP (Pretoria Wireless Project) finally got to a point where they could link up their networks and bring their total connected nodes to just over 200 and covering +-140km of area.

If you are interested in finding out more about a WUG in your area please visit wug.za.net for a complete list of wugs in South Africa.

For a complete article about the networks check out the MyBroadband article.

Can you say 30ms pings? CTWUG certainly can now. Yesterday some of the guys braved the cold rain and marble sized hail and went out to install the latest addition the the CTWUG high site family namely Jupiter.

Jupiter is situated on top op Tygerberg Hill and cuts the hops in more that half to go from one side of the network to the other side. It boast backbone links to Saturn and Neptune, also another new site, aswell as a 5.8 sector and 2.4 panel towards Durbanville/Brackenfell area. What is great is the latency, its the lowest the WUG has had so far and this is a great plus point for all the gaming enthusiasts.

Just want to give a great thanks to the guys that made this possible in the weather, we as a WUG greatly appreciates it. As for all the users on the WUG, hope you have your KY ready!

During this weekend some of the guys from CTWUG went out to do some maintenance on our Mars high site. During this time they also thought it would be a good opertunity to sort the backbone link to LoemWug.

LoemWug is a Wireless User Group operating in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, they have about 40 users according to their admins. CTWUG en LoemWug have been negotiating now for a long time to link up and the day has finally arrived.

CTWUG and LoemWug are now officially linked via the Mars high site, so it safe to say the the combined user total of both WUGS are now almost 100 users. All that has to be done now is sort the routing as the 2 WUGS run on different ip ranges, but I’m sure this will be sorted anytime soon.

And some other news, CTWUG will be putting up its Tygerberg Hill high site tomorrow. After the completion of this site we will have our own fully owned backbone reaching from one point of the network to the other end. The site will provide a one hop link to the other side of the hill which should drop latency quite a bit, it will also have 1 5.8 sector covering Durbanville Brackenfell side of the hill aswell as a 2.4 panel cover the same area. The site will be called Jupiter and will link to Saturn and Pluto via Rellik for now.

Good luck to the team going up tomorrow, hope everything goes smooth and as planned. We are really starting to build a kick ass network now.

Nadeo recently launched TrackMania Nations Forever (TMNF), the successor of their previous free racing game TrackMania Nations (TMN).

Being part of CTWUG we have a few avid gamers on the network and one of the games we played allot was TrackMania Nations (TMN). So with the new TrackMania Nations Forever (TMNF) I thought I would give it a go and set up a server, and as with every game on the network users prefer a stats page aswell. So after searching high and low on the web I couldn’t find a stats solutions for TMNF that produced stats based on real time results, the closest I got was TMOS - TrackMania Offline Server, so the obvious thing to do was write my own solution.

Running a dedicated TMNF server required ASECO, Automatic Server Control, to generate statistics in realtime to a online database or local database. It took me about 2 days of programming to get a stable running bug free site. I called it AsecoStats cause it is based on the Aseco 2.1.4 for TMNF.

The index page displays live server stats like how many players are currently online, current track, list all player names and best times that are currently online aswell as the Author records aswell as the best time for the track.

The Players page displays all the current players that ever played on the server aswell as their total wins and total time played on the server.

When you click on the player name you will be transfered to a page detailing all the tracks the player has ever raced aswell as their best time for each track and poll position

On the Tracks page is a list of all the challenges (tracks) ever played on the server with their author, best time and what player achieved this time.

When you click on the track name you will be transfered to a page that details all the players that ever played that track aswell as their poll position and their time.

This is all I did for now as this is the first beta version (v. 0.9b), and what the users wanted to see for now. The pages is written in php and utilizes Aseco 2.1.4 for TMNF’s mysql database. I haven’t decided on a license for it yet but if interest is big enough I will possibly release this under GNU.

For the next release I’m looking into a point system so users can get a overall server position and not just per track. Please leave your comments as to what you guys think of this and any suggestions is also welcome.

Mikrotik announced the release of the RB433 early this week. The RB433 is a high performance AP (Access Point) with a 300mhz Atheros CPU. With the announcement of the RB433 came the EOL (End of line) announcement of the RB333 a performance AP that was based on the PowerPC CPU.

The RB433 is the replacement for the RB333, which is weird cause the RB333 hasn’t been in production for that long. Mikrotik probably used the RB333 to test the PowerPC CPU in their devices. We at CTWUG have a RB333 on one of our highsites and it perform very well.

Back to the RB433, it is kinda a exact replica of the RB333 with exception to its hardware specs and price. The RB344 boasts a Atheros AR7130 300MHz CPU, 64MB Memmory, 3 x 10/100 Ethernet ports with one POE (Power over ethernet) enabled, 3 miniPCI slots for wireless radios, 12~28V DC power jack aswell as POE, and the great RouterOS level4. One thing that it doesn’t support is remote voltage monitoring, something that is expected in a later hardware release.

I spoke to william at Scoop Distribution earlier today and they expect stock arrival by the end of May. The best thing about the RB433 is the price, it will be sold for just under R800 here in SA as apposed to the RB333 that is currently going for R1300 exlc vat. Scoop also told me that they will be selling the RB333 for R1150 as they are trying to clear our the RB333 in expectation of the new RB433.

All and all I’m looking forward to this new High Performance AP from Mikrotik and know they won’t dissapoint as always. Im sure CTWUG will be stoking up on on the RB433 for new highsites and even relay nodes as soon as these babies goes on sale.

So this is the NanoStation2, it gets described as “The Ultimate CPE for the Global WISP Community” but lets see what makes its manufacturers think that this device is so leet. Firstly this is the NanoStation2, where the hell was the NanoStation1? Me being part of CTWUG I have all my doubt in this little device as all devices I know that really packs a punch in the wireless industry is Mikrotik Routerboards. So lets have a look at the NanoStation2 specs as given by the Ubiquiti website.

• Processor Specs: Atheros AR2316 SOC, MIPS 4KC, 180MHz
• Memory Information: 16MB SDRAM, 4MB Flash
• Networking Interface: 1 X 10/100 BASE-TX (Cat. 5, RJ-45) Ethernet Interface
• Wireless Approvals: FCC Part 15.247, IC RS210
• RoHS Compliance: Yes
• TX Power: 26dBm, +/-2dB
• RX Sensitivity: -97dBm +/-2dB
• Antenna: Integrated 10dBi Dual Pol + External SMA
• Outdoor Range: over 15km
• TCP/IP Throughput: 25Mbps+
• Max Power Consumption: 5 Watts
• Power Supply: 12V, 1A (12 Watts). Supply and injector included
• Power Method: Passive Power over Ethernet (pairs 4,5+; 7,8 return)
• Operating Temperature: -20C to +70C (System PCB optimized for hi-temp)
• Operating Humidity: 5 to 95% Condensing
• Shock and Vibration: ETSI300-019-1.4
• Weight: 0.4 kg

Out of personal experience with wifi networking I dont think this devices comes close to the Mikrotik Routerboard 133c, and just to mention the 133c is not being produced anymore as its being replaced with the RB411 that packs a powerful 300Mhz Atheros Networking processor. And the lack of a high gain antenna puts me off, as 10dbi is not worth it for a CPE. The throughput listed there is hard for me to believe, maybe in a lab at a distance of 5m but still then i have my doubts as a 175Mhz Atheros cpu maxes out at about 14mbps. Sure it has a kinda powerful radio, but that anway illegal in South Africa. If I must take a guess the NanoStation would retail at about R700 - R900 here in South Africa and for that price I would rather buy a custom Routerboard CPE from scoop. All in all the NanoStation looks good from the outside but with the multitude of CPE enclosures you get nowadays there is better designs out there.

Just to sum it up, I dont forsee this device competing with any Mikrotik produk in the near future as Mikrotik has a good OS on their devices and has allot of power behind their devices that overtakes the NanoStation by far.