Harris Hudson January 2024
This is a write up for an internet rural transponder build, and some of the lessons from that process. This setup provides our internet access at our rural family property in southern NSW.
This write up is dedicated to a fellow engineer and colleague - Luke Nyhof.
Luke wasn't involved with this build but I did work with him as a fellow
software engineer. RIP Luke.
In 2012 and 2013 my brother Henry was temporarily staying in my off-grid cabin on our rural family property in southern NSW after his divorce. The family property is a second generation property that our parents bought back in the 1960's and is shared with Henry and my sister Heather. Whilst there was a Telstra radio telephone installed in the late 90's, this phone does not have any sort of data service. Nor was there any mobile coverage on the property. Both Batemans Bay and Braidwood are about 30km away (in opposite directions). However, on occasions, people riding motor bikes high up on some of our mountain tracks reported receiving the occasional SMS text message.
And with the hint that there may be mobile signal high up on the mountains - so began our quest to attempt to get an internet connection to our dwellings down in the valley. This is a story of ingenuity, hard work and sheer determination to make that finally happen. Now 10 years later, in 2024, this internet relay provides legal high speed reliable data access to the property. And it is somewhat a solution of the times. Back in 2013, the only data solution was a geostationary satellite solution which was both costly, required a constant 240v power supply (which we didn't have at the time), and was subject to high latency. And also now in 2024, there are other Low Earth Orbit satellite solutions available. However, that was not the case back in 2013.
Described here is the analysis and evolution of our internet relay. Please note that there are several links to resources included here. Such links were valid at the time of writing this page (Jan 2024)
Way back in the late 80's and early 90's, the very first phone connection I managed to establish from there was by connecting a large yagi antenna to an analogue mobile phone handset and pointing it through a valley in the mountains towards Ulladulla (30km away). That was patchy and unreliable but it was the very first time I could make a phone call down there. Then in the late 90's, with government incentives at the time, we had a Telstra radio phone system installed. Unfortunately, these legacy type systems only really supported voice. Analogue mobile is now long gone and the Telstra radio phone doesn't support data (only voice). So, it was not possible, in any practical sense, to try to get a data connection over these technologies.
So, once we had a hint of a possible 3g mobile service high up on the mountains, began our quest to establish a data connection. As we (Henry and I) wanted a legal solution - we concentrated on a possible wifi transponder (mobile hotspot solution) instead of a mobile phone repeater type solution (which wasn't legal at the time). From our research we understood that wifi could be beamed long distance so our initial attempts were based on driving up the to areas on the mountains that had just a fraction of mobile coverage (from Batemans Bay 30km away) and could just see the cabin line-of-sight (LOS) using crude WokFi setups based on kitchen cookware. Whilst we dedicated quite a bit of effort to this - there were several shortcomings. Firstly, the spot that had vehicle access could only achieve 1 bar on the phone or pocket modem. And we soon realised that a minimum of 2 bars was required to make a data connection. And secondly, the spot on the mountain that had mobile service was about 50m away from the spot that could see the cabin line-of-sight. And then on top of that, whilst our WokFi testing setup (based on a colander and a pocket modem) could achieve a long distance wifi link, unfortunately the colander also acted somewhat like a Faraday shield in relation to the mobile signal coming in the opposite direction. But our early WokFi experiments came to an abrupt end when a poorly oriented colander, caught the setting sun, and with that turned it into a solar cooker that instantly melted down our pocket modem. That was the end of that.
So, the analysis began, we needed to search for another site that had the following attributes;
Before blindly starting to hike and scramble upon the surrounding mountains performing recognisance, I used the ACMA Site Location Map so I had a rough idea of where coverage would be likely in the surrounding mountains. (By the way I used to work for the ACMA a few times, and I actually wrote that web app). So, with that in mind, I started to scramble around some of the surrounding mountains on foot to attempt to find a more suitable site. After some time, in 2013, I found a rocky outcrop high up on a different mountain opposite the valley that had the prerequisite 2 bars signal on my phone and I could see the old shed in the valley approximately 700m line-of-sight below. We had now abandoned the pocket modem wifi setup and Henry started to finance some hardware (mind you it was still cheap hardware) at this stage even though we did not know it was technically going to work. But Henry was confident. However, the new site that I found was not accessible by vehicle and involved a 45 minute to 1 hour steep hike to get there. The very first attempt to get a connection was me lugging up a 12v jump pack, a TP-Link router, 3g usb dongle, the old yagi antenna (left over from the analogue mobile phone setup) and a newly purchased grid antenna to beam the wifi down to the valley. In the very first instance, I stood on the rocky outcrop holding and balancing all this setup whilst Henry tried to connect all the way through to test the link. We communicated by using the radio phone down there (and I had mobile access up on top of the mountain). Once Henry could connect to the router using his mobile phone down in the valley, we were both confident we would be able to establish an internet connection.
So then, some more hardware was purchased and the construction began. That involved buying an antenna mast from Jaycar, a 100Ah deep cycle battery and a 33 litre esky to house it all. The system would initially be powered from an old 12v 100w solar panel and regulator I had lying around.
All this stuff had to be lugged up by hand. And it took several trips. And certainly wasn't easy to lug a 100Ah 30kg battery up a mountain.
But the excitement of getting that first connection back in 2013 was incredible. I distinctly remember coming back down to the valley after the initial build, standing in the paddock, and seeing my iPhone connect to the wifi and then making my first wifi based phone call to my wife Hoa back in Canberra!
This very fist setup, with a 3g link to Batemans Bay was working but we had more lessons to come before we could say it was reliable.
For instance, the TP-Link router would occasionally "lock up". And would require a reboot or power cycle. Now, you are only going to hike 1 hour up a mountain to press reboot on the router once! So that first time I hiked up there to reboot it, I also took a Jaycar 12v timer to setup a periodic reboot (power cycle) the modem every 10 hours.
Then the next reliability enhancement was - well after some heavy rains, our initial esky setup turned out to be not so water proof (even with holes drilled in the bottom). So at some point there, I purchased a metal box enclosure, to house the modem, dongle, regulator and battery.
We had now been powering the setup with a 200w 12v solar panel purchased from Low Energy Developments. But because the rocky outcrop location was on the southern side of the mountain, for the first 5 years or so, we were experiencing winter solstice dropouts. That is from mid May through to mid July, the transponder would shutdown due to low voltage. It took several iterations, and multiple batteries and panels to sort this out but eventually, adding 2 more old solar panels facing in a westerly direction to get the setting sun and using a lithium 100Ah battery - we finally solved the winter solstice shutdown problem. Now the transponder runs 24x7x365. As we wanted to have net access 24x7 we didn't want to have to resort to installing timers to shut it down in the nights, for example. Adding 2 more old panels and the lithium battery did the trick in relation to the power supply.
Over time though, the cheap $30 TP-Link router and $20 3g dongle started to have other reliability issues and the dongle modem connection to the yagi antenna was sketchy at best (we had to find a dongle that had an external antenna port). There was also now a 4g signal coming from Batemans Bay (Vodafone tower). So, in mid 2020, I bit the bullet and bought a professional modem/router - enter the Teltonika RUT950. The Teltonika was a new breakthrough for us in terms of reliability (for the most part) and also speed. Yes, I could have looked into flashing OpenWRT, Rooter, or such on to an old router but I went for a commercial offering in this case. Whilst the Teltonika did have some issues with particular firmware upgrades, it brought a huge leap forward in terms of reliability - such that I can reboot it and perform other configuration changes via SMS directives or the intranet web interface. So I setup periodic reboot and ping reboot, SMS gateway, etc, etc. I could finally dispense with the old Jaycar 12v timer. The Teltonika did everything. The Teltonika also came with 2 external SMA connections for both the wifi and mobile signal. So I purchased second 11dBi yagi antenna.
Because the Teltonika had proper SMA antenna connections we also saw improved speed of the 3g, and now 4g, signals coming from Batemans Bay. The old TP-Link router and dongle were getting around 1-2Mbs at best over 3g and now the Teltonika was getting up to 8Mbs on 4g to Batemans Bay at 30km away!
It was also around this time (early 2021) that a new Telstra mobile phone tower went live on the Bolero tower (this was after much political campaigning by locals in the area due to Kings Highway mobile black spots). Coincidentally, the Bolero tower is part of the backbone link of our Telstra radio phone. This meant that a mobile tower was now only 15km away instead of 30km. So, I first confirmed the coverage again using the ACMA app, purchased an Aldi (Telstra) SIM and hiked up the mountain again. Installed the SIM and re-orientated the small yagi antenna towards Bolero Mountain. Now with the Bolero tower, we are seeing speeds up to about 36Mbs and much less subject to holiday period congestion.
Meanwhile, down in our valley where the dwellings are, whilst the wifi signal outside in the paddocks was fine, there was virtually no wifi inside. So Henry and I setup wifi repeaters (range extenders) down on the shed and the cabin. These had grid antennas facing back up the hill to the transponder 700m away. Again, I went through a learning curve here - these "cheap" routers would also occasionally lock up and require reboot/reset. I purchased a few different wifi repeaters but in the end due to various reasons - such as clocking up phantom data or locking up - I ended up purchasing a more pricey Netgear AC1200 range extender. The wifi range extenders had to have specific requirements - which turned out to be uncommon - and you no longer can find. For example, the range extenders had to operate from 12v (they are also powered from 12v batteries and panels) as there was no permanently available 240v at the time. And they also had to have external antenna ports (SMA) to be able to connect to the grid antennas. In the end, the more expensive Netgear range extenders fitted the bill perfectly and are now also part of this final solution.
Whilst I have climbed that mountain countless times and lugged so much gear up there, the setup now is incredibly reliable. In fact, at the time of writing this, I haven't been up there for about 2 years (as of Jan 2024). It's more reliable than our Telstra radio phone setup. And with the new Bolero tower only 15km away, the property enjoys faster internet that my NBN connection back at my Canberra home.
This setup now forms the basis for connectivity down there. We rarely use the Telstra radio phone now (but that is still an essential backup). We have various home/farm automation and security through this link. I even have Raspberry Pi cameras down there - that in part helped save my cabin during the 2019 Currowan bushfires by detecting nearby fires.
I hope you found this story interesting. Like I say above, this was a home grown solution to fit a particular need for the time. Now-a-days, there may be alternate LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite solutions on offer. But we enjoy fast and low cost internet down there now thanks to the back breaking work, blood, sweat and tears of Henry and myself. And our extended family enjoys that connection these days largely oblivious to the effort required to establish that link. Just last week, we had several guests down there all using the net in all sorts of ways; browsing, watching videos, live streaming, phone/video calls, karaoke - you name it.
Harris.