The village of Langtoft in East Yorkshire has recently installed a LocustWorld mesh to provide wireless broadband to the 400+ residents in the village and surrounding community. Langtoft has fascinating history, and was the home of Piers Langtoft, the Mediaeval historian. Recently a double hoard of Roman coins was found near the village.
The Langtoft.net team are installing customers at a steady rate, with several new requests for installations received each week, providing a great example of a local network sharing the cost of broadband using the mesh. The system is fed from a 1 Mbit/s Aramiska satellite internet connection. Satellite internet is very popular in meshes throughout Europe, and the LocustWorld system contains settings specifically designed to optimise satellite connections. "We are still in a pilot phase and are aiming to eventually reach the whole village, including most of the surrounding areas with our mesh network.", says Phil Whitley, one of the founders of the project. "Langtoft is a challenge to cover with a wireless network. We are located in a dip, along a valley which curves through the village, so direct lines of sight are not so easy to find." The furthest client is one mile away from the mesh, getting an excellent signal with a clear line of sight. Other customers are not so easy to get to, and this is where the mesh comes into it's own, working around corners and obstacles to provide widespread coverage, eliminating blank spots. On advice from Solwise, a Hull based equipment supplier, Langtoft.net use 8db omni-directional antennas on their meshboxes. These give wide spread coverage and long range. Higher gain antennas often limit the coverage to other roof-level devices, which is not much help to customers who are nearer the ground. "We take a mobile aerial on a pole with us to check the reception in new locations before deciding on the best way to make a permanent connection to the mesh. Using simple square panel antennas we have found that we get very good reception." The satellite connection comes in to the village at Appletree Works, the base of Cambrai Covers. "Cambrai Covers manufacture fine quality aircraft covers for the British and European aircraft market", says Phil. "We initially installed the internet connection for our own needs Now, by using the mesh, we can support the community broadband project and offset some of our overheads, sharing the connection with the other users in the village." Links:
www.langtoft.net
www.cambraicovers.co.uk
Piers Langtoft, 13th Century Historian
Coin Hoard Discovered
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