A Day of Networking

I spent the day today, with two other fathers, working on the network at our children's school. We had done most of the rough wiring for the campus wide network right after school got out for the summer. Today we finished pulling the last couple cables and getting all the cables terminated with either RJ45 connectors or terminated in keystones.

I started out getting all the rough wiring in the middle school and parish hall placed into surface mount conduits and boxes. Gordon spent most of his day putting on connectors. Jim worked back and forth between the to jobs.

Once we had all the wiring finished we got to start the science part of our project. We had four wireless access points to install. We planned on using them as paired bridges between the different buildings on campus. None of us had ever worked with these access points and we just aren't the kind of guys to spend too much time reading directions. Which was good because we didn't have many instructions. So we got to do some experimentation.

We got one set of the APs working as a bridge. But when we headed home for the day we were having trouble with the seoond set. We suspect that we are trying to transmit through just too much block wall and too much distance. We're hoping that tomorrow will have the three of us rested and thinking a bit clearer so we can finish this job.

We have been working on getting the school wired for internet connectivity in every classroom for two years. Finding funding, equipment, and manpower had taken longer than we ever hoped. But we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now we're hoping that light isn't some SOB with a torch bringing us more work.