It's August now and this project has been an interesting life experience for sure. It's hard to believe how much time has gone by since the start of this project and, while I'm going to continue this project, I want to show off what I have done so far. I will admit that I have not gotten as far as I would like to due to numerous reasons such as life, vacations, backorders, and technical issues. Even with those setbacks, I am proud of what I have accomplished so far and I plan on finishing what is left to do.
Map of progress made so far:
To remind people of the purpose of this project and to catch people up if you don't wish to read multiple blog posts, I'll give a description and a progress summary that took place over the course of the summer. My parents are the owners and operators of a fair-sized sheep farm in rural South Dakota. For a while now they have been wanting to find ways to upgrade the farm Wi-Fi and extend the range so that it covers more of the farm. They also wish to install cameras to monitor sheep and record the loading and unloading of sheep.
One of the ideas I gave was to change Wi-Fi providers, in order to get better service and faster speeds. After a few weeks of searching and talking to different companies, we settled on CenturyLink by Qwest. This was due to a cheaper monthly fee, 60mbps speed claims, and a few neighbors have the service and have said nothing but positive things about them. Since the process of switching internet providers was going to take some time, due to the fact that nobody would be able to come out to the house for a couple weeks, we decided to look for new equipment that would help spread Wi-Fi all over the farm.
These items we were looking for were a Security Gateway, Indoor Access Points, Outdoor Access Points, and Switches. We weren't going cheap out either, they told me to find what I thought would be the best ones to suit our needs. The process of find the right items took a little longer than I thought, but, with the help of A-I Computers, I found what I thought was the best for the farm. Most of the items I bought were from the Unifi and Netgear brands. The items were the UniFi Security Gateway, UniFi Long-Range Access Point, UniFi Mesh PRO Access Point, Netgear 8-Port Switch with 4 PoE, and Netgear 8-Port PoE Switch. I ordered all of the equipment through A-I Computers in Watertown and, unfortunately, the items took a long time to get to me due to most of the items being on backorder, due to the amount of equipment needed.
The only other item needed was a modem which we bought from CenturyLink and it was their C4000LG model. Once the connections were all made and the equipment all finally arrived, it was the end of July. Where did all the time go? This is where I started running into a few problems, the first one was not being able to connect to the modem and the CenturyLink network. After trying to modify my computer's network settings and resting the modem, twice, I admitted defeat and called tech support. After multiple attempts and a phone call which lasted 3 1/2 hours, mostly on hold, I was able to go in and get the modem connected and was able to get the Internet using our new provider.
After getting the new Internet up and running, I set up the Unifi Network Manager that would manage and run all of the Unifi products from the main house computer, which did not take long. After getting the manager done, I set-up the USG, the Switch, and the AP that would be used in the main house and running. Early on, I had trouble connecting the USG, but after changing my IPv4 settings and resetting the USG, it worked perfectly.
The Main House set-up (We are going to set up a shelf and the AP will be moved to a different location):
Once that was completed, I went and set up what needed to be installed in our guesthouse and got it connected (Sorry for the weird lighting and angle as this photo was taken from deep inside an office desk):
