What about grounding and lightning protection?
- The AyrMesh Hub has is protected from voltage surges over the electrical lines by an overload circuit in the Power Supply. If the Power Supply is not well-grounded (third “prong” of the plug going to a ground) the Power Supply will burn out if it encounters a voltage spike. This is intentional: the Power Supply is an inexpensive off-the-shelf part which is easily replaced, and it is designed to save the Hub.
- Putting any antenna into the air, especially if it is mounted on a metallic pole, can invite lightning in areas prone to thunderstorms. Grounding and protecting your AyrMesh hubs can help them perform better and protect your property from lightning damage.You don’t want to lose your AyrMesh hubs to lightning, but, more importantly, you don’t want them to invite lightning into your home, where it can do real damage.
- If you live in an area prone to lightning, we strongly suggest, first, that you have a lightning protection system on your house and that the antenna of your AyrMesh hub NOT extend above your lightning rod or rods. We also suggest you place a lightning suppressor (like this one, for instance) on the Ethernet cable between your AyrMesh hub and the power supply, as close to the hub as possible, and ground it properly.
- A lightning suppressor is relatively inexpensive and, properly installed, will protect your house if your AyrMesh hub is struck by lightning. You want to install it outside, of course – under an eave works best, but you can mount it on the same pole as your AyrMesh hub. Make sure the cable holes point down so water runs away from the cable inlets. You’ll need an Ethernet cable to connect the hub to one side of the lightning suppressor, and then you’ll plug your existing Ethernet cable into the other side of the lightning suppressor. Finally, make sure the lightning suppressor is grounded.
- Grounding the lightning suppressor is as simple as connecting it to the grounding system for your lightning rod – use AWG 6 solid copper wire or even 3/4″ copper braid for best results. If you don’t have a lightning rod, run the wire or braid down to either a grounding rod (at least 4′ long copper spike driven into the ground) or a good water pipe that goes underground for at least 4′. Either way, make sure the grounding wire makes very good electrical contact with the grounding rod – a “grounding clamp” is useful for this.
What role does a router play in networking?
A typical “consumer” router (Linksys, D-Link, NetGear, etc.) – is a collection of three pieces:
- A router – this is a piece of equipment and code that connects one network (the “Wide Area Network” or “WAN”, usually the ISP’s Internet connection) to another (the Local Area Network, your home LAN). This piece sets up “Network Address Translation” to provide you with multiple local IP addresses mapped to the one “Public” IP address your ISP gives you, and “Firewalling” to make sure devices on the Internet cannot enter your LAN and interact with the devices there.
- A wireless access point – 802.11 b, g, or n, single or dual-band, single or multi-antenna, etc. – this is connected to the “LAN” side of the router, and
- An Ethernet switch, connected to the LAN side of the router, to provide several “plugs” on your LAN (and you can plug additional switches into that switch if you need additional ports).
What is a Residential Gateway?
A Residential Gateway Device is a router with at least one additional piece in the box: a “Modem” to turn the signal from your telephone line, TV cable, or satellite transceiver into data and vice versa. This connects to (takes the place of) the WAN port of the internal router. They are typically provided by your ISP as “Customer Premises Equipment” (CPE). Note that these Residential Gateway devices may have several other functions integrated with them, including television, telephone, and even home automation features.
Is the AyrMesh WiFi system secure?
The Ayrstone AyrMesh system has been designed to deliver a fast, reliable, and secure network for local use and Internet access. As such, the AyrMesh system uses encryption extensively to secure connections. The encryption we use is unbreakable, but the security of any encryption method is dependent on the use of strong, unguessable passwords. If you have a strong password that no one can guess or steal, your network cannot be broken. If you just leave the default password on your network, you are inviting people to break into your network and the machines on the network. Be sure to change the default passwords on all your electronic devices.
What type of encryption does the AyrMesh system use?
The AyrMesh system uses WPA-TKIP encryption by default to encrypt the data stream between the AyrMesh Hub and a client device. The WPA encryption we use depends on a “Private Shared Key” (PSK) – a password that is shared between the AyrMesh Hub and the client device. This password is selected and entered on your account on ayrmesh.com and then entered on all your client devices. By default, the AyrMesh devices ship with encryption enabled with the password Ayrmesh1. We STRONGLY encourage you to change this password as soon as possible because, of course, that password is publicly known and not secret. To be secure, the password must be secret and difficult to guess. The AyrMesh system also uses a different kind of encryption to pass data back and forth to ayrmesh.com, called “Secure Sockets Layer.” This encryption method uses keys that are generated by the server at ayrmesh.com and the AyrMesh Hub (or your computer when you use ayrmesh.com) to secure the data stream to ayrmesh.com.