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"campus" wifi on-the-fly

Can someone help me discover HOWTO for an on-the-fly "campus" wireless network? I will be part of a large youth sports event spread over several acres of grassy fields. I need a wireless network for the event operations and administration. I want to operate a private wireless lan, "under the stars" with a few puddles of kiosks participating.

Some of my thoughts:

I need some sort of antenna for outside use with wifi.
I need a primary wifi access point
I could use a wifi router & access point to connect with the primary for each kiosk puddle
I could use a pair of wifi router & access point boxes, with directional antennae, as point to point
phone and tablet and pda and laptop boxes, in the hands of staff,
could use this private wifi lan for event operations
I could put a LAMPP or XAMPP server someone on this lan for event operations
The server could have a connection to the public internet somehow

If I used one of the linux open-source wifi box, hotspot images or similar, I could manage this lan as a group of steamer-trunk, drop and setup stations...

Comments and suggestions wanted eagerly,
~~~ 0;-Dan

If it's private, you'll need to set up security.
Do you have the equipment to set it up and have you looked into any online documentation for networking concerning your distribution of choice?
It may be a lot of headache to have a user on both the main server and the acces point. Try letting only the access points use the server and the users connect by access point. Look at it from a security standpoint.
Hardware is something you need to research. If you don't have much to spend, better be thinking "refurbihed" or "used."
If you want a private LAN separate from the "main" then set it up on a different server. Use different access points.

Interference is something to take into consideration. Not trying to discourage you.
Network names need to be unique. God knows how many NETGEAR and Dlink networks there are. What I mentioned earlier, secure systems. It doesn't take much to crack security if the password is weak.

You are setting up a non-Univerity network and a lot of people are going to like that freedom.

Security is a must. Else their is an option of mis-using it. In case you are not in a position to pull network cables to that place, you can use Ethernet over power. The other thing to comes to mind is to use the same ESSID across all the AP's since, these will help people to move across different AP's without loosing connectivity.

--
Prasanta

I'm looking for help with the network plumbing at this stage. Here is what to accomplish:

Code:

{some kiosk boxes} =z= wire =z= {N-port wifi router 1}



{N-port wifi router 1} =z= {wireless LAN} =z= {N-port wifi router 2}



{N-port wifi router 1}  =z= wire =z=  {some kiosk boxes}



{wireless LAN} =z= {walk-about boxes}



{wire or wireless LAN} =z= {FOSS "hotspot"} =z= {general public}



{wire or wireless LAN} =z= {event server}



{event server} =z= {something} =z= {public internet}

Can someone tell me about how to configure the router-1 to router-2 wireless "bridge"? Since this will run outdoors, what makes best sense for antennae (directional, high-gain, well elevated)?

Do I need separate wireless access points for walk-about so that the "bridge" bandwidth is preserved for that traffic? All wireless will be 802.11n.

Which wireless router hardware do you recommend?

Which software (vendor or FOSS) runs on the wireless routers?
Which FOSS if you recommend that approach?

Your active icon states Ubuntu but is that what you are using for the server?
What to do:
http://www.google.com/linux
Enter the distribution you are using for the network.
Go to "search within results" at the bottom of the page.

Use that to see what Howto's and configs are available to you.
When you come to a part that you have trouble with, post to the mailing lists, this thread, and to the official forums of the distribution.

Nearly all Open Source- BSD and Linux- will have howto's on configuring networking, bridging, etc. You will need to see what hardware works- there is a hardware compatibility list for that- and what you can afford according to that list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr-Bisquit (Post 3959478)

Nearly all Open Source- BSD and Linux- will have howto's on configuring networking, bridging, etc. You will need to see what hardware works- there is a hardware compatibility list for that- and what you can afford according to that list.

Yes, I'm using *-buntu boxes. I have a pretty good handle on config for the server and workstations and so on. I'm trying to discover how to use set-up and config two (or more) wireless router, gateway, access point boxes as a free standing lan in the middle of a sports complex.
It is this point-to-point bridge that I cannot discover how to accomplish.

~~~ 0;-Dan