Nook Net of the North: A PortMaster users saga By John G. Thompson, Technical Support Engineer Since April of last year, I've been in an email support conversation with Ramon Gandia, who owns, with his wife Margaret, a small Internet service provider (ISP) business called Nook Net based in Nome, Alaska. Ramon has been working to bring Internet access to the residents of several Eskimo villages around Nome. To do this he has been deploying PortMaster 2E units at his company's hub and remote locations and connecting the PortMaster devices over high mountains via solar-powered microwave repeaters. As I've exchanged emails with and provided installation tips to Ramon over the past months, I've become increasingly excited about his project. Following are excerpts from the many emails Ramon sent me between May and November of 1998. The photos are provided courtesy of Ramon and his courageous project team. May 3, 1998 Ramon: We recently had a weather window here, so I decided to move forward with this project to hook up villages to Nome via microwave. I spent a while flying about in a helicopter, checking out some other mountain top sites. Nook Net owner Ramon Gandia (left) and his mechanic Doug Melland (right) survey a microwave antenna site on White Mountain. Found a site that's easy to land on; from there I can see a target village and Nome at the same time, so that I can eliminate a double-relay for this village, assuming I can secure permission to rent from the land owner. This will save me a lot of money in construction and maintenance. John: Yes! Ramon: That helicopter I was in was a Robinson R-22, which is a two-seater, the smallest made. There is no room for baggage, but quite a bit fits between your legs if you do not mind being cramped. I strapped the antenna stuff to the outside skids. It worked out okay, at a tremendous savings compared to chartering larger, turbine-powered machines. I will be returning to configure the PortMasters this week. Will probably upgrade the memory on them first. Will keep you posted, so please keep this ticket open. John: Nice thing about email-it is very easy to open and close tickets! Good luck! May 8, 1998 Ramon: One of the village land owners has come through; the contract is supposed to be signed Monday. So, at least with this one location, the project is moving ahead. There is one more mountaintop site that I am waiting word from. This week I ordered 16 1x9-60 memory modules to upgrade all my PortMasters to 4 MB of RAM. When this is done, I will upgrade to ComOS 3.7 and proceed per your instructions. Will keep you posted. John: Excellent! By the way, make that ComOS 3.7.2 please. Ramon and his team unpack their tools to begin installing electronic components on the White Mountain relay tower. June 2, 1998 Ramon: The very first village we're connecting is White Mountain, located approximately 60 miles east of Nome, on the bank of the Fish River. . . . There are other villages with associated repeater sites as well. Altogether, 15 villages are associated with Nome. Nome is Alaska's eighth largest city. We have a population of 4,100. It's so large, I only know half the people here. :-) September 3, 1998 Ramon: We had appalling weather here this summer; it grounded the helicopter and made overland trips to the mountaintops impractical. However, it finally cleared up. I got one of the microwave links up-specifically, the one from Nome to White Mountain, Alaska. Doug (left) adjusts the antenna mast for verticality and Ramon (right) wires the solar panel that will provide power for the facility. Meanwhile, Ramon's son (lower right) stabilizes the antenna frame. I'm starting to configure the PortMaster 2E20 that's going to White Mountain. I'd like to know if you are still around, on tap, in case I run into problems. With your excellent instructions I do not anticipate any, but . . . November 2, 1998 Ramon: The microwave link between Nome and White Mountain is working fine with only one mountaintop repeater station. There are now 10 users in the little village of 250 Eskimos. I'm using a PortMaster 2E at each end; the routing from the one at White Mountain is serial port S19 out and connects via an async microwave radio repeater to S29 on the PortMaster 2E here in Nome. All done per your instructions, and it is working great! There's another pair of villages about to come on line. But because the weather's been so bad, all we could do to install the microwave tower supporting those links was to sling-load it on a helicopter at the base of the mountain. We are sitting out the weather now. It is one blizzard after another. But, if the gods of the ethernet are with us, we'll get a sunny day with a clear blue sky and a helicopter will be available on that day so we can bring the other two villages on line. Thanks for your help. You can close my tickets now. I am a very satisfied customer! Lucent Technical Support Engineer John G. Thompson (JGT) at his terminal in the Pleasanton, CA office of the InterNetworking Systems. Author's Note: To find out more about Ramon's pioneer efforts in Alaska, visit his company's web site at http://www.nook.net.