I recently had the opportunity to provide Internet connectivity to the first Airsoft Arms Fair so the Stall operators could show YouTube videos, Retailers could utilise Paypal and so media outlets could do Live blogging or upload high resolution pictures throughout the day.

The core of this setup was a series of 3G Modems linked up with 3G to ethernet devices such as the Solwise NET-3G-3GWIFIMRW.

These were backed off onto a server running Squid and BIND with DHCP containing all the relevant proxy auto config data (plus some IPTables magic for those that didn’t play nice).

Couple this with three Access points with 8db omni’s spread about to acheive maximum coverage I was pleased to see that at one point the network was sustaining over 8mbit/s of throughput!

There was a lot of web browsing, I was streaming spotify, people were blogging and tweeting and despite the heat it all stayed alive.

Next time I’ll be doing it without mains power either so mount up the UPS’s and gas the generators!