This is an old 802.11b setup which is now defunct and WAY out of date. Our connection to the Internet was fairly new technology, especially for Syracuse, NY. We had what is called a Wireless Local Loop (WLL) or Multichannel, Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS). The wireless signal is a beam around 2.5 GHz that points to a tower on top of our State Tower Building. It's a line-of-site setup, so no obstructions can be in the way (The only downfall of this technology, but POP towers are suppose to be available for other locations). 

The CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) is PaeTec. The provider and carrier of the equipment, and well as the actual WLL, is CyberTech Wireless. The connection from the tower has at least 5 backbones to the Rochester, NY hub (A BIG plus in my book!). Once there, it travels through Verio's backbone to the rest of the Internet. The connection is equivalent to a T-1 line (1.54Mbps), both up and down speed (1.5/1.5), and is upgradeable to 4Mbps with a simple phone call to PaeTec. The technology is capable of 11Mbps, but I think PaeTec put a cap on it for now so as not to oversell the bandwidth (another plus).

It was installed on July 21,2000. Compared to the sDSL line we had, the WLL is a hell of a lot more reliable. Even through heavy rain, snow, or fog, the connection hasn't been effected one bit (It's monitored on our end and at DSLReports 24/7). Running a UT server or other type of server is smooth, with excellent latency and very little, if at all, packet loss. Our average latency to the gateway is always under 10ms!! Try THAT with cable or xDSL! (Sorry, had to say it ;) )

Now to the hardware...

The equipment on our end consists of a small yagi dish mounted on our roof and a thick coaxial cable that goes through the roof to a small device called an access point. The access point is then connected to our Firewall/Router, which was a DLink DI-701 Internet Gateway, which then got upgraded to a Netopia R9100 as our bandwidth and security needs increased. Since we test a variety of Internet connection sharing solutions, this setup is ideal for our purposes since the static IP address is independent of the type of connection. With our old sDSL line, we had to give the CLEC the MAC address of the NIC it was connected to in order to assign it a static IP.

Finally, here are some pictures.
(Click on the images to see a larger version)

The yagi antenna and how it's mounted. The grey box above it is a 5 GHz antenna that we eventually got upgraded to as the 2.5 GHz spectrum started filling up and we started to have some issues:

A close up of the yagi antenna, both in front and in back:

And the focal point at the front of the antenna:

This is the device that powers the dish and converts the signal to an Ethernet connection. It's an Aironet 4800 Series Wireless Access Point (It use to retail over $1000.00!). It was installed before Cisco bought out Aironet and changed the design and look. This model is no longer made. On top, from left to right, is the Ethernet connection, the power cord, and part of the coax that goes to the roof. Behind the Ethernet jack is a 9-pin serial configuration port.

Here is the lightning arrestor, which is necessary to protect the access point from static build-up that the antenna can pick up. The black cable that curves up (to the left of the coax connections) is connected to earth ground.

The two cables to the left are not part of this system, but part of the 5GHz antenna pictured above the Yagi antenna. The black cable is a shielded CAT5 cable attached to the grey flat-panel antenna, and the green wire is a ground for static protection.