Technology Project List

This is a blog about the needs of Hospital Loma de Luz; the geeky ones. For all of us regular geeks. A list of projects that we believe would be beneficial to what God's doing here at the hospital and associated ministries.
Some of these projects are 'team projects' meaning that you come and provide the labor. With most projects we ask that you raise the necessary funding prior to coming. There may also be special tools or equipment that we'll ask you to bring. Also on this blog you will also find a wish list of equipment and tools that we can't get here in Honduras.  Lastly, you'll find several posts that are simply IT questions for our geek friends to consider and answer (via comments) when they can.  
When you've found the project or equipment that your interested in contact Dave Fields, the head geek, at davef@lomadeluz.net.

Our first video! Mission Connection 2010

A recent list of IT Equipment needs

Needed Equipment:

Hi Bart!

I wanted to respond to your kind request asking us if we needed any other types of IT equipment here in the hospital.  I try and keep lomadeluzgeek.blogspot.com updated with current needs - but as I'm sure you noticed I'm not always able to maintain that site. In fact, I'll stick a copy of this note there so that anyone else that is checking the blog will see it as well.  Lastly, I'll copy a few friends who have also asked me for such a list.  Let me just start out by saying thank you for your interest in the technical needs of Hospital Loma de Luz.  We are so encouraged by your interest and your support.  I assure you that these are real needs that would assist us greatly with our mission to deliver health care to this very poor section Honduras. 

Bullet 2 (5) and Bullet 2hp (5) Wireless Amplifier/routers  http://www.ubnt.com/bullet

2000 feet of fiber optic cable as well as three routers that can be used to terminate the fiber into Ethernet networks.  We also need need the equipment and knowledge on how to terminate the fiber optic into the routers.  We need a type of Fiber that it fairly durable and could be used outdoors (although we would put it in an inexpensive conduit to protect it) and we need to make two 1000' runs in a daisy chain type of a configuration. 

Switches.  6-10 16 or 24 port switches and 12 or so smaller 4 port switches.  

Wireless routers / wireless access points / omni directional antennas / 2.4 ghz 802.11b/g stuff

Wireless pager (Doctor would carry the pager on his belt) paging system with 24 pagers.

Ethernet network cable and RJ45 connectors

Servers - 2-4 Windows based servers.  Good used condition is fine.  

10 laptops per year.  Again, Windows based - good used condition is fine.  

Ethernet based ip security cameras and a DVR based recording system.  

Type N, Type TNC coax cable connectors.  

Warning lights for towers (red flashing warning lights for outdoor towers that are 100' tall)

Cell phone repeaters for 850 mhz cellular systems that work with external antennas 

What else?  I'm sure there is more and I'll update you as the list grows.  I'll also try and keep thelomadeluzgeek.blogspot.com website updated with current needs.  

Please email me at davef@lomadeluz.net if you need more info about the types of equipment that I've listed here or if you think that you might be able to help us out. 

Thank you!

Dave Fields

Hospital Loma de Luz

Balfate: Colon

Honduras

Update - 2010 September

Hi everyone!  Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a bit.  We're still here!  The ministry of hospital Loma de Luz continues to be a blessing to the North Coast of Honduras.  We are still struggling with most of the same issues that you see listed below. We believe that we may have a donation of laptops.  Please pray that this comes through!  I'll post an announcement once we get final word.  This will be an ongoing need, though - so please continue to consider us for laptops.  We are still looking for a couple thousand feet of fiber optic cable (I think I've decided to abandon coax for now) and some fiber optic to Ethernet routers.  I'm also hearing about a possible donation on a phone system - which would be a wonderful blessings.  I'll try and get some more specifics up in the next week or so.  Thank you to all who pray for our ministry and help in so many ways.  Please stay tuned!

Grace and Peace,
Dave Fields
Hospital Loma de Luz.

Fiber optic cable and routers.

IT Question:
Needed Equipment:

**Update - 2010 September.  Feel like I need to go with Fiber here as I may be looking at runs from 2000' to 1KM in the future.  Someone told me to take a look at   Allied Telesyn FS709FC routers and they look like exactly what I need.  I think I'll need three of these and about 2000' of fiber optic cable.  Question:  how hard is it to terminate the  fiber optic cable?  Anyone out there with experience with this?  Blessings, DF






2010 - April
We have a couple of long run (700'-1000') cabling needs.  I had been trying to find some fiber optic cable and switches when some friends recently suggested that I look into coax for these runs.  After doing some research, I'm sold on the idea.  It seems like we can buy some coax to Ethernet adapters and run our cabling up to about 1500' with no issues.  I'd love to hear from someone who's done this to confirm that this is an easy cheap way to make these runs.  I'd also wonder if there is anyone out there with this type of equipment "sitting around".  I understand that coax used to be utilized for ip networks frequently before Ethernet cabling became so popular.

So to summarize, what I am looking for is two things:  1) confirmation that this is a good way to achieve 700'-1000' cabling runs for high speed data and 2) to see if anyone has access to 1500' of coax and or the coax to Ethernet adapters lying around that they could donate.

Thank you and blessings!

DF

Asterisk Question(s):

IT Question:

We use Asterisk (open source PBX) for all of our local ip-phone extensions in the hospital and in the missionary homes.  It allows us a quick easy way to pick up a phone and ring an extension.  Nurses call doctors at home when they are on call with this system.  Doctors can quickly and easily call the pharmacy, or the nurses station.  In short, it is a real time saver and a pretty important part of the communications here.  Lastly, we do rent some did (direct inbound dial) numbers and folks can place calls to the states on them and receive calls to US numbers on them.

All of this is wonderful, but I don't know how to do much with it.  I don't know how to troubleshoot it and certainly don't know how to fix it.  If a reboot won't fix it, I'm in trouble! :)

Right now, we have a case where certain extensions can call others, but no one can call them.  I've trotted my one trick pony out onto the stage, rebooted, and alas  - still broken.  Does anyone out there know Asterisk?  Can you give me some pointers on where to start troubleshooting this?  Also, we have frequent internet outages here.  The extension to extension phone calls don't work when the internet is out.  Why?  The whole system seems to fail when the internet goes out. I can (obviously) understand why inbound DID calls don't work when the internet is out, but the doctors should be able to call the nurses and so forth - sans internet.  Again, any help in troubleshooting these problems would be greatly appreciated!

Please respond via the comments with more questions or suggestions.

Thank you and God Bless!

Dave Fields

What is my bandwidth usage right now?

IT Question:




Before I start, let me say that we are SO BLESSED to have any type of high speed internet here at the hospital, essentially in the jungle.  I am aware that so many that came before us to this place had to drive to town (more than an hour) to make a phone call or later to send an email as little as four years ago in this place.  Today, we watch Youtube videos and check Facebook 20 times a day and then when it is slow, we complain.  We are so very thankful for the connectivity that we have, but that said, we also want to be the best stewards of the connectivity that we have and we do often have very high demand for bandwidth.

We currently have a 1,000Kbps (1Mbps) connection which comes to us via point to point wireless at 2.4Ghz over about 28 miles or so.  Right now, if I ping google.com I get response times between 70-115 mili-seconds.  It is pretty common for me to get response times in the 30 msec when usage is low and I usually get times over 100 msec when usage is higher.    There are around 50 people here that share the connection.  Admittedly, we don't all use the internet, but I'd say that there must be 30 or more laptops here and it would be very likely that 20 of us are using the internet on any given evening.  Additionally, during the day, we are using the internet for online classes for some of our home-school students (sometimes three at a time) and doctors are doing medical research (and checking their Facebook) and we have this IT guy that uses a fair amount as well.  So day and night we generally have more demand than we have bandwidth.   

Here, finally, is the reason for my post:  how do I know at any given moment, what our total bandwidth usage is on our internet link?  What software/hardware can I use to give me a right now snapshot of our bandwidth usage?  Additionally, If I could subdivide it out by router IP address (each house is on a router with a fixed ip so that I know who is what and where) that would just be perfect.    

Extra credit:  can I do bandwidth shaping such that I never allow one downstream router more than say half of the bandwidth of the connection so that one house (router) can't dominate the connection?

Some details.  The connection comes in to the hosptial via 2.4Ghz connection and is then ported into our SonicWALL TZ170.  We then redistribute that connection out to the campus.  We distribute it directly to the hospital users (they are connected directly to the SonicWALL via cable or wireless) and we also send it out to the houses via 802.11b to a receiving router (Linksys WRT54G) running DD-WRT firmware. When I look at our usage history (past, not present) - I can see usage by router and know that a particular house used x amount of bandwidth yesterday, but it doesn't give me a good sense of how that might have been choking the system at a particular given point in time.

Please leave any questions or comments in the comments sections of this post and thank you for your help!

DF