Wireless Networking - 2 Mile Distance

[Don]

Chaps. Been reading through the interesting stuff about Local Area Wireless networks. All seems no problem...

But what I want to do is have two Wireless Access Points in seperate buildings and link the two of them using a Wireless medium distance connection. I have line-of-sight between the two buildings and a distance of almost exactly two miles.

Anyone done anything similar? Would you believe the reason why I want to do this is to connect my offices (no broadband at all of any kind) to my house (which can get *wireless* broadband) so that I can:

1) Work from home as if I was on the office LAN
2) Connect the office to the internet via a broadband connection via a little routing at my house!

So..anyone done it? Anyone an expert who'd be prepared to 'mail me a decription of the products etc that would be needed?

Any help much appreciated.

[pbrettle]

2 miles is not really possible - you can get long distance WLAN access points, maybe upto 1 mile I suppose, but the quality degrades considerably and cant really do it. What about microwave?

To be honest, the best and most cost effective is to use the internet, broadband and a VPN.

Cheers,

Paul

[Simon T]

Don,

You need a microwave link for 2 miles line of sight comms. Or semaphore

[Don]

Thanks for your input, guys.

Cisco seem to be talking about Antennas on their site that do 11mbps to 2 miles and using a directed (dish like) Antenna can do 25 miles!

It did seem a bit on the unlikely side to me....

Yep, Matt, In any sensible location I'd agree with you but I live in good old Basingstoke (Kempshott side) where BT have no plans to roll out ADSL, there is no cable provider and the only broadband supplier is wireless (Liberty Broadband ex Tele2). I can get that at my house but my offices are in a listed building which doesn't belong to me and is in a dip - so the wireless broadband can't get to it.

The only alternative is a leased line that BT are quoting £13,000p.a. As you might expect I told them to f*** o** and so I am willing to get very creative in my attempts to get some reasonable bandwidth into my offices at a decent price!

[Pookie]

http://www1.planet.com.tw/www/htdocs/product/CATALOG/cables.htm

They have antennas etc that can transceive up to 40km. check them out.

I’m guessing the government would also like a small contribution for a transmition licence or whatever they can think of to bleed you dry.

I know many companies in high rise office blocks use laser links for line of sight applications, but ill guess they are pretty hefty in price?

I was thinking that if there is clear line of sight, maybe a small device could be created for a laser link? a simple converter that converts the signal from the rj45 to 2 well placed laser transceivers? there as effectively just being an extension to the connection to your LAN?

>> Edited by Pookie on Tuesday 11th February 17:46

[AlanN]

Whatever you do don't be tempted by BT's Satellite "Broadband".
Take it from me (we took them to court in the end), "Broadband" it ain't!
Here's some stuff that may be of interest, I've never used any of it but if it does what it says on the tin...

www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=3CRWE90096A-E1&asource=
www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=DWL-1800B&asource=
www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=DWL-1800R&asource=

Good luck!

Alan.

[pbrettle]

Microwave is really the way to move forward - a quick search on Google came up with the following:

http://rf-links.com/microwave.htm

Ok, so its RF communications for TV pictures, but I am sure that some adapting and relevant routing kit should sort that out (cant you tell that I am not a telecomms engineer ).

Oh, and by the way, £13,000 PA from BT is taking the michael. You should be aiming at around £6000 for a 128 or 256 line - thats more like the going rate from any supplier. Obviously this is based on numbers etc, but a little shopping around should sort that out.

Alternatively try satellite broadband. BT do a service which has prices below:

www.btopenworld.com/satellite/pricing.html

Again need to sort out a VPN and routing kit for the networks, but shouldnt be too hard to do that.

Cheers,

Paul

[niggle]

On the cheap, a linksys WET11 plus a couple of external directional antennae(?) would probably do the trick.

Cisco also publish this spreadsheet for calculating the max distances.

HTH

[manek]

I gather the Cisco long-distance stuff does work -- but because of European regs it's only powerful enough to run up to 11 miles rather than the 25 they can use in the US.

[roop]

The important thing here is are the sites in line-of-sight of each other with no obstructions (not even light foliage or a mesh fence). Without LOS you're into building masts or cabling it. With LOS you can use standard 802.11b kit to get up to 15km at 11MBit/s although the beam angle is narrow at this range. At 2km, two decent high gain Yagi antennas might just to the trick before reverting to a dish arrangement.

I've had 800m range connecting a laptop with a home made antenna I cobbled together to an access point with no special antennas.

Roop

Roop

[308gt4]

Chaps. Been reading through the interesting stuff about Local Area Wireless networks. All seems no problem...

But what I want to do is have two Wireless Access Points in seperate buildings and link the two of them using a Wireless medium distance connection. I have line-of-sight between the two buildings and a distance of almost exactly two miles.

Anyone done anything similar? Would you believe the reason why I want to do this is to connect my offices (no broadband at all of any kind) to my house (which can get *wireless* broadband) so that I can:

1) Work from home as if I was on the office LAN
2) Connect the office to the internet via a broadband connection via a little routing at my house!

So..anyone done it? Anyone an expert who'd be prepared to 'mail me a decription of the products etc that would be needed?

Any help much appreciated.

Don,

Just did this for a customer, used the Cisco Aironet350 kit which costs about $6K aud (2K pounds) which comes with 2 Yagi 12.5db antennae , 50' low loss cable , 2 350 Aironet bridges and all the mounting brackets.

4km distance OVER the top of some heavy industrial sites with many trees (Roop is right though, trees are the big problem, moisture ya see)

These antennae were so good i didn't even have to get them to alignment before I started getting excellent sig/noise ratio which allowed 20 full size ping packets as well as 2 transfers of 100GB files with no dropped packets.

I've done microwave too but this stuff is miles ahead and requires no FCC or whatever the authority is in the UK, approval. You just put an IP address on the bridges and connect to them for full configuration via the browser, too easy. If you go down this route send me an email and I'll send you some example configs to secure the link (a must in this day and age!)

Cheers

john

BTW you'll love it, it is so simple and quick, I've got 11mb up to 10kms so 2 miles is a cinch

[308gt4]

manek said: I gather the Cisco long-distance stuff does work -- but because of European regs it's only powerful enough to run up to 11 miles rather than the 25 they can use in the US.

Manek,

Cisco now only make one type of WLAN bridge the Aironet350 which is used across the world now and it is capable of 100mw as opposed to the 30mw limitation for Europe but is configurable for 1-100mw so no problems. Even at low settings it will still do 11mbps for some considerable distance (varies according to many things so pointless stating distances).

The Yagis are great for up to about 30kms in perfect conditions giving you 11mbps and if you want to go further (I tried this) you need to use the parabolic dishes (strangely similar to the Sky/BSB dishes )

I have been playing with wireless since 94 in various incantations and am only now happy with the standards based products coming out of the industry. The old wireless gear was 1 or 2 mbps and we thought that was OK for a limited number of apps but the new products are excellent for taking the place of copper.

GT4