Directional building to building Wifi

[gizard]

Hi All,

I am trying to get a decent broadband connection for my parents. they currently have only about 0.25 meg ! which is draconian considering less than half a mile a way BT infinity is available - however for reasons not exactly known they will not upgrade / add the fibre cabinet in my parents street.

The only other option open to them is a microwave link to Portsmouth (they live on the Isle of Wight). However I am not convinced this is a good idea because of the volume of shipping that goes up and down the Solent and their house is almost at sea level.

So I have BT infinity at a property that is approximately 300 - 350 meters as the crow flies from their house which I believe has line of sight (I need to confirm this and understand that it will make a difference).

My question is what sort of speed over 2.4ghz wifi will I get with directional wifi in line of sight with something like the following and would I need any form of booster or will a couple of standard wifi APs be good enough (Draytek Vigor AP 700):

http://www.wifi-antennas.co.uk/antennas/18dbi-2-4g...

What sort of speed would I expect to get (it would need to be 10MB plus in order for it to be worth while

I was thinking of them keeping their existing broadband (lets call it narrowband!) and using an old 2820 draytek router which has a secondary internet port for load balancing etc with the wifi AP link connected to the secondary WAN port.....

[gizard]

andy-xr said:

They not using Wightfibre? Thought they had everything on the island sorted out?

Ha ha far from it, the microwave link is an offering from Wightfibre but as mentioned it is / will be susceptible to ships blocking the signal on a regular basis...

[gizard]

Well my parents neighbour has 'wightfibre wireless' and says that every time a ship goes past it gets disrupted.... plus I am not sure but wouldn't the link also be disrupted by trees? There are trees on their sea wall which will probably be in the line of sight of the microwave link and they will not want to cut down or back the trees....

[gizard]

andy-xr said:

Gotcha, seems odd - I'd have thought they'd be using 5 and 18Ghz rather than 2.4 tbh, but you know more than I do!

ah no you miss understand me - I've no clue about the microwave link or whatever Wightfibre provide to link to Portsmouth. I am proposing to do a standard wifi link over 350 odd metres to a property that does have a BT infinity broadband hence my question in the first post about what sort of speed I should expect to get using the linked antenna?

[gizard]

arcturus said:

Just use Ubiquiti kit. It is what it is built for. As a previous poster said, get 2 of these. One at each end, job done, no messing around and it will work (provided you have LOS). We use them regularly for linking buildings.

Thanks all for the replies most helpful. It looks like the above would be the best option 100 quid would be reasonable. I can do the cables easily (I have structured cabled my own house through out!) The tricky bit will be getting on the roof of both houses and then aiming the two... Still I need to confirm that los is actually available - I strongly suspect that chimney stack to chimney stack is los but I am not on the island ATM so cannot confirm...

Cheers G.

[gizard]

Hi All,

Right I have investigated the site in more detail and the distance is 310 meters give or take a few and there is good line of site. the only problem might be that they are at different altitudes so the antennas I assume will need to be angled on two planes horizontal and vertical.

I am wondering which is the best to go for:

https://www.msdist.co.uk/product_Ubiquiti-NanoStat...
84.88 inc Vat per unit


https://www.msdist.co.uk/product_LOCOM5.php
65.48 inc VAT

the difference being the speed I guess - bearing in mind that the internet speed is currently 30 meg infinity but would be capable of the full 70 meg if I upgrade it....

[gizard]

here is a picture taken from an upstairs window of the property that has the decent broadband. circled is the chimney stack I am hopping to mount a receiving wifi link - as mentioned the distance is about 310m and as it's the height of summer there don't appear to be any trees anywhere near the LOS.

[gizard]

oh I should add that I am proposing to mount the antenna on the sending property a little higher than the point the picture was taken, so given the angle there will be even more clearance and better LOS.

[gizard]

TheExcession said:

To the OP, buy a couple of NanoBeam M5s, they're generally cheaper than the NanoStations, and for the sake of your 'neighbours' buy a NanoBridge before you buy a NanoStation (narrower beam), but the NanoBeam is better.

Edited by TheExcession on Wednesday 16th July 01:06

Hi All

in the end with very useful advice from TheExcession I have installed and setup a pair of Ubiqiti Nanobeam M5 19's (16's are not yet available in the UK as these would also have been fine and a little cheaper.

The PTP link has been running for a few days faultlessly and claims to have near perfect signal quality 99% plus most of the time so I'm chuffed it's all working perfectly so far - the hardest part was borrowing a roofing ladder ladder and trying not to fall off the roof whilst routering the cable under tiles etc.!

so cheers and thanks for all the help esp. TheExcession.

[gizard]

I might even be able to getaway with turning the power down even more, I haven't had a chance to go back and play yet. But it has now been up and running for over a week with no problems at all so far...

[gizard]

So - an update after ~ 10 years!

link has been working faultlessly for that long!

However it is now dead - but not a fault of the kit itself - we had windows replaced on the property so the antenna was taken off it's mounting and was left dangling in all the rain- so it filled up with water and shorted it self.

Now need a replacement - sadly the M5 Nanobeam 19 is no longer available so going to have to get two new ones - was thinking of the NBE-5AC-Gen2 NanoBeam AC Outdoor 5GHz 19dBi