long distance wireless

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cieje

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 19, 2006
Messages
252
Within months... I'll be moving to a rural area where my home will not get broadband of any sort, nor does the phone company know when I can get it or plan on even bringing it to that area. The cable company doesn't even plan to ever bring cable there either... Although I have heard rumors of FIOS at some point... 2+ year timeframe.

So I'm down to 3 options that I see: stay with dialup - satellite (which wouldn't be the end of the world, except that I can never play cs:s again) or possibly setting up a long distance point to point wireless connection.

I'll actually be starting a business in-town where both dsl and cable are available, and probably only... 10ish miles away; haven't decided on a building to lease yet.

What options do I have if I can get line-of-sight? Has anybody done anything like this? I really wouldn't want to spend more than... $700 ideally. I could setup a tower at my home above the trees that could help...
 
microwave link...needs some serious dish equipment though...

I think 10 miles on a can-tena may be pushing it but I think i read something with people shooting wi-fi signals like 75 miles using certain antenas
 
If you can get line of site. Then it is defiantely possible. It will be QUITE involved. So if you are even remotely timid then maybe this is not for you. The long and short of it. You will need two powerful acess points/routers with amplifiers both on the Tx and Rx. A directional attena (the higher the gain the better, some converted microwave antennas can be up to 24dbi gains)). DD-WRT has some options to help with getting the link stable, but keep in mind, In inclement weather etc. you will still have problems. I have read of people getting 20ish kilometer links. You are getting close at above 16km. You will set both wireless acess points to act as bridges between the two networks. I will do some more research and see if I can get you some nitty gritty details about the setup etc.
 
I know a guy who did it, about 10km away.... but he had some industrial grade bridges given to him, from a local company.... he only got about 2mbit's though....
 
the only thing im gonna say is please try and keep it legal when it comes to power/gain/ERP etc...

anyway

your going to NEED line of sight...

2.4ghz is microwave which is very LOS and dosent make it well through any objects in the way...

your probably gonna need a pair of these

http://www.fab-corp.com/product.php?productid=2894&cat=251&page=1

and your probably gonna want to pick up some outdoor enclosures like this

http://www.fab-corp.com/product.php?productid=16195&cat=278&page=1

you want to keep the feedline between your antenna and AP/Client/Bridge as short as possible... or preferably no feedline at all... that antenna has an N female on the end... so you could drill a hole and slip the N female into your enclosure, then get an N Male to whatever adapter and plug it straight to your wireless device... so like, N Male to RP-TNC Male to go to a WRT54g mounted inside the box...

then just run a long cat5 with PoE into your house and you should be good to go... next up would be actually aligning the dishes... this is really the hardest part, think of pointing a laser at a piece of paper 10 miles away, its not easy... if you by any chance know anyone with a spectrum analyzer (and preferably a signal generator too) this is by far the easiest way of aligning two microwave dishes... if not you could setup one antenna with an AP and then get a pigtale for your notebook and just start moving the antennas on both sides (your gonna want two people with cellphones for this one) and slowly move the antennas around until you get the highest signal... this will take forever and its a very important step...

sorry its so long, but its a complicated process... if you do pull it off, hey, at least you will have internet :)
 
According to the FCC rules Part 15.247 the max a general network can have is an EIRP of 4watts. While a point-to-point network can have higher wattage based upon the dBi of the antenna.
 
Thanks all for the responses! I know it's a daunting task... but if it's a possibility I'm willing to try. Here's some solutions I found, to see what people think:

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/wireless/point-to-point-bridge.php

That one is line of sight... but this one:

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/w...hp?PHPSESSID=61dbf33094e4a2848d6dd6b31bd45f6d

says it can pass through some trees etc...

I don't know the exact distance; But I do know that my house is located on an open valley surrounded by trees ~2miles from the main road. This whole idea will probably be unrealistic once I find a place to lease, but I can dream...
 
Much easier if you can somehow relay at a mid point. Make a deal with a local business/house 5 miles in.
 
you may need a license for something like that also you will need some hefty encryption.
 
I have done ~2 miles with Cisco Aironet APs and antennas. I don't recall the throughput that we achieved, but It was generally stable. There were issues during precipitation though. This was mainly packet loss and slowdowns of the link.
 
cieje said:
Thanks all for the responses! I know it's a daunting task... but if it's a possibility I'm willing to try. Here's some solutions I found, to see what people think:

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/wireless/point-to-point-bridge.php

That one is line of sight... but this one:

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/w...hp?PHPSESSID=61dbf33094e4a2848d6dd6b31bd45f6d

says it can pass through some trees etc...

I don't know the exact distance; But I do know that my house is located on an open valley surrounded by trees ~2miles from the main road. This whole idea will probably be unrealistic once I find a place to lease, but I can dream...
Click to expand...

ya no thats bs, microwave is still microwave, you need LOS...

see if you can get LOS... things like google earth and MSN live will give you a good idea of the kind of stuff that will be inbetween you and where you want to go... get some height... how high is your building in the city? can get yourself a tower at home? some rohn 45 should be easy to find and not that difficult to setup...

phr0ze mid point idea is a good one too... see if there is someone closer to town that would also want internet, heck you might even make a little side business out of it...
 
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