Large Area Network Design !

I help a non-profit organisation building a network to help them in their operations. For now I just want to give them access to web traffic and emails, no servers ever.

There is an attached file, this is the plan of the campus, and the blue square is a river.

Actually, only H6 have internet. My plan was to put some wireless access point like in the map and put the router/firewall in the H2 building wich have a locked room and a direct access to the a DSL line.

I dont realy know what to do after, to make it reliable and redundant... Fiber ? Cat6 Cable ? Wireless Bridges ?

If I do fiber, its seems costly and complex running multiple drops (H2 to H3, H2 to H6) plus buying fibers adaptors for the switches. I was thinking prehaps about aerial fiber ?

If I do Cat6, I think the distances are okay but are Cat6 cables are buriable ? Will they resist Canadian winter ?

Wireless bridges give mes concerns about a single point of failiure. If H2 to H3 brige dies, H6 will be offline too...

I am open to consider alternatives solution, I clearly dont know everything

We dont have a lot of money and this is grinding my gears, we will buy our networking equipment from tech soup canada, but I will buy and donate all the wires, firewall (pfSense on a supermicro barebone) and time to this project.

This is an opportunity for me, here to learn some design principes.

http://imgur.com/JZge7

Thanks !

We need to know the exact budget or as close of a number that you can provide.

Without how much is available any help is going to be all over the place.


Other info that would be nice to know:
Do you want wireless in all of the buildings?
Do you plan to put network drops in each of the buildings?
How many sq ft are the buildings?
So if I understand you correctly, you have internet coming into H6? What is it and what is the speed?
If you want to do wireless links between the buildings...Are there foliage or other objects blocking Line of Sight?

This should get the thread going.

Hi !

I dont have realy a clue of the costs neither the budget. The non-profit dont have a lot of money but we are helped by techsoup, we can haves APs, swtiches and routers for ''cheap''. The project can be in one, two or 3 phase. The most important is H6, after H1 H2 H3, in the same year. H4 and H5 are not realy important.

If I do H6 and H2 the first year, it will be acceptable. Because H1 and H3 are at a 20 sec walking distance.

I considered prehaps doing a wireless mesh with Meraki, ask them about a non-profit discount if they have one. Prehaps doing a mesh with other vendors if they offer an affordable solution.

I am more worried about the fiber cost or wireless bridge kits specially if we are outside

1. I plan to wireless all the buildings. I have some bulk cable to do install properly the inside installation. H6 is wired actually because its the main office.

2. Its a good question. I try to plan with maximum availability and try to not make a single point of faillure. The problem I see and you guys will probably see is if I start to fiber from h2, the costs are gonna sums up, either will I have to buy fibers module for the switchs/router or fiber to ethernet converters. H4-H5 will have no network drops.

3. All the building have 2 floors, 2000 sqared feet by floor. There is about 24 people per building but never in 10 years we will have 24 people connected to a AP.

4. There is a phone line in every building and a dry loop. We have a 7mbps/1mbps internet connection actually in the H6 wich is the main office. We will probably upgrade it in the future, but the site is in a remote and unpopulated area.

5. We have some trees and electrical poles beetween each H1-H2-H3 buildings, and a canadian winter each year (brace yourselfs). H3 and H6 is a clear sight.

Do they own all of the land around and between all of the buildings? Are there other buildings in between? Streets?

Are these buildings in place yet?

I guess I am confused as to what is actually in place and connected. The picture makes it seem like you laid fiber through the river.....


But...

I would run direct burial cat5. You can get 1000ft for less than $200.

I would run AT LEAST 2 for each link in case one breaks. H6 to H3, H4, and H5 all direct cat5 connection. Depending on the layout of h3-h6 you may not be able to do this link due to total distance of the cable. I don't know where your switch closet is or demarc, etc., in relation to the building. If that's the case, you still have H6-H4-H3 and H6-H5-H3 so not having a direct H6-H3 link is not a big issue.

Wireless point to point link H4 to H2, and also H3 to H2. Two separate routes.

Direct burial cat5 H1 to H2 (once again run 2 separate cables, maybe even dig two trenches at least a couple feet apart so something going underground and breaking one doesn't require a complete new run)

You could do all wireless links but why when you own all of the land and cable is cheap. Much less problems down the road.

Running any copper cabling between buildings is a terrible idea since you *will* have issues with potential differences - even without considering lighting.

Fiber is the preferred option since it is non conductive.

Microwave links are an option however the unlicensed spectrums aren't getting any less congested. That said Ubiquity makes some products - AirFiber is one. I believe AirFiber is 10GHz which should be reasonably usable for a while.

cymon said:

Running any copper cabling between buildings is a terrible idea since you *will* have issues with potential differences - even without considering lighting.

Fiber is the preferred option since it is non conductive.

Microwave links are an option however the unlicensed spectrums aren't getting any less congested. That said Ubiquity makes some products - AirFiber is one. I believe AirFiber is 10GHz which should be reasonably usable for a while.

Click to expand...

24 GHz actually, but yes, either run fiber or use something like AirFibre. As someone above said run Cat5, if you are going through the work to run direct burial Cat5, you might as well run fiber and do it properly.

I believe the AirFiber units are about $1500 a pair or so.

I would recommend not doing Cat5 or 6 between buildings. If you are really strapped for cash, you could check out other Ubiquiti gear that will give you roughly the same performance as 10/100 wired.

AirFiber may even be overkill for some of these buildings and the distance. I would look at some of the other products Ubiquiti has.

Eickst said:

Do they own all of the land around and between all of the buildings? Are there other buildings in between? Streets?

Are these buildings in place yet?

I guess I am confused as to what is actually in place and connected. The picture makes it seem like you laid fiber through the river.....


But...

I would run direct burial cat5. You can get 1000ft for less than $200.

I would run AT LEAST 2 for each link in case one breaks. H6 to H3, H4, and H5 all direct cat5 connection. Depending on the layout of h3-h6 you may not be able to do this link due to total distance of the cable. I don't know where your switch closet is or demarc, etc., in relation to the building. If that's the case, you still have H6-H4-H3 and H6-H5-H3 so not having a direct H6-H3 link is not a big issue.

Wireless point to point link H4 to H2, and also H3 to H2. Two separate routes.

Direct burial cat5 H1 to H2 (once again run 2 separate cables, maybe even dig two trenches at least a couple feet apart so something going underground and breaking one doesn't require a complete new run)

You could do all wireless links but why when you own all of the land and cable is cheap. Much less problems down the road.

Click to expand...

1. We do own the land, its in a big forest. The plan above, is a small part of a "huge" campus, 2km by 2km wich have other buildings who will never be connected to the internet.

2. Nothing is in place or actually connected, exept H6 who have internet and a phone line. The buildings are kind of newish, is about 5 years, and there is phone service in them but no actual phone number or tonality. Just a ready to activate phone service. All the routers or APs in the picture are not really there.

3. The black lines are just hypothicals drops I immagined and the logical way to wire the campus. The blue box is actually a river. It become an underground river about 10 feet after the H1-H2-H3

It was my understanding that aerial fiber optic is not THAT expensive. Its just the way I (we) want to be, we have to run multiple drops to ensure availability and scalability makes it expensive...If I buy Aerial fiber, will I be able to install it correctly, or do I need a professionnal ? I am working in I.T for about 5 years. Cat5e and Cat6 cabling, cutting, management, im really good at this. Its the same thing for wireless analysis, positioning and installation. But this scenario, I sense that this is gonna be another story.

Here some vendor price,
http://search.cablesplususa.com/nav...rial/Self_Supporting--Environment-Outdoor

Thanks to all for the help and the advice. I really apreciate it.

I even considered to negotiate with the ISP for 1 internet connection in the H2 building and 1 internet connection in the H6 building with a discount.

With this scenario I can concentrate on H1-H2-H3...

Step back a second and talk to the organization to make sure you understand what their business case is here. What do they need to do? What do they currently do without networking these buildings that they might do better with a network? VOIP phones, faxing, data sharing, video conferencing rather than staff walking between buildings?

You said Internet only, which is fine, but you need to think more long term. IT is seen as a cost, not a benefit. So whatever you buy needs to do something for them that a non-IT person can measure.

For the technical stuff, the best long term solution is fiber. I have a customer running 10Gb/s across the same fiber they installed 15 years ago to go at 155 Mb/s. But, you're not going to get that work done cheaply, or by yourself.

Beyond that I'd look at a wireless mesh, so the wireless system does all the connections rather than you.I'm familiar with Ruckus, but other vendors do it as well. Your distances aren't too great, some outdoor APs should probably work fine, depending on the level of trees and terrain.

Finally, talk to the buildings and grounds people to find out if there may already be conduit between buildings, that might make things much easier for you.

I agree with everyone here about fiber vs copper but stand by my previous suggestion for direct burial copper. As soon as you show them a quote for fiber they will just laugh you out of the office. Show them both, give them the pros/cons of both, but expect them to pick the cheap one.

Wireless mesh is another expensive solution. Ruckus, Aruba, Cisco, etc...for this many nodes will be way more than they are probably willing to spend.

But without knowing a real budget for this scenario it's really hard to say. but having worked with non-profits before.....they are probably broke and won't even want to pay for the copper cable option.

Eickst said:

I agree with everyone here about fiber vs copper but stand by my previous suggestion for direct burial copper. As soon as you show them a quote for fiber they will just laugh you out of the office. Show them both, give them the pros/cons of both, but expect them to pick the cheap one.

Wireless mesh is another expensive solution. Ruckus, Aruba, Cisco, etc...for this many nodes will be way more than they are probably willing to spend.

But without knowing a real budget for this scenario it's really hard to say. but having worked with non-profits before.....they are probably broke and won't even want to pay for the copper cable option.

Click to expand...

Ubiquiti wireless gear would not be that expensive. For the short ranges here, we're talking what, $60 per radio (not including installation costs and labor)? Depending on the terrain, some of those gaps could even be covered with UniFi APs

jjeff1 said:

Step back a second and talk to the organization to make sure you understand what their business case is here. What do they need to do? What do they currently do without networking these buildings that they might do better with a network? VOIP phones, faxing, data sharing, video conferencing rather than staff walking between buildings?

You said Internet only, which is fine, but you need to think more long term. IT is seen as a cost, not a benefit. So whatever you buy needs to do something for them that a non-IT person can measure.

For the technical stuff, the best long term solution is fiber. I have a customer running 10Gb/s across the same fiber they installed 15 years ago to go at 155 Mb/s. But, you're not going to get that work done cheaply, or by yourself.

Beyond that I'd look at a wireless mesh, so the wireless system does all the connections rather than you.I'm familiar with Ruckus, but other vendors do it as well. Your distances aren't too great, some outdoor APs should probably work fine, depending on the level of trees and terrain.

Finally, talk to the buildings and grounds people to find out if there may already be conduit between buildings, that might make things much easier for you.

Click to expand...

1. I have worked for them for years and the scenario is quite un-usual. As the H1-H2-H3 are more or less small hotels with chambers for staff during the summer. In the autumn, spring and winter we do rent thoses houses to corporate groups or tourist etc etc to finance the summer activities, I will probably implement a paying hotspot solution with pfSense, to compensate the cost.

As customers in the winter request internet in thoses ''hotels'' the staff want basic internet too in the summer. Think as H1-H2-H3 will only a guest network with limited functions, not even printing... The day to day operations in the summer are quite basic, there is about 3-4 computer in use in the summer (they are in H6). It is really about emails and web browsing to a webserver that I rent and the CRM is there.

The critical networking stuff is in the H6 office who really needs internet access during summer. For the 3 other seasons H6 is disconnected and the equipemet is gonna be in a vault. The IT growth is not gonna be that much because H6 use a home made CRM (that I made, adding modules as time goes by) and that is about it.

2. I am in the board of this non-profit and I pretty have the last word on this project that has to be done, one way or another. I have made some calls on fiber installation companies and the fiber cost + installation was about 7K $. The other members of the board says 7K was what they expected but I need to digg a little more and make multiple scenarios.

3. I will do a very detailled drawing of the cable drops and show it in the thread in the next days.

4. I have cheked the blueprints and I do not see some conduits. They were some planned on the original blueprints but, its a non-profit so they didnt see the need 5 years ago.

5. I will defenetivly look into a wireless solution. The single point of faillure is a concern but it can be prevented with an intelligen design, as more I read about it.

I realy like doing this

If you can afford it, get conduit between buildings and run fiber. Make sure you pull triple or or more strands than what you need right now. If you only need two strands between buildings, have them pull 6 or 8 strands of fiber. The expensive parts of fiber is the splicing, pulling extra strands does not add that much to the cost. To save on splicing costs, get half of the strands spliced and wait until you need the strands to splice the rest.

Also you might have different companies put in the conduit vs the fiber. Usually we have an electrical contractor put in the conduit between locations we need fiber. We then go with another company that specializes in fiber to run the fiber and splice it. They can run the conduit of course, however they charge a lot more for running conduit than other guys.

If you can't do a full conduit + fiber at once, do wireless point to point bridges and the conduit. Then when you have the money run the fiber and splice it and re-use the wireless as backup if a fiber gets cut.

If you really want to save money, buy a bunch of fiber, conduit and rent a Ditch Witch. Do everything except for the splicing yourself.

ubiquiti has bridge kits that will do 300mbps easily and cheaply...

got line of sight? that's all you need...

Eickst said:

I agree with everyone here about fiber vs copper but stand by my previous suggestion for direct burial copper. As soon as you show them a quote for fiber they will just laugh you out of the office. Show them both, give them the pros/cons of both, but expect them to pick the cheap one.

Click to expand...

DO NOT EVER EVER EVER connect buildings with differnt power circuts with copper. This will never pass code or a fire inspection for several reasons.
1) Lightning strikes will cross over the wires
2) Ground differntials between buildings can fry switch gear on the low end or on the high end can cause fires
3) Even things like static caused from wind shear can come into play and fry gear, cause fires, etc.
Ground differnetials are scary things, do not mess with them. Run fiber. Every time.

My three sugeestions in order of use:
1) Fiber between buildings
2) Point to point wireless
3) DSL in each building and VPN tunnels

Devices do exist for protecting copper building to building links....they have been done before in plenty of campus environments. And they are pretty cheap.....

To the OP, you mentioned you got a quote for a fiber install at 7k and that's what other members of the org's board expected. Does that mean they are ok with paying for that? if so it's a no brainer, go with fiber.

7K is very reasonable to get fiber ran.... We paid 30K for a lot less than that.

My suggestions:

Check out the Ubiquiti equipment. Your internal APs should all be Unifi units. Perform your captive portal on them if possible.

Get 1 or 2 internet connections. If you get a SLA business class connection with 99.99%+ uptime maybe you could consider 1 connection.

Listen to these guys in this thread. Use fiber to connect the buildings. Even if you connect it all with cheap 100mbit fiber switches to save money. It's going to save you infinite amounts of pain and cost later. As a stop gap measure, you may be able to use some of the wireless equipment (nanostations) made by Ubiquity in the 3.6Ghz or 5Ghz range to wirelessly interconnect the buildings without impacting your 2.4Ghz connectivity for your clients.

Fiber... heck im using Fiber in my home. I love it. No better way. 7K$$ is pennies.

The Sun can go bat shit and fry everything with EM and CME events, but your fiber will stay all fibrous and glassy haha. Totally awesome stuff.

Mackintire said:

My suggestions:

Check out the Ubiquiti equipment. Your internal APs should all be Unifi units. Perform your captive portal on them if possible.

Get 1 or 2 internet connections. If you get a SLA business class connection with 99.99%+ uptime maybe you could consider 1 connection.

Listen to these guys in this thread. Use fiber to connect the buildings. Even if you connect it all with cheap 100mbit fiber switches to save money. It's going to save you infinite amounts of pain and cost later. As a stop gap measure, you may be able to use some of the wireless equipment (nanostations) made by Ubiquity in the 3.6Ghz or 5Ghz range to wirelessly interconnect the buildings without impacting your 2.4Ghz connectivity for your clients.

Click to expand...

I love this company, I discovered them while I was browsing this forum. I was more a Ruckus AP before

Mackintire said:

My suggestions:

Check out the Ubiquiti equipment. Your internal APs should all be Unifi units. Perform your captive portal on them if possible.

Get 1 or 2 internet connections. If you get a SLA business class connection with 99.99%+ uptime maybe you could consider 1 connection.

Listen to these guys in this thread. Use fiber to connect the buildings. Even if you connect it all with cheap 100mbit fiber switches to save money. It's going to save you infinite amounts of pain and cost later. As a stop gap measure, you may be able to use some of the wireless equipment (nanostations) made by Ubiquity in the 3.6Ghz or 5Ghz range to wirelessly interconnect the buildings without impacting your 2.4Ghz connectivity for your clients.

Click to expand...

I will consider Ubiquiti, as I am considering them when I consult for busineess. If they offer non-profit discounts I will go with them blindly instead of Cisco.

I agree that we need 2 internet connections. Due to the fact that we are in a remote place, I preffer to have a backup connection. The problem is the DSL provider is a b*tch and wont let us have better speeds.

I am pretty sure I will use fiber as more I read about it in the forum and other sites. I just need a few more informations !

Metraon said:

I will consider Ubiquiti, as I am considering them when I consult for busineess. If they offer non-profit discounts I will go with them blindly instead of Cisco.

I agree that we need 2 internet connections. Due to the fact that we are in a remote place, I preffer to have a backup connection. The problem is the DSL provider is a b*tch and wont let us have better speeds.

I am pretty sure I will use fiber as more I read about it in the forum and other sites. I just need a few more informations !

Click to expand...

I almost guarantee you won't get any discounts from Ubiquiti. Their products are already dirt cheap compared to competitors. TBH, you should go with them over Cisco regardless of a non-profit discount or not.

/usr/home said:

I almost guarantee you won't get any discounts from Ubiquiti. Their products are already dirt cheap compared to competitors. TBH, you should go with them over Cisco regardless of a non-profit discount or not.

Click to expand...

Ubiquiti UniFi: $60
Ubiquiti UniFi enterprise: $75
Cisco Aironet 1131AG: $260 - $550

That would have to be one hell of a non-profit discount.

wizdum said:

Ubiquiti UniFi: $60
Ubiquiti UniFi enterprise: $75
Cisco Aironet 1131AG: $260 - $550

That would have to be one hell of a non-profit discount.

Click to expand...

unifi pro is $229 from streakwave...


still a better product imo...

wizdum said:

Ubiquiti UniFi: $60
Ubiquiti UniFi enterprise: $75
Cisco Aironet 1131AG: $260 - $550

That would have to be one hell of a non-profit discount.

Click to expand...

http://www.techsoupcanada.ca/node/2459

Techsoup Canada, but I think I am limited in the quantity I buy ! Anyway, I try more and more to avoid Cisco...

Those are old as snot. Stay far away from those.

Just suck it up and get Ubiquity UniFi Pro. You will not regret it.

Those are only Wireless G access points. The Unifis are N.

feffrey said:

If you can afford it, get conduit between buildings and run fiber. Make sure you pull triple or or more strands than what you need right now. If you only need two strands between buildings, have them pull 6 or 8 strands of fiber. The expensive parts of fiber is the splicing, pulling extra strands does not add that much to the cost. To save on splicing costs, get half of the strands spliced and wait until you need the strands to splice the rest.

Also you might have different companies put in the conduit vs the fiber. Usually we have an electrical contractor put in the conduit between locations we need fiber. We then go with another company that specializes in fiber to run the fiber and splice it. They can run the conduit of course, however they charge a lot more for running conduit than other guys.

If you can't do a full conduit + fiber at once, do wireless point to point bridges and the conduit. Then when you have the money run the fiber and splice it and re-use the wireless as backup if a fiber gets cut.

If you really want to save money, buy a bunch of fiber, conduit and rent a Ditch Witch. Do everything except for the splicing yourself.

Click to expand...

One of the volounteer in the staff is a electrician, and he do have a Ditch Witch. The previous electrical contractor wired some other houses in the site with high gage electrical wire buried about 1 inch in the ground...We had to rewire and put conduits for all the campus after an electrical strorm...

The wireless backup solution is genious, if we do this project in 3 phase this is propably what ill do. I dont think anyway that the wireless equipement is a waste either way, I need the wireless.

Cisco released the WAP321 to keep Ubiquti from bleeding them dry.


The feature set is different but at least the entry price for Cisco has dropped.

If it's anythiung like their old "entry" APs, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. They were basically rebadged shitty Linksys. These look kinda like that too...