Networking for remote area?

E

ericmachine

n00b
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Aug 14, 2012
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33
Hi everyone,

I need some help here. I need to setup IT infra at a remote location. The internet here is really slow and quite unstable. Since this is a remote area, the internet service provider has very little coverage and it's really expensive here.

My scenario:-

I have 2 offices in this remote area. Both offices distances around 500 meters to 1 km away.

Office 1 – All my servers will be located here
Office 2 – need to access office 1's servers. Need to setup LAN as I can't rely the internet here. But I can't pull LAN cables that far away and doesn't really make sense.

Note: Inside this office 2, I have 3 different blocks where I have LEDTVs as dashboard for work monitoring. This data will be pushed from Office 1 to be displayed on these LEDTVs. If I need to wire up LAN cables for these 3 blocks, will be tough too. But WIFI is really bad here. Is there any way I can boost WIFI strength or something?

HQ (outside of the remote area, basically my office) – since internet is an issue in office 1, I will get my Office 1's servers to perform daily batch updates at 2 a.m. to my HQ server.

Few questions:-

a. How can I achieve what I need above? Any better solutions maybe open source?
b. For batch updates, is 2 a.m. the right timing?
c. Any way to boost internet speed and reliability?
d. Is there any way I can boost wifi speed? Having cisco 2.4GHz and 5GHz can't help much here.
e. someone suggested me to use this rocket m http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#rocketm (point to point or point to multi locations) but i am not sure whether this is overkilled for me.

How do you plan for your remote architecture?

For better internet access, do people use vsat link?

Any help from this community? Thanks.
 
"wifi is really bad here"

what does that even mean?

you mean wifi between your offices? what devices are you using?

do you have line of sight between those two offices? what is between them? "you can't pull cable" why not? how about fiber?

also, have you tried talking to the ISP to make their links more reliable? i'm guessing when you say they have "coverage" you're using some sort of cellular internet service... there are probably modems and outdoor antennas you could use to give yourself a better signal...

we got no idea what hardware you got, what the geography of your area is like... or what you're using for internet connectivity

really not much we can help with

if you have line of sight between the offices, yea, the rockets are overkill, a 1km link can easily be done with nanostations/loco unless you've got a LOT of noise in the area...
 
sorry, i should have been more clear on this.

The location is at Newman, Western Australia.

For wifi, it's between blocks within the same compound. It's also between 2 offices buildings - distance 500m - 1km.

For fiber, I am not sure it's a good idea. Everything is expensive in Newman. I assume pulling fiber between office is expensive. Plus it's almost soil everywhere. Not sure where the fiber will go.

For nanostations, can this work? http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanobridgem or is there a recommended brand which is cheaper and around 1km radius?

As for noise, how can I measure?

Any help? Thanks.
 
Those are for point to point, so no radius involved here. They could work for your situation, depending on line of sight, and installation height though, take a look at http://ubnt.com/airlink and test it out, it will give you a good idea of any obstructions along the path, as you'll want to avoid, or get up over trees/buildings.
 
ericmachine said:
I have 2 offices in this remote area. Both offices distances around 500 meters to 1 km away.

Office 1 – All my servers will be located here
Office 2 – need to access office 1's servers. Need to setup LAN as I can't rely the internet here. But I can't pull LAN cables that far away and doesn't really make sense.
Click to expand...

Yes you can. Fibre-optic cable has a length limit of 1.5km. Cable each office normally, and put in a fibre-optic bridge between the two offices.

HQ (outside of the remote area, basically my office) – since internet is an issue in office 1, I will get my Office 1's servers to perform daily batch updates at 2 a.m. to my HQ server.
Click to expand...

What is the bandwidth and latency of the internet link? How large are the updates? My first thought is that this sounds like a job for a Secure FTP server. Maybe a satellite link too.
 
ericmachine said:
For fiber, I am not sure it's a good idea. Everything is expensive in Newman. I assume pulling fiber between office is expensive. Plus it's almost soil everywhere. Not sure where the fiber will go.
Click to expand...

You put the fibre in a pipe and lay the pipe underground with a digger. Make sure you put in some draw-strings so you can put other cables there in the future. If there's existing pipework, make use of it.
 
I will check whether there's any pipe underground. It may have. But again it's kind of a desert to me.

So if say I do point to point between office 1 to office 2. In between there's trees and buildings blocking, do I have to place my wifi hardware above of those? Does this matter?

Will wifi signal be affected by dust? Coz Newman is really dusty.

Any help? Thanks.
 
ericmachine said:
I will check whether there's any pipe underground. It may have. But again it's kind of a desert to me.

So if say I do point to point between office 1 to office 2. In between there's trees and buildings blocking, do I have to place my wifi hardware above of those? Does this matter?

Will wifi signal be affected by dust? Coz Newman is really dusty.

Any help? Thanks.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_zone

this should answer both of those questions i think....
 
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