Wireless bridge w/ethernet speed?

J

joblo37pam

2[H]4U
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Jun 28, 2002
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I'm thinking about putting up a wireless connection between my office and my house (1/3 mile, decent LOS, roof access on both) to share internet connectivity, files, work from home, remote administration, etc.

I know I can do it pretty easily with 802.11a/b/g, but I was hoping to be able to get better speeds than that. I've seen whitepapers on optical wireless solutions that can do up to 1.25Gbps, but I can't seem to find anywhere to buy them, and even if I could, I imagine they would be cost prohibitive.

Running fiber or cable isn't an option, because it would have to go under a US highway, and across quite a few properties, few of which would be willing to allow trenching. I suppose if I have to settle for g speeds, I can. I was just hoping for better, if possible.

Thanks for your help.
 
If you don't want to use 802.11 your looking at the 10's to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the solution. Western Multiplex have dual radio bridge (so full duplex wireless) of varying speed steps. 10, 100, all the way up to 480Mb. I think the 10Mb is in the 3-5k range. Even enterprise 802.11g bridging gear is going to be 1000+ per side, when you factor in masts/brackets, lightening arrestors with the coax run, directional antennas etc...
 
I can't find the information I had on point-to-point laser links, they're not too brutal, but you are looking at more than a thousand bucks I'm pretty damn sure for 100+mbps.

There's also some good wireless kit from MDS (Microwave Data Systems) but I think you have to pay $4800 for the kit, though it is all inclusive.
 
The theoretical max speed @54Mbps is ~31Mbps for the record. I can't seem to find a max distance you can still operate at 54Mbps, but I would think that .33 miles should still do it, since @11Mbps can run ~150miles. This is due to the time it takes to physically travel that amount of distance and timeouts.

I wouldn't even mess around with "108Mbps" routers. If you need more bandwidth and want to go with 802.11, I'd build a machine to combine the bandwidth of multiple APs and send across that way. You can run channels 1,6, and 11 without bandwidth overlap on 802.11g, and 802.11a could add a few more(I'm unsure of how many.) In theory we are talking about at most ~150Mbps of true bandwidth if you could use 3 g routers and 2 a routers all at once. Sounds like more of a pita than it's worth to me for wifi.
 
Nate7311 said:
Try here:

http://www.lightpointe.com/
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I had actually already looked at their sight because I found while searching the [H], but even their smallest package is $9500, and probably overkill for what I need.

If there isn't anything cheap and easy other than 802.11, I'll just go that route. If this was for a larger enterprise, or more people, I would consider something more extravagant, but it's not worth the money if it's just for my home setup. That being said, are there any comments on my earler post about the Netgear equipment?

Thanks again for all your help.
 
thanks Sandmanx, you must have posted while i was still editing my post. I actually thought that the 108Mb routers were already doing what you said could be done with the different channels, etc. Maybe I'm mistaken. If you don't recommend them, what would you replace them with?

I really don't need gig speeds or anything, I am just looking for a cost effective way to get decent bandwidth. I will be sharing some files back and forth, but for the money, I can be patient.

As for the distance, I'm sure I can get .11g that far. The only obstacles in the way are some trees in my yard that in all reality need to be trimmed anyway. Even if I leave them as they are, an antenna mounted high enough should get around/over them well enough.
 
joblo37pam said:
thanks Sandmanx, you must have posted while i was still editing my post. I actually thought that the 108Mb routers were already doing what you said could be done with the different channels, etc. Maybe I'm mistaken. If you don't recommend them, what would you replace them with?

I really don't need gig speeds or anything, I am just looking for a cost effective way to get decent bandwidth. I will be sharing some files back and forth, but for the money, I can be patient.

As for the distance, I'm sure I can get .11g that far. The only obstacles in the way are some trees in my yard that in all reality need to be trimmed anyway. Even if I leave them as they are, an antenna mounted high enough should get around/over them well enough.
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I was referring to timeouts from a longer distance. For 11Mbps 802.11b you can go about 150 miles(with certain hardware,) but 802.11g uses a different signal broadcast pattern and I can't find any info on how far it will work at 54Mbps. My guess is that 1/3 a mile should be fine, but it might require certain hardware where the timeouts can be raised as wifi is very sensitive to latency. With a standard card, line of sight, and antennas, regular 802.11b has trouble around the 10 mile mark, which is why I question if the much faster data rate and different signaling will work.

As far as 108Mbps routers are concerned, they are all propritary, and that's the biggest issue. Of course, for a P2P that may not matter. AFAIK, they do use 2 channels worth of bandwidth to get the speed up, but it sounds like real world testing shows you don't get much speed gain.

I'd do a google search on 802.11g longshot and find a few forums of people who do this more often, that would have a better idea of equipment and setup. I've toyed around with the idea of a 5 mile long shot before and did some research in the past, but I didn't have anywhere near line of sight so I never got too far into it.
 
First off, your not getting a .11x 150 miles period. End of story. Aint happenin, not even worth debating on that one. Secondly the "broadcast pattern" is identical with b or g. The signficant difference in b and g is modulation type. OFDM for .11g or cck for .11b. Has nothing to do with distance the carrier will travel.

There are many things that inhibit microwave tx. Power, and FCC regs in america being the one you deal with in the states and how you get line of site At 10 miles you can have a rock solid link with 1-3 ms pings and very reliable given the right equipment but you'd be tower'd at both sites unless on side was on a mountain or something. with towers and amps or very short coax runs and good antennas links in the 15-18 range are fairly easy to do if you have the climbers and towers. Line of site is the key with WAN wireless links.
 
ktwebb said:
First off, your not getting a .11x 150 miles period. End of story. Aint happenin, not even worth debating on that one. Secondly the "broadcast pattern" is identical with b or g. The signficant difference in b and g is modulation type. OFDM for .11g or cck for .11b. Has nothing to do with distance the carrier will travel.

There are many things that inhibit microwave tx. Power, and FCC regs in america being the one you deal with in the states and how you get line of site At 10 miles you can have a rock solid link with 1-3 ms pings and very reliable given the right equipment but you'd be tower'd at both sites unless on side was on a mountain or something. with towers and amps or very short coax runs and good antennas links in the 15-18 range are fairly easy to do if you have the climbers and towers. Line of site is the key with WAN wireless links.
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Although 150 miles would be cool, it's irrelevant in this case. I'm only trying to go 2000ft max, and I have decent line of sight. I'm just trying to pull all of the speed out if it that I can.
 
Actually, with vendor spec equipment, I've shot a plain-jane 802.11 signal 80 miles, without even worrying about line of sight.

802.11 is FHSS which hits a LOT more signal out, but only on very narrow bands, for very short times.

This was with two patch-antennas tuned to the 900MHz that this 802.11 FHSS was going out over.

Judging by the signal fall-off rates, had we better line of sight, lots lower Fresnel effects from the buildings nearby, and a better antenna, we could hit 150mi easily. Of course, the whopping 30kbps would probably kill the deal. :p
 
ktwebb said:
First off, your not getting a .11x 150 miles period. End of story. Aint happenin, not even worth debating on that one. Secondly the "broadcast pattern" is identical with b or g. The signficant difference in b and g is modulation type. OFDM for .11g or cck for .11b. Has nothing to do with distance the carrier will travel.

There are many things that inhibit microwave tx. Power, and FCC regs in america being the one you deal with in the states and how you get line of site At 10 miles you can have a rock solid link with 1-3 ms pings and very reliable given the right equipment but you'd be tower'd at both sites unless on side was on a mountain or something. with towers and amps or very short coax runs and good antennas links in the 15-18 range are fairly easy to do if you have the climbers and towers. Line of site is the key with WAN wireless links.
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As far as 150 miles, it's theoritically possible. Did you see the story from defcon of the 125 mile link? http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/31/defcon_wifi_shootout.html As far as reliable all of the time, I would doubt it.
 
moetop said:
if you have line of sight issues you may want to convert your 2.4Ghz to 900Mhz You can still use your 802.11g equipment, you just need 900 Mhz antenas.

EDIT: Ohh ya I forgot about this, but it sounded like you wanted to keep it under $10,000 Proxim Tsunami
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I cant tell you about proxim but the original company was www.wdi.com which renamed to www.terabeam.com which bought proxim.. you may want to look at their product also but either way I'm guessing that to get what you want you'll need $$$$$$$$ if you dont want a/b/g
 
sandmanx said:
As far as 150 miles, it's theoritically possible. Did you see the story from defcon of the 125 mile link? http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/31/defcon_wifi_shootout.html As far as reliable all of the time, I would doubt it.
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Not really. Yeah, I saw the article. Had a good laugh about it too. You could do 150 miles. You'd be well out of legal FCC spec and your towers would be in the 500+foot range. Theoretical is useless really. You wouldn't get a 150Mile link. Period.
 
moetop said:
What are you talking about?
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Attaching an antenna tuned to 900 MHz does not make the device operate at 900 MHz. The tranceiver is still tuned to 2.4 GHz, and the DSP is still going to be filtering and performing its functions expecting a 2.4 GHz carrier. So all you would be doing is severly degrading your signal quality by attaching a different antenna.

You're right that 900 MHz has better penetration of obstructions (walls, trees) than 2.4 GHz, but to utilize this quality, you have to be using 900 MHz transcievers.
 
BollWeevil said:
Attaching an antenna tuned to 900 MHz does not make the device operate at 900 MHz. The tranceiver is still tuned to 2.4 GHz, and the DSP is still going to be filtering and performing its functions expecting a 2.4 GHz carrier. So all you would be doing is severly degrading your signal quality by attaching a different antenna.

You're right that 900 MHz has better penetration of obstructions (walls, trees) than 2.4 GHz, but to utilize this quality, you have to be using 900 MHz transcievers.
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Did you even go to the web site 2.4Ghz 900mhz CONVERTERS ? These are up/down converters. You hook them up to regular 2.4 b/g equipment convert the dignal down to 900 Mhz and amplify it send and receive it with 900Mhz antennas (duh) then at the other side convert back up to 2.4 .
 
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