A friend of mines parents asked me to get them hooked up with internet, the only problem is, they are about a half mile into the woods. Their property is somewhere around 70-80 acres, with 3 houses spread out across it. The house closest to the road has 16/4 connection from Comcast. I looked up the distance from the front house to the back house and its about 850 meters, with lots of trees, so no clear line of sight. I can't run a cable, cat6 is only good for 100m and RG-8 or fiber would annihilate their bank account. What I had in mind was a point to point wireless system from the front house to the back house. I don't have experience with this type of hardware, and I don't know the most cost effective solution to get this done.
tl;dr
Need to set up point to point wireless connection through 850m of wooded area for as cheap as possible.
I'm thinking the only solution here would be to set up a very good directional antenna on a pole above the treetops, if that's possible.
I used a directional antenna while I lived on a boat in Mexico for a while, it picked up a signal from a hotel easily a half mile away (Line of sight)
The main problem I see is the lack of line of sight. Getting wifi through trees would be really difficult. Fiber would be the best option since you won't get interference and it goes long distances, though it's expensive, difficult to work with and you'd probably have to dig a trench and shit. There are inexpensive transceivers, though the huge cost is going to the cabling.
If you do want to do wireless, you're going to need to get the antennas above the tree line. I don't have experience with it, though I hear really good things about Ubiquity's stuff.
The problem with an antenna on a pole is that it will move around and have interference from the atmosphere at different times of the day. The trees also move around and grow, which will further interfere with the signal.
If it were up to me, I'd use 10BaseT + PoE over Cat5e. Since you can't go over 100M, you'd basically have a small trench with 1" PVC and come up every 100M or so into a weather proof box with a switch and back out again into another PVC run. You could use PoE to power the first switch on each side of the run and power each additional switch with a two wire extension cable run in the same pipe. If you have power poles between the houses, it would be easiest to run it along those and nail the boxes to the poles.
It would be more expensive to do it my way, but far less expensive than Fibre and more reliable than antenna on a pole. The only real expense would be the Cat5e wire spools and the PVC pipe. You want to make sure you find a good source of it because in the last few years the market has been flooded with poor quality Chinese Cat5e that use the wrong wire gauge (sometimes up to 30AWG when the spec cites 24AWG) and improperly twisted wire. You can find cheap switches at thrift stores, which don't even have to be of the same brand, and even large spools of scrap wire for extending the power to the other switches.
[QUOTE=bohb;39584555]The problem with an antenna on a pole is that it will move around and have interference from the atmosphere at different times of the day. The trees also move around and grow, which will further interfere with the signal.
If it were up to me, I'd use 10BaseT + PoE over Cat5e. Since you can't go over 100M, you'd basically have a small trench with 1" PVC and come up every 100M or so into a weather proof box with a switch and back out again into another PVC run. You could use PoE to power the first switch on each side of the run and power each additional switch with a two wire extension cable run in the same pipe. If you have power poles between the houses, it would be easiest to run it along those and nail the boxes to the poles.
It would be more expensive to do it my way, but far less expensive than Fibre and more reliable than antenna on a pole. The only real expense would be the Cat5e wire spools and the PVC pipe. You want to make sure you find a good source of it because in the last few years the market has been flooded with poor quality Chinese Cat5e that use the wrong wire gauge (sometimes up to 30AWG when the spec cites 24AWG) and improperly twisted wire. You can find cheap switches at thrift stores, which don't even have to be of the same brand, and even large spools of scrap wire for extending the power to the other switches.[/QUOTE]
Not sure that would work. He'd start having power problems running extension cords that far and the signal degradation is going to be crazy. Satellite internet is probably the best bet, its going to be crummy but at least it kinda works and isn't super expensive.
Or dial-up if there's a phone line going to the property.
[QUOTE=M2k3;39585185]Not sure that would work. He'd start having power probablylems running extension cords that far and the signal degradation is going to be crazy. Satellite internet is probably the best bet, its going to be crummy but at least it kinda works and isn't super expensive.[/QUOTE]
Why would there be signal degradation? The switches are acting as repeaters
[QUOTE=M2k3;39585185]Not sure that would work. He'd start having power problems running extension cords that far and the signal degradation is going to be crazy. Satellite internet is probably the best bet, its going to be crummy but at least it kinda works and isn't super expensive.[/QUOTE]
There would be no signal degradation. The only problem you'd have is increased latency for every switch you added.
As for the power, switches don't draw enough for that to be an issue. The first two switches between runs would be powered by PoE, and the rest would draw 0.5A at max, often much less.
Well, if they're going to go through the trouble of running a bunch of CAT5e in the ground or on poles, they could run electrical wiring as well and splice on an outlet every 100M. You might also have to keep the weather of the area in mind, if it gets really cold you're going to need some sort of enclosure to protect the switches.
Long range Wifi would still be the cheapest option, I think. I did a few searches and the ~$50 Ubiquiti Nanostation M2 looks like it should work fine for under a kilometer, since they advertise that they can do up to 15 km. A couple of those should work fine, though keep in mind you're going to need a POE injector on each end. Since it's outdoors, you'd probably want a grounded POE injector.
I Just looked up some prices for fiber including equipment and it doesn't seem as high as setting up etherlines with a bunch of switches.
And then I saw the price of trying to find a single cable of that long, and I saw it might be 500-600 dollars. Then the cost of the converters and possibly splicers. You could run the fiber to a small box about 80 feet from the house and then run a network line to the house, but you'd have to figure for power to run the converter box and it would be nice to have fiber running inside the house :\
Can't you just get Comcast to come out and connect the houses to cable for a small fee?
[QUOTE=Shadaez;39591910]Can't you just get Comcast to come out and connect the houses to cable for a small fee?[/QUOTE]
It's not going to be a small fee. All of that shielded copper coaxial cable is going to be retarded expensive.
Ok I probably should've explained a bit more, I mean the signal degradation you're going to get running 850 [i]meters[/i] of ethernet and mains in the same conduit. This is over [b]2788 feet[/b]. In almost any normal situation it really wouldn't be a big deal but the distance is massive. I also realize cheap little switches sip power but you are never going to get any extension cord running 425 meters each direction, the voltage drop will not play well with a sensitive piece of a equipment like a network switch. I think it would be a great experiment to try, but my money would not be on it functioning reliably if at all.
How about something like this? [url]http://tycononline.com/wireless/ezbr-0214.html[/url]
It says effective range of 3 miles. You think I could get 1/3 of that distance with trees in the way? Mounting the antenna above the treeline isn't gonna happen, its like 50 feet up.
[QUOTE=its shortie;39594850]How about something like this? [url]http://tycononline.com/wireless/ezbr-0214.html[/url]
It says effective range of 3 miles. You think I could get 1/3 of that distance with trees in the way? Mounting the antenna above the treeline isn't gonna happen, its like 50 feet up.[/QUOTE]
What about mounting it to the top (or near the top) of a tree?
I think you should just make or buy two uni-directional antennae and point them towards eachother. People have used old satellite dishes to pick up wireless signals across lakes.
[url]http://www.walmart.com/ip/16523450?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=&wl3=21486607510&wl4=&wl5=pla&veh=sem[/url]
[QUOTE=its shortie;39594850]How about something like this? [url]http://tycononline.com/wireless/ezbr-0214.html[/url]
It says effective range of 3 miles. You think I could get 1/3 of that distance with trees in the way? Mounting the antenna above the treeline isn't gonna happen, its like 50 feet up.[/QUOTE]
How dense are the trees? If there's a fairly straight path that you could aim that or the ubiquity routers that I linked, it might be possible. Though if it's dense forest, I honestly have no idea how badly it would interfere. Though I can't imagine it would work too well.
surely there's a driveway to the two houses that's fairly straight that you could easily use two directional antenna for? Or go get a chainsaw and cut some down!
Could you program some manual MIMO? like network up two dishes at an angle on the left and right of each house so you can sort of shotgun some signal to the other house?
[QUOTE=M2k3;39593588]I also realize cheap little switches sip power but you are never going to get any extension cord running 425 meters each direction, the voltage drop will not play well with a sensitive piece of a equipment like a network switch. I think it would be a great experiment to try, but my money would not be on it functioning reliably if at all.[/QUOTE]
Switches aren't directly powered by mains, they have either linear regulator wall warts, or in newer instances small switching power supplies. Those things are usually very forgiving of voltage drop, I've seen them work off of dirty generator power at 90v.
Also, he would have two runs, not one single run of 850M. The house in the middle of the property is likely half that distance so it would be less of an issue.
[QUOTE=bohb;39584555]If it were up to me, I'd use 10BaseT + PoE over Cat5e. Since you can't go over 100M, you'd basically have a small trench with 1" PVC and come up every 100M or so into a weather proof box with a switch and back out again into another PVC run. You could use PoE to power the first switch on each side of the run and power each additional switch with a two wire extension cable run in the same pipe. If you have power poles between the houses, it would be easiest to run it along those and nail the boxes to the poles.
It would be more expensive to do it my way, but far less expensive than Fibre and more reliable than antenna on a pole. The only real expense would be the Cat5e wire spools and the PVC pipe. You want to make sure you find a good source of it because in the last few years the market has been flooded with poor quality Chinese Cat5e that use the wrong wire gauge (sometimes up to 30AWG when the spec cites 24AWG) and improperly twisted wire. You can find cheap switches at thrift stores, which don't even have to be of the same brand, and even large spools of scrap wire for extending the power to the other switches.[/QUOTE]
Sorry to revive this old thread but I thought the OP or others here may be interested that my friend and I just finished a system very similar to this one mentioned here, and I just uploaded a short 12min mini-doc on how we built it. Hopefully this can be of some use to someone as I know this problem crops up every now and then.
This system is in the process of a cable re-routing and stake down so don't mind the horrendous cable run :P
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_lUWlXYAvM[/url]
The system details are in the description along with some FAQs.
--Quick breakdown--
2,200ft Cat5
6 Switches using passive PoE (Custom injectors we made out of HP printer power bricks)
6 weatherproof containers
6 voltage regulators
6 pairs of RJ45 power splitters/re-injectors
We send about 50v down the line and split that power off in each box so we have a 50v pass through(bypasses switch by exiting RJ45 cable and connecting to the other end via male/female barrel jacks), and 50v to a step down voltage regulator to take it to a nice 7.5v for the switch to run on. We soldered the cable we cut off the switches power brick to the Vreg board so we could use the tradition power input on the switch. Total project cost was about $180.
[QUOTE=RainbowPilot;42672758]Sorry to revive this old thread but I thought the OP or others here may be interested that my friend and I just finished a system very similar to this one mentioned here, and I just uploaded a short 12min mini-doc on how we built it. Hopefully this can be of some use to someone as I know this problem crops up every now and then.
This system is in the process of a cable re-routing and stake down so don't mind the horrendous cable run :P
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_lUWlXYAvM[/url]
The system details are in the description along with some FAQs.
--Quick breakdown--
2,200ft Cat5
6 Switches using passive PoE (Custom injectors we made out of HP printer power bricks)
6 weatherproof containers
6 voltage regulators
6 pairs of RJ45 power splitters/re-injectors
We send about 50v down the line and split that power off in each box so we have a 50v pass through(bypasses switch by exiting RJ45 cable and connecting to the other end via male/female barrel jacks), and 50v to a step down voltage regulator to take it to a nice 7.5v for the switch to run on. We soldered the cable we cut off the switches power brick to the Vreg board so we could use the tradition power input on the switch. Total project cost was about $180.[/QUOTE]
My only concern is cold weather, both on how the electronics reach to it directly, and then condensation.
Although condensation can be kept down with bags of moisture absorbent crystals akin to what you typically find in a box of new shoes.
That can also occasionally be bought at hardware stores in a bulk bag for drying up a basement in a old house.
[QUOTE=Van-man;42674525]My only concern is cold weather, both on how the electronics reach to it directly, and then condensation.
Although condensation can be kept down with bags of moisture absorbent crystals akin to what you typically find in a box of new shoes.
That can also occasionally be bought at hardware stores in a bulk bag for drying up a basement in a old house.[/QUOTE]
Good idea I will toss a bag of those crystals into each box, not sure if it will be necessary but it can't hurt. I'm not really worried about moisture because we already had one small accident in which a switch was completely submerged in the creek outside of its box for about 10 mins while powered on. Still works fine and was actually sending data down the line while submerged, my electrical engineer friend said the power was too low for it to short out in water. According to the manufacturer ideal switch operating temperature range is 23° to 122°F, and we never get more than 1 or 2 degrees F bellow freezing here so we should be fine.
Wow, that's very interesting. Now I'm curious how well something like that would work here, where we get a lot of snow and the winters can get to forty below.
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