Longer Range Wireless

[dawks]

The company I work for has 4 houses in a row, the right most house (we'll call 4) is wired into our corporate network (it was just built). House #2 currently has a internet connection we pay for (we'd like to get rid of this), that is share wirelessly to the other two houses (1 and 3), and that wireless doesnt work well since the both the routers and computers are in the basement. I'd like to put a router in the new house (#4), and share our connection to the other 3 houses. Would it be possible for a single router inside to reach all 4? Perhaps something like this?

Are there any affordable outdoor options? We'd like to keep it below $250 if possible. Could we set up a router in house #4 and connect it to an antenna outside on or near the roof? Can you suggest the hardware to do this? How far away from the router could the antenna be? I've done some googling and searched the forums but I can't find quite what we need.

Thanks

 

[JackMDS]

I have the feeling that you are taking an Entry Level consumer approach to a corporate Network.

I would seek a consultant for such project.

 

[dawks]

Thanks for your useless comment. We are a non-profit on a strict budget. Perhaps a real suggestion might be helpful.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: dawks
Thanks for your useless comment. We are a non-profit on a strict budget. Perhaps a real suggestion might be helpful.

What's useless about it? He offered a real suggestion. Your talking about attaching a SOHO device to a corporate network. You need a REAL corporate network wireless solution for this. I would say you also should consult a consultant that deals with this type of issue. If you don't realize this then maybe your in the wrong line of work.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: dawks
Thanks for your useless comment. We are a non-profit on a strict budget. Perhaps a real suggestion might be helpful.

Well what you're asking is really vague. You have four separate buildings with some kind of WAN/VPN connection at building 4. Is your goal to connect separate LANS that exist in the other 3 buildings? What kind of cabling do you have in each of these 4 buildings? How far apart are they? Do you have line of sight? What kind of performance do you expect? What are you really trying to do here?

But without going further if all you're trying to do is get 4 ALREADY existing LANs in each of the 4 buildings connected then some kind of outdoor antennas with proper grounding, properly installed to electrical and grounding code can be done. 250 bucks isn't going to get you far. At the very low end that will allow you to put a radio and antenna on a single building, antenna and lightning protection - install would be a lot more. You don't want to be messing around with lightning.

 

[dawks]

Thanks,

All we need to do is get 3 PC's wireless access. 3 Simple PC's. Imagine have a wireless AP in your house, with 3 laptops, and you need the 3 laptops to connect to the wireless AP. The only difference here is the 3 laptops are each in their own house. So now you're at the end of a 4 house street and want to share your net with a laptop in the previous 3 houses.

It shouldn't be all that difficult. I've seen an outdoor antenna that said it has a ground wire, what else does it need to deal with lightning?

Is sharing Wireless G over 3 single story houses from a single 2nd story roof mounted antenna too difficult?

 

[spidey07]

Is it difficult? Well that all depends, it depends on the density of the material you're trying to cross, antenna positioning, any obstructions between the "main" antenna and the client antennas (walls, brick, etc). The homes being in line could present a challenge. You "may" be able to get away with a directional antenna with a wide beam on house 4 pointed below the roof of the last house in the line.

All of this is "could", "maybe should", "never know till you try". If you want to try then take a SOHO router/AP similar to what you listed and put it as high as you can in building #4 without being outdoors and closest to a window that faces the other 3 houses. If they are brick you're probably SOL on the last two, but I don't know how far apart they are.

My solution would be 3 directional antennas on houses 1-3 and a sector antenna on building #4 (the one you're trying to get to). Each house has it's own AP and bridges to house #4. Depending on environment this would use 5 Ghz 802.11a and the APs would also have a 802.11G radio to provide service to each individual house into which it is installed.

With this kind of solution and line of sight between the antennas I CAN guaranteed good performance provided you don't have a particularly noisy environment.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Is it difficult? Well that all depends, it depends on the density of the material you're trying to cross, antenna positioning, any obstructions between the "main" antenna and the client antennas (walls, brick, etc). The homes being in line could present a challenge. You "may" be able to get away with a directional antenna with a wide beam on house 4 pointed below the roof of the last house in the line.

All of this is "could", "maybe should", "never know till you try". If you want to try then take a SOHO router/AP similar to what you listed and put it as high as you can in building #4 without being outdoors and closest to a window that faces the other 3 houses. If they are brick you're probably SOL on the last two, but I don't know how far apart they are.

My solution would be 3 directional antennas on houses 1-3 and a sector antenna on building #4 (the one you're trying to get to). Each house has it's own AP and bridges to house #4. Depending on environment this would use 5 Ghz 802.11a and the APs would also have a 802.11G radio to provide service to each individual house into which it is installed.

With this kind of solution and line of sight between the antennas I CAN guaranteed good performance provided you don't have a particularly noisy environment.

This would be the best way to do it but for $250, well, you can dream but that's as far as you'll get for $250. As far as how bad is lightning, well, if you don't properly ground your equipment, they are essentially giant lightning rods. Again, my recommendation is to hire a wireless consultant or read up on how to properly install outdoor wireless.

This isn't as easy just installing a SOHO router in a house and expecting to get usable signal in the other houses. It's just not going to happen. You need an outdoor antenna with directional antennas pointing to each other for the signal to go where it needs to go. Those antennas all have to be properly grounded.

 

[Modelworks]

A couple options.
Run buried ethernet cable between the homes. Cheapest and guaranteed to work as long as the houses are no more than 300ft apart.
Powerline ethernet - may work, depending on how far apart the homes are and whether they share the same step down transformer.

Personally I would go with the wire and run it home to home. You only need bury it about 6 inches.

 

[skyking]

For 250 you could try and chain (6) used wrt54g with 3rd party firmware together in a huge Wireless Distribution System (WDS), without using any external antennas. It might work. It would certainly be a learning experience, fun times
Line of sight window to window.
building 4 (wrt1) grass trees (wrt2) building 3 (wrt3)more grass and trees (wrt4)building 2(wrt5) assorted grass and trees(wrt6) building 1

Could I get it to work? probably.
Would it break now and again, requiring running around and rebooting stuff? Most definitely!!!!!

All kidding aside, you might get it covered with only 4 routers that way if the buildings and distances involved would favor a central location inside buildings 2 and 3.

 

[Scarpozzi]

How far apart are the houses?

Wireless N spec says you can go 1200 feet, but of course this is going to depend on how thick the houses are and whether or not there are trees between them. Line of sight means a lot in wireless distances. If you're really wanting to set up something though, you can go with an N router positioned for maximum distance ($75) and get a directional antenna ($100) or a wireless repeater ($100) to place in house 2 or 3...to make the signal strength go up in house 1.

Just keep in mind that repeaters cause more network latency and distance without them will make noise and dropped packets impossible to avoid.

You're better off sticking with one technology. If you choose G, go all G....if you choose N, go all N. If you mix modes, you'll be sacrificing quality of service and may be slowing down transmission rates if your equipment defaults to the speeds of the lower technology.

Meru makes very good commercial wireless routers. If you're wanting to mount these in the attic for increased range, consider temperture in your placement and investing in power-over-ethernet equipment so you only have to run cat5/6 to your WiFi router.

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
A couple options.
Run buried ethernet cable between the homes. Cheapest and guaranteed to work as long as the houses are no more than 300ft apart.
Powerline ethernet - may work, depending on how far apart the homes are and whether they share the same step down transformer.

Personally I would go with the wire and run it home to home. You only need bury it about 6 inches.

IIRC, connecting any two buildings together via ethernet is a no-no. The potential differences in grounds between the homes may lead to a floating voltage on the ethernet cables that can damage equipment. May work, may not, but, in the long run I had previously read it's a bad idea. Can run Fiber but that'd be a bit more $.

As for wireless, you could find some DD-WRT capable AP's with external antennas. Plug in one at each home, with the antenna outside and rig them all together in a bridged network. You could run a second AP within each home for inside client access / wireless.

Each AP is probably going to run about $50-60, plus cable and an antennae another $40-50, and then a second cheap AP for the internal wireless. Thus, about $200/home should get you running. You might be able to get by with less AP's depending on how far apart the homes are, more trial and error if trying to cut costs. You could do a proof of concept with two of the homes though to see how it works.

I know it does, as that setup works fine for me, across two homes about 600' apart.

 

[bobdole369]

DD-WRT capable AP's with external antennas, on a mast or the eaves ought to handle it in WDS mode.

Ethernet is a differential signal. There is no reference to ground, its isolated, so no voltage loops/differences, and no problem burying ethernet. However your building code may or may not allow it. I would say at least it needs to be in conduit, at most a trench dug and cemented in.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: dman

Originally posted by: Modelworks
A couple options.
Run buried ethernet cable between the homes. Cheapest and guaranteed to work as long as the houses are no more than 300ft apart.
Powerline ethernet - may work, depending on how far apart the homes are and whether they share the same step down transformer.

Personally I would go with the wire and run it home to home. You only need bury it about 6 inches.

IIRC, connecting any two buildings together via ethernet is a no-no. The potential differences in grounds between the homes may lead to a floating voltage on the ethernet cables that can damage equipment. May work, may not, but, in the long run I had previously read it's a bad idea. Can run Fiber but that'd be a bit more $.

As for wireless, you could find some DD-WRT capable AP's with external antennas. Plug in one at each home, with the antenna outside and rig them all together in a bridged network. You could run a second AP within each home for inside client access / wireless.

Each AP is probably going to run about $50-60, plus cable and an antennae another $40-50, and then a second cheap AP for the internal wireless. Thus, about $200/home should get you running. You might be able to get by with less AP's depending on how far apart the homes are, more trial and error if trying to cut costs. You could do a proof of concept with two of the homes though to see how it works.

I know it does, as that setup works fine for me, across two homes about 600' apart.

Yeah if you want a guaranteed solution, fiber between the houses is the only way but then your having to deal with underground utilities and installation, etc. Do NOT run ethernet outside of a house, it's just not worth it. Fiber may be more expensive but when you look at the potential issues with running a very long copper line underground without the proper grounding, fiber suddenly isn't as expensive anymore.

 

[drebo]

Seriously, the logical solution to this is to get cheap DSL connections at each house and VPN them all together.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: drebo
Seriously, the logical solution to this is to get cheap DSL connections at each house and VPN them all together.

I think the slow speed might hinder this one.

 

[drebo]

Depends what type of data they're dealing with. If they're just using it to access documents of each other's computers or email from an exchange server or the like, then they'd be fine with cheap DSL connections.

If they're copying videos, then no, it would not be.

We just don't know.

I can tell you one thing, though...it'd be FAR superior to a 6 AP WDS setup.

 

[dawks]

Some good ideas here thanks! I might look into an outdoor Engenious AP since its supposed to have decent range.

As for running cable, not going to work. And the cheap DSL is what were doing right now. We just dont want to pay $80 a month for these 3 houses when we already have a fat single $80 pipe running to house #4.

We just need basic speed for email and light browsing, just dont want a monthly bill for it.

 

[drebo]

The problem with "doing it cheap" is that it often costs more in maintenance costs than it would if you were to just do it right the first time.

You're concerned about $80/mo, but if you were to do the wireless the right way with a Cisco point-to-multipoint bridge from house 4 with APs on each house, you'd be looking at $10,000+ to set it up. You'd be guaranteed a good, working system that would be 0 maintenance (if set up by someone with experience, which I factored into cost).

Now, you could go the cheap route and use $40 wireless routers with Tomato or DDWRT set up in a WDS domain, but it's going to be high-maintenance and probably not a very good solution, if it works at all. How much are you going to spend over the next X number of years maintaining this hodge-podge system, versus doing it right the first time?

Alternatively, $80/mo for DSL and ~$2000 up front for a few ASA5505s and someone to set them up gives you a solution that will ALWAYS work and will be zero maintenance as well. When compared to the other no-maintenance solution, you're looking at a 100 month ROI period. How long are you planning to stay in your current setup? If it's more than 8 years (longer with a Smartnet on your APs), then the wireless setup above is the right way to go about it. If less than 8 years, then this is the cheaper solution.

Networking is the LAST place you want to skimp on in a business, whether non-profit or not. How much will it cost you in lost productivity with your spotty solution that goes out every time there's a stiff breeze? My advice is to do it right the first time and not worry about it. If you're there long term, do the point-to-multipoint bridge. In the near-term, though, the DSL and VPN solution is the cheaper way to go.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: dman

IIRC, connecting any two buildings together via ethernet is a no-no. The potential differences in grounds between the homes may lead to a floating voltage on the ethernet cables that can damage equipment. May work, may not, but, in the long run I had previously read it's a bad idea. Can run Fiber but that'd be a bit more $.

Actually it is done all the time. You use isolators on the ends of the cable. About $20 each.
Or you can use the screening approach. That is connecting the ground of the cable at only one end of the cable.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: drebo
The problem with "doing it cheap" is that it often costs more in maintenance costs than it would if you were to just do it right the first time.

You're concerned about $80/mo, but if you were to do the wireless the right way with a Cisco point-to-multipoint bridge from house 4 with APs on each house, you'd be looking at $10,000+ to set it up. You'd be guaranteed a good, working system that would be 0 maintenance (if set up by someone with experience, which I factored into cost).

Now, you could go the cheap route and use $40 wireless routers with Tomato or DDWRT set up in a WDS domain, but it's going to be high-maintenance and probably not a very good solution, if it works at all. How much are you going to spend over the next X number of years maintaining this hodge-podge system, versus doing it right the first time?

Alternatively, $80/mo for DSL and ~$2000 up front for a few ASA5505s and someone to set them up gives you a solution that will ALWAYS work and will be zero maintenance as well. When compared to the other no-maintenance solution, you're looking at a 100 month ROI period. How long are you planning to stay in your current setup? If it's more than 8 years (longer with a Smartnet on your APs), then the wireless setup above is the right way to go about it. If less than 8 years, then this is the cheaper solution.

Networking is the LAST place you want to skimp on in a business, whether non-profit or not. How much will it cost you in lost productivity with your spotty solution that goes out every time there's a stiff breeze? My advice is to do it right the first time and not worry about it. If you're there long term, do the point-to-multipoint bridge. In the near-term, though, the DSL and VPN solution is the cheaper way to go.

You dont need to explain this, I understand it. What you should know is that in our case, beyond my salary, our entire IT budget is around $15,000 a year for over 100 users. We work cheap here. thanks.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
Do NOT run ethernet outside of a house, it's just not worth it. Fiber may be more expensive but when you look at the potential issues with running a very long copper line underground without the proper grounding, fiber suddenly isn't as expensive anymore.

I have to laugh every time I see someone saying not to run ethernet outside. There is nothing special about ethernet cable. It is no different than telephone, which is not required to be grounded at the home , or coax cable. The NEC considers them all low voltage wiring and the only real requirements are :

Must be buried 12 inches
Must not be within 4 inches of wiring providing power.
Must be grounded at one end, but not both.


They make direct burial ethernet cable for a reason. Ethernet cable is also run outside, through the air, up poles and across rooftops to connect wifi access points. The biggest danger running ethernet , or any wire, outside is when you are running it at points that are higher than the local buildings, making it a lightning target. Even then you can install a $20 arrestor and you are fine.


Some good books on the subject:
NEC code 2008
Industrial Ethernet Planning and Installation.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: dawks



You dont need to explain this, I understand it. What you should know is that in our case, beyond my salary, our entire IT budget is around $15,000 a year for over 100 users. We work cheap here. thanks.

It is hard for some people to understand that you can't just pull money out of the bank or go get a loan for $$$ sometimes.

How far apart are the homes that need connecting ?
And are they on the same side of the power transformer ?

 

[dawks]

Pretty standard distance, each lot is about 50 feet across, so the max would be 150ft.

Couldn't say if they are on the same transformer or not. Is that the cut off for ethernet over power? I thought it was a breaker for some reason.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: dawks
Pretty standard distance, each lot is about 50 feet across, so the max would be 150ft.

Couldn't say if they are on the same transformer or not. Is that the cut off for ethernet over power? I thought it was a breaker for some reason.

Ethernet over power lines will sometimes work on a home next door if they are on the same side of the power transformer feeding the homes. The breaker is just like a switch so the signal usually flows fine through them . The great thing is that you can buy them at local stores and try it, if not just return them .

To get a rough idea if they share a transformer. Look around the yards and count the number of transformers you see on poles or on the ground (large green metal boxes). If there are 3 houses and one transformer, pretty likely they share it.