Rural Wifi

[fgeb]

We are moving to a rural property and will be putting the office in a separate building about 100 yards from the main house and DSL modem. We need to keep both office and home on the same wireless/wired network and want keep up the internal network speed for large file transfers. What are the pros and cons of going with a wireless bridge between the two buildings (a pair of EnGenius ENS200s of ENS500s look like they would work) versus a range extender and access point (Amped has an AP600EX access point + SR600EX range extender) that could work)? The sight line between the buildings is spotty with some large oak trees in the way, but there are a few patches of wall that would be unobstructed. Better still would be to mount units indoors and not have to worry about sealing cable holes. It would be nice to have wifi coverage across the entire 20 acres, but not sure how practical that would be. The good news is that there are no competing wifi networks that I've been able to find wandering the property with laptop in hand. I'm new at building a network beyond the confines of a 1000 sf city house, so all suggestions and warnings are welcome!

 

[stevech]

range extender.. not a good approach.
The bridge pair you mentioned, is best, if you can get them clear line of sight, eaves-height mounting or better,.

 

[fgeb]

There are oak trees in the way, trunks in places and branches with plenty of leaves in other spots. I'm guessing that means problems... Since one building is down a slope from the other, any problem with having one antenna up at eave height and the other lower down, 3-4 feet off the ground? My wife or I would wander through the beam occasionally and maybe the odd deer, but it would be clear more often than not.

 

[stevech]

need a photo to guess.
Try to get bridges mounted on eaves. Or with Oak trees, maybe you want to be low enough to miss the mass of the limbs (mostly) but high enough to be above cars and ground clutter.
The bridges have 14dBi or so of antenna gain on each end (I assume), for 28dBi total- and with that extra margin, you can deal with some semi-non-line-of-sight.

I don't know about AMPed, but Engenious low cost outdoor bridges have that kind of antenna gain.
Antenna gain is far more important that a few mWatts more transmitter power... and marketing ads tend to talk about best-case power- whereas in 802.11g/n the power decreases as the link rate (bps) increases, due to physics and economics. Antenna gain is constant for all speeds and powers.

Non-wireless (always better, if you can)...
Here's one of several on the market:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-168-083&ParentOnly=1&IsVirtualParent=1

If both buildings have TV coax, you'd be better to try MoCA.
And you could also try HomePlug (power wiring) if both buildings wire back to the same breaker box.

 

[fgeb]

I'd like to go wired, but that just doesn't work. No coax at all in either building and the two structures are on separate electrical meters out of the same transformer, so that's out, too.

The various Engenius bridges have anything from 8 DBi to 14 DBi on each end, so that sounds like the way to go. Antennas under the eaves will pretty much be beneath the canopy and unobscured except for the occasional tree trunk and human or deer wandering through. I had been hoping to put an antenna inside at least one of the buildings, but the preferred window is completely blocked by a low hanging limb--chain saw is tempting, but not an option. There is a lot of wall visible at the other end from both buildings, so I'm guessing a lot of trial and error to see what gives the best signal.

Any particular reason to go for 2.4 MHz vs 5 GHz? There don't seem to be any competing wireless networks, at least nothing my laptop can pick up at either building.

 

[jerryk]

A friend of mine and I extended a LAN between two hangars using a couple of cheap (30 each) directional antennas I got off eBay. We were able to get very strong signals at about 300 feet. We put the antennas on two short metal poles and mounted them atop each of the hangars. Of course, we did not have an trees (airport :->) to contend with, but was an easy solution.

 

[stevech]

The Engenious bridges with 14dBi don't cost much.

 

[coxhaus]

I ran cat5 underground in cheap pipe to my neighbor’s house. We liked to play games and our teenage daughters were always on the phone. The trenching was easy as I used a shovel to open the ground up and laid pipe as I went. I installed 2 cat5 plugs, one in my house and one in his house. I had to cross my neighbor’s garage to get to his inside wall for the plug but all worked great for years. This was over 20 years ago. I think this would be much lower maintenance than buying transmitting equipment. I would now use cat5e but it did not exist when I used cat5.

 

[fgeb]

I'm pretty much looking at wireless. Can't lay conduit over an active drive and and it would be cheaper to go wireless than to hire a trencher to cut through the bedrock that forms the driveway. But I should be able to shoot a signal under the tree canopy with a little positioning once everything has leafed out. I suppose I could mount masts above the branches, but I'm not anxious to reach above a 50-60 ft canopy

 

[coxhaus]

Sorry to hear you do not have a direct shot at your office building. I think permanent installed cat5e would be a lot less of a headache in the long run. The lawn sprinkler install guys can go under driveways just using a garden hose and water pressure. It makes a big enough hole to run a pipe under the driveway.

 

[klein22326]

I have a very similar situation, with a steel building about 120 ft down the driveway from my house. The house has DSL with a router/wireless N 2.4 Ghz access point. I want to connect the two buildings so both have wireless. Digging a trench and running cable isn't practical, so I'm looking at a wireless bridge. There are lots of trees around, but I do have a clear line-of-site between the two buildings.

I'm leaning toward using a pair of 5 Ghz Engenius wireless bridges, either the ENS500 or ENH500 model. They are about the same price, but the specs on the ENH500 look a little better. I figure using 5 Ghz bridges will not interfere with the 2.4 Ghz wireless AP's I will have in both buildings. But, there are no other wireless networks around that could cause interference.

A rough diagram of my proposed setup is:

DSL Modem---Router/WAP in house---ENH500Bridge---ENH500Bridge---WAP Steel Bldg

Is this a reasonable setup? Any gotchas I've missed?
Would 2.4 Ghz bridges be preferable to 5 Ghz bridges?

Appreciate any comments!

 

[CaptainSTX]

2.4Ghz radios have better range and penetrating power than 5 Ghz. The AP radios are fairly directional. Put them on a different channel than you other APs and you shouldn't have any problems.

 

[stevech]

2.4Ghz radios have better range and penetrating power than 5 Ghz. The AP radios are fairly directional. Put them on a different channel than you other APs and you shouldn't have any problems.

True, but the difference is slight. And easily offset by using a bit more antenna gain. Another factor: Doubling the frequency (say, 2.4 to 5.8 is about 2x) increases path loss by about 6dB. But the path loss is on the order of 60-80dB, making 6dB small in comparison. And, antenna gain is easier to get as frequency increases - without larger sized antennas.

So for a point to point bridge, go for at least 14dBi.
Don't go above 18dBi or so because the antennas become hard to aim and keep precisely aimed due to wind storms.

 

[klein22326]

Thanks stevech. Since there isn't much difference in price, I'm considering 5 Ghz bridges. Specifically I'm looking at the Engenius ENH500 and the ENS500. The latter is newer, and $10 cheaper, but the specs don't look quite as good. The antenna for the ENH500 is listed as 13 dBi, whereas the ENS500 is listed as 10 dBi. But for my application the ENS500 might suffice, since the distance is only around 120 ft.

Any advice as to which of these to go with, or am I too far down in the weeds? There are more detailed specs at this link (along with some marketing fluff!)

 

[stevech]

I can do a prediction on the link performance - if you tell me
distance between antennas, +/- 25 ft. or so.
Antenna height above ground
good description or photo to understand what's in the line of sight between the two BEST antenna locations.

 

[klein22326]

I can do a prediction on the link performance - if you tell me
distance between antennas, +/- 25 ft. or so.
Antenna height above ground
good description or photo to understand what's in the line of sight between the two BEST antenna locations.

Thanks - here is the info:
Distance between two antennas: 120 ft.
Height of antennas: 8 to 10 ft.
Description of site: 20 or so mature cedar and post oak trees are in the space between the house and steel building, but a clear line of sight exists between the antenna locations. No foliage would be in the way.

 

[stevech]

120 ft.
Near clear line of sight.
Very easy. Low gain antennas OK.
Probably don't need a bridge-pair link.

On the cheap, we could work out how to use consumer grade WiFi - unless you live in a harsh weather area.

 

[klein22326]

Thanks stevech, I appreciate it!

I think I will go with the ENS500 bridges, even though it may be an over-engineered solution. We do have nice hot summers here in Central Texas, as well as our share of harsh weather!

 

[CaptainSTX]

Harsh Weather

Keep the weather in mind as it will reduce the outdoor APs life. I got about thirty months out of my Engenius AP. Living in the tropics a thousand feet from the ocean along with a couple of tropical storms including a Cat 3 hurricane and it was time for a replacement AP.

 

[stevech]

Over-engineered wireless is a good thing. In wireless, it's all about excess margins!