Wide Fi suggestions on best practices?

January 9, 2017 8:12 PM

I'm dealing with two buildings spaced approximately 200 feet apart. Inside the buildings (on the third floor) are network capable security camera DVRs but no network connection. I'd like to be able to access the DVRs wirelessly ideally from anywhere in the two buildings but minimally from a room on the first floor of one of the buildings. What is the best practice way of doing this?

I can run a Cat5e cable to connect the 3rd floor room where one of the DVRs is located and 1st floor room which is the key monitoring location. We'd like to monitor these cameras via our phones though. And I should be able to mount exterior antennas on the roof of the buildings but I might be limited to PoE to power the antenna and obviously would like to avoid that work if I could.

I'm open to specific hardware recommendations. I've been googling around but can't seem to separate a signal from a fire hose of chaff.

I don't need this equipment to be internet accessible at this time.

posted by Mitheral to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

If you have existing wiring in both the buildings, just add in a network bridge.

I have a couple of options in my profile under the heading: Want to build run a couple mile long Wi-Fi link?
posted by deezil at 8:27 PM on January 9, 2017

Something like a pair of Ubiquiti Nanostations, set up point-to-point as a bridge? They offer window/wall-mounting kits.
posted by holgate at 8:36 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Seconding Ubiquiti gear (specifically, 5GHz Nanostations or Airgrids, which work nicely on PoE) for point-to-point applications. Good, fast, cheap: in Ubiquiti's case you can pick all three.

There should be enough backscatter off the radios in the point-to-point WAPs to let you connect to anything networked through them from a wifi client reasonably close to either of them, but best practice would be to add a separate dual-band UniFi AP Pro indoors on each floor of each building, and use Ethernet cables for all the intra-building links.

As soon as you're running more than maybe two WAPs you will be glad of the centralized management that Ubiquiti builds into the AP Pro.

AP Pros also have a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports each, so you can daisy-chain your cabling rather than running everything back to a central switch; but they don't do PoE passthrough, so you'll need a local plugpack and power injector for each WAP (these are supplied as standard, if I recall correctly).
posted by flabdablet at 10:31 PM on January 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

NanoStations (and Ubiquiti products in general) are great. I'd choose the 5GHz version if you're able to mount them outside for better throughput, but if the buildings have just 200' feet of unobstructed space between them and you can place the units inside against the exterior walls you will probably have plenty of signal using the 2.4GHz version (I only use 5GHz when there's line-of-sight, it can be finicky otherwise.)
posted by contraption at 11:07 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]