My own little two-home wireless ISP

April 29, 2014 9:03 AM

I would like to connect two homes that are about 150m apart in order to share an internet connection. Unless convinced otherwise the cheapest solution is likely a point-to-point wireless link at 2.4ghz (using directional antennas and tomatousb/ddwrt). I have line of sight but there are some trees in the way: is this feasible? Bonus: will cheap 14 dbi panel antennas be good enough with the trees?
posted by ennui.bz to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Honestly, you may be better off just running Cat6 through a buried conduit. It's probably a wash cost-wise and way more reliable.
posted by Oktober at 9:30 AM on April 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: the max distance for Cat 5e is 100m. Does Cat 6 run farther? There's no easy way to power repeaters so everything would have to be POE, which would make the whole project unaffordable.

Basically, the budget for this is really small.
posted by ennui.bz at 9:33 AM on April 29, 2014

Check my profile about a point-to-point wireless system. I've had someone non-technical buy it and install it with no help from me and it's been running over 3 years now.

If that budget's too much, a couple of cantennas pointed at each other should do it, but I don't have any good plans to point your way.
posted by deezil at 9:39 AM on April 29, 2014

For $150 or so you can get two Ubiquti Nanostations or Nanobridges. They are purpose built for this sort of thing.

I don't know what impact "some" trees will have, and the best way to find out is to try.
posted by Good Brain at 9:39 AM on April 29, 2014

A couple of cantennas will work nicely as a wireless bridge, but never as good as a wire unfortunately.
posted by defcom1 at 9:40 AM on April 29, 2014

Yeah, i think the definition of "some trees" is key. If you mean "it's a largely open field with a few trees here and there" you're probably ok with one of the wireless solutions above. If you mean "woods", well, you may be better off with a hard line. You shouldn't have too much trouble at 150m assuming that there aren't any huge RF sources (power lines, microwave transmitters) nearby.
posted by Oktober at 9:44 AM on April 29, 2014

I'd be concerned about ground differentials if running Cat6.

I like the Ubiquiti stuff that Good Brain talks about.

What deezil links to on his profile would work, but it's overkill.
posted by tomierna at 11:06 AM on April 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

It would be more expensive than wireless, but a coax ethernet extender (check ebay too) would give you gigabit speeds over very long distances and would be more reliable and easier to setup at the same time.
posted by Poldo at 11:29 AM on April 29, 2014

Best answer: I run exactly what you're looking to do from my house to four other locations, over several hops. Over the years, I have tried a *ton* of different hardware solutions (oh lord, the stainless steel cantennas with 50M of LMR400 cabling…shudder), and these units are far and away the best solution I've used.

If you want the stupidest, easiest setup for this, buy two of the Ubiquiti Loco M900 APs, configure and go. Simple. 900Mhz blasts through *everything* with no problems, especially over your short distance. They are rock-solid reliable, and have more than enough bandwidth for anything you're trying to do. We stream full-HD avi files across the network with no problems.

At $129 each they're a touch pricey, but you absolutely get what you pay for, and it will take you next to no time to get them up and running.
posted by liquado at 11:46 AM on April 29, 2014

Liquado has it right. You want Ubiquiti gear deaigned to do point to point links. Using standard consumer gear is a recipe for fiddling and annoyance.
posted by fief at 6:58 PM on April 29, 2014 [1 favorite]