Slashdot Mirror
Wanted - 45 Mile Wireless Broadband?
Slashbaby asks: "I am a net admin for a school division that doesn't have broadband Internet. We are a rural school division, so we don't even have a provider in any of our towns. What I am looking for is a way to get highspeed Internet access into our division through either RF or microwave. There is a city about 45 miles away, (max. distance) that has ISP's that would be willing to sell us bandwidth if we can find a way to get it the 45 miles to the schools."
"What I am looking for is either companies or websites that deal with this kind of technology. I have no idea what to really look for, so any help ideas would be appreciated. Our budget for this project would be ~$125 000 CND ($80 000 USD).
We are currently using Direct PC satellite (which is NOT broadband) Unfortunately, they are dropping us in 2003...they are dropping service for rural communities in order to expand service for government funded projects."
http://www.detonate.net/matrix
Read it 1st then moderate
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
If you get phone service out there, check into your local company.. maybe they can contract out with the big boys to provide you with a bunch of DSL trunks, which will get you some good bandwidth.
A whole lotta cable :)
Too bad bandwidth through power lines hasn't come out yet. It probably woulda come in handy now.
I imagine that would be prohibitably expensive, esp for a school district.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
As an EE currently studying Hardware Communications, I'd say Fiber...with latencies in the picosecond range, It'd probably be your best bet...the only question is what kind of terrain do you have between here and there...Microwave might have too much latency. Your Return To Wolfenstein ping times would be HUGE! :)
JoeLinux
I heard Iridium phones are going cheap.. How about purchasing the whole smear and having satellite modems ;)
Perhaps a Beowulf Cluster of 56k modems?
hey.... It could work!
Try a solution based on a form of 802.11, or it's variants. Find a suitably high place in the city to mount a directional antenna on, point it at your school, go about 10 miles, install an 802.11 acces point in some friendly location, add more directional antennas. You'd probably run up to $10k getting the proper communications equipment and such, and you'd need a PC at the first of the hubs to be providing the gateway (*Nix or 2K Server so it won't crash too much) It might work or it might not. There are many communities that are providing 802.11(x) service for their entire city, but I don't think it's ever been taken past a city before.
JKoebel
I suppose you could offer to give residential homes between you and the city free access to your broadband pipeline as long as they set up equipment to act as a wireless relay. You supply/(pay for) the bandwidth and access..and willing participants will set up the equipment.
Your biggest problem will be overcoming the fresnel zone. Most wireless requires radio line of site, which means there can be no obstructions. The fresnel zone is actually the eliptical path that a radio wave takes from one point to the next - for a 45 mile link you would need ungodly clearance between the 2 points. To calculate the fresnel zone and other requirements try going to www.ydi.com and use their online calculators.
If you do, some kind of microwave system might work. If you don't have line of sight (or can arrange for a series of relays), you are probably out of luck.
cisco offers wireless solutions that just barely reach 45 miles ( I think) or maybe thats 45mbit over 25 miles. Oh well, its worth checking out. In any even they offer a nice , albeit pricey, solution
BTW, whats wrong with two way dish ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
$80,000 should be enough for 45 miles of fiber...
Satellite internet is shit - the latency makes it virtually impossible.
1. Build a sattelite with a reciever and transmitter
2. Build a rocket.
3. Build a 2 sattelite dishes and transmitter/reciever combinations.
4. Launch your sattelite into orbit around the earth.
5. Use the sattelite to connect the two locations.
Light travels about 1/100 of an inch in a picosecond, not 45 miles. And microwaves travel just as fast through air as visible light does through fiber.
83chrise.nuf
Throw it in front of a big proxy server, and bam, you're done. Cheap, unless you must play CS, the latency isn't all that.
any news lately beside "who's using wireless this week"?
Have a company sponsor you with cat-5 cabling and cable pipes. Then declare a "Plant A Cable" field day in the entire district, spread the kids out evenly along that 45 mile stretch with shovels and pickaxes, and let them dig! Or you could have a chain-gang-themed masquerade, and have them in striped shirts and fake manacles, with a price to the class with the best costumes.
Or maybe not.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Remember kids, fiber keeps you regular!
Wouldn't it be possible to gat fiber (or some low-end form of it, it's just a school) for under $80k?
NerfOnline - Because Nerf Guns aren't just for kids -
If you are in Canada check out http://www.webworldwarehouse.com ask for Lonnie. There are a number of other WISP's up there, but he is a good start. As long as you have the line of sight you can shoot 2.4GHz DS 30+ miles with the proper equipment.
Good luck,
Tom Dodge
dodge@qlynk.com
I believe www.oreilly.net had an interesting article on the subject. Can't remember the full URL thought
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
You won't be able to guarantee a consistent connection, and it could easily cost more than $10,000 for that kind of range. If your district and ISP are going out of the same CO, just get a point-to-point DS1 for $250 a month.
Perhaps an 802.11 over a heavily boosted antanne? Is this in a country w/ RF restrictions?
I'm not sure if 45 mi is possible, but w/ repeaters, it may be.
Also, HP is working with something for long distance 45Mbps wireless backbones w/ 802.11 downlinks for internet access in remote areas.
There is a previous slashdot post here.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
I don't know what the law is in Canada about 802.11b wireless ethernet, but people do make line of sight point-to-point 802.11b links with dish antennas on both ends that are as long as 20+ miles. I understand that Linksys WAP11 access point (US$200) can be configured as a repeater, as can some Cisco Aeronet unit that costs US$1k. Of course, when you include the antennas, housing, professional design and installation, the cost of making these repeater stations will go way up, but still nowhere near US$80k.
Here are my thoughts on how you can get bandwidth:
1. Can you get T1 lines? They'll work just fine.
2. Is there some kind of government grant or something that you can sign up for to pay for something more expensive? Or is that how you got the money in the first place?
3. I assume you're too far out for DSL, correct?
4. What about pooling 2 or 3 cable modems?
5. The CPP (Carrier Pigeon Protocall) can work well, plus teach the student's responsibility (that means make them take care of the pigeons for you). Of course your bandwidth will grow every year this way. But you won't have any during very cold months.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
My school district used to be in the same situation. We used Intellicom's VSAT technology.
http://www.intellicom.net/kids.htm
No, Iridium satellites fly very low so the latency isn't that bad. It should also be possible to combine the satellite connection with a regular modem connection, routing low-bandwidth interactive traffic (telnet, irc, short http sessions etc) trough the modem(s) and high-bandwidth bulk traffic (ftp, nntp, large http downloads etc) through the satellite.
I remember seeing an article a while back about using grain elevators for this purpose in rural areas. This would seem like a good option if you have grain elevators in the area.
Over here in Hawaii the Department of Education has a quirky little technology program show on public tv. One week they showed how they were modifying standard Airport hardware and getting somewhere around 25 miles of range out of it by attaching certain kinds of antennas. If you can get 25 miles out of modified Airport hardware, 45 miles doesn't really sound too unreasonable.
I'm not sure of the exact speeds yet, but we are going to be experimenting with using laser for linking APs in Brismesh. Here's some links:
r /
http://www.qsl.net/wb9ajz/laser/laser.htm
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/laser.html
http://www.gbonline.com/~multiplx/wireless/lase
http://www.emn.org.uk/laser.htm
http://www.n1bug.net/tech/laser/alc_wa6ejo.html
That last link explains how to get around the modulation problems that can slow down standard laser diodes. You find some of these links useful.
David
I have read some articles about using 802.11b over long distances. Perhaps these links might help.
O'Reilly Network: A Wireless Long Shot [May. 03, 2001]
O'Reilly Network: An 802.11 ISP on Maine's Rocky Coast [Oct. 12, 2001]
45 miles is a pretty long haul for RF, given as other posters have remarked, the Fresnel zone, line of sight, and - from what I have been told -- the the curvature of the earth at those distances.
I administer a WWAN for my employer. We use Solectek Skyway wireless Point to Point bridges/routers. These units operate at 11mbps in the 2.4Ghz spectrum. I like these units alot, they are well made (NEMA compliant) and perform very well (~20ms latency on my 90 mile roundtrip network). They do not use 802.11b due to some the inherent problems with that standard. Their WCOPP RF protocol is based on HDLC, and their bandwidth managment is top notch.
Their maximum rated distance is 30 miles. My longest link currently is 18 miles (line of sight) and works great. While you may not be able to dp 45 miles with one link, it might be possible to operate a repeater site off of some radio tower between you and the city. I have 2 such sites, due to line of site concerns.
Good luck!
See Reach Out and Touch Someone and some more followups in Cringely/Old Hat. Admittedly, he used 802.11b wireless for less than 10 miles, but maybe you can extend the technology somehow.
One followup which might be of interest is the suggestion to become the broadband supplier for your town: Roll Your Own: Not Only Can You Do Your Own DSL, Here's How to Become a Broadband Tycoon at the Same Time -- if you could do that and get enough 802.11b customers locally (meaning no wires to string), you could justify some up-front costs.
HTH
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
but the distance wasn't so far, only 10km. He used telescopes to find a neighbor who was close enough to telco for DSL (Cringely wasn't), then hooked the neighbor up for free and mounted 21dB-gain directional Yagi antennas.
The story's an interesting read.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Who is your local telco? You may want to ask them about a point to point T1 circuit. Hook-up one end at the school and hook up the other end at your ISP.
Do you have voice service from your local telco? Typically you can get ISDN service anywhere you have voice service. Some hotels in my area bond 3 or 4 of these circuits together instead of a T1. This may or may not be cheaper depending on how your telco bills ISDN access charges.
-ted
This links to a very informative case study in Maine.
0 /1 2/maine.html.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/1
Why doesn't the local communities get together and form a co-op? The school system would take the lead on this since they would benefit first but the rest of the members would benefit.
If your system is anything like where I grew up, we had small schools for each of the communities. Why not take a room from each of the schools and turn it into the local pop for the service. If you've got a line of sight from each of the schools or could get access to a point where you could relay it, then you wouldn't have to worry about using T1's to connect each of the locations.
The co-op would sell access to the Internet and since they're the only game in town there's no competition.
The school system would get deep discount since they're providing the space and power. But, setup a non-profit to run it and make them responsible.
Of course they'll be some interesting political hurdles to jump but hey that's what makes life so great.
If you live in Virginia there is a state program to get deep discounts called Virginia Link. They did have some really nice pricing on T1s and installation. James
Read his column from the week after, he talks about antennae and longer distances:
1 2. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200107
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
How about satellite?
I know that ping times are a little crappy, and if you want to do any hosting you'd best forget about it and all, but it's not too bad a solution.
Down here in Australia, we've got a real problem with rural schools. 45 miles is nothing, some face distances of hundereds of miles to the nearest populus. Telstra, our major carrier tend to pitch the satellite option to our rural users quite heavily.
I work for a regional school, and although we aren't far from a small population, we still don't have access to DSL or anything similar, so we use a Sat. connection. It isn't perfect, but it does the job where the kids are concerned. It serves 150 desktops without any real difficulty, and with very little downtime due to the satellite itself (some due to the people running it though).
I'm sure there must be some Sat. options available in other countries (after all our uplink is in the U.S.). You might want to give it a try!
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Maybe I'm stating the obvious but you could try StarBand sat. service. It's not a T1 or maybe even DSL but it is two way and a heck of a lot better than dial up.
The high school I used to attend had wireless broadband years ago (well probably 5 or 6 years ago anyway).
A little poking around on the net brought me to this site which explains all the details of the install at my school and the other schools in the board. You might want to check out that site for some ideas anyway.
Ft. Thomas AZ did something in this range with Cisco Airnet from Ft. Thomas (duh :-) ) to I believe Safford. They use it for Internet and distance learning.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
If your area has cell phone towers, then radio relays can cannect you. (It uses those microwave dishes that are on each cell tower, thus you do not have to set up a single huge dish up high.) I do not know the price, but it has been the way my company has linked remote offices in the mountains. I heard it is pricey for a subscription, but bearable. It is also not too fast, but it will be faster than 56k, and is essentially your network...you set it up, they maintain the dishes. BUT You will also have to deal with telco BS.
I would say try getting T1 if you can
badness 10000
Screw microwave. If you guys have a line-of-sight to the ISP, or near the ISP then you can get service like http://www.terabeam.com/hom.html. Supposedly the current technology only allows up to 5 miles, but that's at speeds up to 155Mb/s. I could be wrong, as I've only done a minimum amount of research on it, but if you have enough money to spend on equipment, maybe you could hop-scotch around the area. One equipment provider is http://www.conversant.com/.
When I was in Hurghada - smallish beach-side resort on the Red Sea in Egypt, some entrepeneurs had come in with a satelitte dish and were offering dial-up service. The only alternative at the time would have been long distance dial-up to Cairo. Throughput Solutions is offering a similar service here
Buy yourself a nice car for $100,000 CDN and a CD burner and offer to drive CD's from the city to your town.
:-)
You will get better range and lower latency than sneaker-net.
All those transformers at powerpoles creat electrical isolation, so you probably will not see that anytime soon, becasue it would require so much signal strenth and even then be disrupted by the AC.
- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/0
5 /0 3/longshot.html
It would be interesting to see if they could pull this off with repeater stations, the only problem being cost for putting up the antenas needed. Not sure how much that would cost, but I'm guessing a lot!A radio station I work for needs to get it's broadcasts to the top of the transmitter towers, and also to the top of all the repeater stations, so instead of laying down some massive cable (the primary tower is around 120miles from the studio, and on top of a mountain), we just have some hardware that emulates a frame-relay connection over a wireless link. Works really great, they have no problems making the distances with some good antanneas, and we used a gas station along the way as a relay ( you need power from somewhere ), so you could probably do that without any problem of even getting close to your budget (The antennas are about 1k a piece, and the relays/transmitters are around 5k, it all runs on the unlicensed frequencies here in the US, so you would probably find a similar product up there and not have to pay for licencing.)
Have you considered using multilink ppp over modem connections? Assuming you can get a 56k modem connection in your area, buy 4 modems and get an account with an ISP that supports multilink and always on connections. Cost shouldn't be too bad: 4 lines * $20 + $50 ISP account(???) = $130 a month for approx 200kbps. Cheaper than a T1 and works anywhere with decent analog phone service. Add more modems if you need more bandwidth.
what happened to PCDirect? High-speed down,
modem uplink, maybe twin modem uplink. Should be plenty of bandwidth for a school, unless you're producing amateur video.
my local schoolboard, the grand erie district schoolboard [ http://www.gedsb.on.ca ] is a rual schoolboard that has large towers with dishes on them for there internet. i'm not 100% sure what it is, but it's fairly speedy to all the schools in the middle of nowhere.
How about using 2 tin cans connected by a long piece of string?
My old school district is about 45 miles from the city but there were companies that had fibre laid years ago. When I graduated and started working for the district we came up with a plan to lease bandwith from those companies.
Obviously I don't know your whole situation but look around and see if there's a company in the immediate area that already has broadband access.
No sig for you!!
i don't know what the legal power limit is for the 2.4ghz public band...but as long as no one complains, chances are you will have no problems.
this place has everything and it's probably all legal
this place has lots of cloices for high-gain antennas and good prices
build your own bi-directional 2.4ghz amplifier!!
802.11b tips and tricks from o'reilly
The Palliser School Division in southern Alberta, Canada implemented a microwave system (45Mbps) three or four years ago. They're now moving to a fibre optic network being built by the Alberta Government. You might want to talk to them. It covers the rural area from Lethbridge, Alberta to Vulcan, Alberta.
http://www.pallisersd.ab.ca/tech/index.html
...ISP that will supply you bandwidth. That will protect you from being tied into one provider, and then they go out of business you can still have your access.
You have something above your lip.
How about you just merge 100 phone lines into one big mass of bandwidth. It just might be cheaper ;-). I it might not be technically possible (let alone feasible), but it sounds pretty straight forward to me! Especially since I have no knowledge of this at all!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
But, why wireless? Just go to a telco and price a point to point T1 to your ISP. That way you don't have to rig a solution and it's something the ISP is already very familiar with. You won't have to worry about rain, fog, growing trees, etc.
I don't see a requirement for it to be wireless.
Yes, I know: it's 72.4 km
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
I think probably the best chance you have is to set up two or three repeaters in between your school and the city. Someone earlier mentioned that you could go 25 miles, but with a very tall antenna (100 feet is very tall for an amateur project, IMHO). Hops of 10-15 miles would be easier.
Then again, there may already be some tall structures or antennas in your area. If there's a radio or TV broadcast antenna in between the two cities, it might be a good idea to ask them if they would do it. Of course, these folks probably actually talk to the FCC on a moderately regular basis, so they might be somewhat concerned about helping in this way..
Cell phone towers might be good candidates for the several-hop idea..
The only thing I have ever seen for those distances is unfortunately a troposcatter antenna.
.anyone know of one here?
I have no idea what companies would sell an affordable troposcatter system. .
Troposcatter completely overcomes the problem of the need for LOS (line of sight), however they require nightly adjustment for long distances as the E1 and E2 fields of the ionospere merge at night time (that's why you get better radio reception at night, BTW), however at that short of a distance you may not have to do any adjustment at night time.
How it works is that it refracts (not reflect as many people erroneously say -- there is no phase inversion) radio waves off of the ionosphere and back to earth to a recieving antenna.
The nice thing is at 45 miles you would not need a very powerful attena.
In the Air National Guard we use 10,000 watt troposcatter antennas to achive T-1 speeds for hundreds of miles without a satellite.
Here is a Wireless Network Link Analysis CGI that can be used to determine if your current wireless setup will work. Calculates fade margins and probability-of-outage.
It's part of the work done by Green Bay Professional Packet Radio
From here:
Northern Lights School Division No. 69
Project brings the internet to rural school division
Northern Lights School Division defied conventional wisdom to bring the world to the desktop of over 6,700 students and 700 staff in 25 schools. Using Wi-LAN technology the jurisdiction established the world's biggest wireless education system in both geographical area (5,714 square miles) and number of sites. It cost them $650,000.
The project has been recognized for its innovation and successful implementation both within the educational community and the industry. ASBO International awarded project manager Gary Krawchuk the Pinnacle Award for Excellence, making him the first Canadian to receive this prestigious award.
For more information contact Ed Wittchen,
Superintendent, at 1.780.826.3145.
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
I've been using a tachyon system for over a year and I find it works just fine for web surfing, email, FTP uploads, etc. May not be good for gaming, but students are supposed to be doing real work :)
Depending on who your RBOC/Telco is, you might want to consider frame relay from them. I used to run a small ISP in Oklahoma, and Southwestern Bell has *no mileage charges* on their frame relay service.
We used Intermedia for our primary pipe, but for redundancy, we got a second pipe from Southwestern Bell Internet Services. 1.5mbps, 64 IP addresses, DNS provided by them if we wanted to use it (which we didn't). They used Williams for their upstream backbone, which performed rather decent. All for only about $500/month, again with no mileage or loop charges.
Most likely Pacific Bell and the former Ameritech have similar pricing since DBC has borged them both.
My company (an ISP and CLEC) has been using Wi-Lan for about a year to provide fixed wireless (both point to point and multipoint) internet service to the masses outside the normal wireline broadband ranges. We have been mostly happy with their products.
For about $750-$1500 in parts you can set up point to point 11mb/sec link using 802.11b base-stations and high gain antennas. With a clear line of sight between stations you can extend this to at least 12 miles.
I would try to find 3 roughly equidistant points between the school and the source of your connection and bridge 3-4 wireless point to point connections between them.
Each relay station would have to have AC power and a land owner willing to let you put up a 20-30 ftp poll.
Ping times might be a little high (although probably not any worse than what you are getting on satelite right now).
As a starting point, here is a company that sells some of the raw materials.
http://www.antennasystems.com/broadband.html
Microwave Data Systems (a subsidiary of California Microwave) has a solution that I think you will be the most pleased with -- I do not work for the company, but an ISP I worked for used this product to some success.
We modified their 1995-era equipment for a nearly 60-mile backhaul for DS3 speeds between Springfield, Missouri and Joplin, Missouri. The microwave link survived even when the AT&T cable between out two metro hubs did not.
Talk to them, maybe they are willing to rent some "underground" bandwidth?
"Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." -- Paul Graham
How 'bout every time you want to look at a website do this...
1) Force a student to ride 50 miles to town with a blank floppy disk
2) Have the student find the nearest comp and save the web page
3) Make him ride 50 miles back.
4) Boot up the floppy
5) Repeat
Actually the post sucked and I really didnt like it much at all.
A quick bit of background.
I am co-owner of a tech engineering company in the mid-west. We specialize in 4 areas, Cisco, Linux, Medical IT and last but not least wireless network design (LAN, WAN and Long Haul).
We had a customer that needed an interum solution (something to last them about 10 months until another means of connectivity came available). It had to be inexpensive, relatively fast, and wireless. We used FHSS gear to accomplish our task (Proxim RangeLAN2 to be exact). Our reasons were many, but I won't go in to that here. I will say forget about 802.11b for this (and for any serious wireless tasks other than LANs). We used two Proxim 7521-05 access points (the XR series as it outputs at 500mW as opposed to the 7520 which outputs at 100mW). As someone alluded to earlier, you have to have Fresnel clearence (ie cooperative geography). You have to know how to do a path survey, and you have to do one methodically at this kind of distance.
Let's assume that for you "task at hand" you can gain Fresnel Clearence and you want to do this. Since you are in Canada, you have to know your output power limitations, here in the US you cannot use high-gain antenna's with the 500mW AP's, unless you attenuate the signal before it reaches the antenna to reduce the output power to legal limits (and in the Carribean where we also do a lot of work, no one gives a rats butt what the law says). Not a problem for this type of thing, as normally the cable length from the ap to the Antenna on top of the tower is sufficient to reduce signal strength. Anyway, a couple of 21dBi or 23dBi parabolics, a couple of AP's (one in master mode, one in station mode), some cable and either your own tower or access to a tower on each end. Keep in mind, you can always use a repeater (passive or active) to clear obstacles in the middle, or to zig-zag as needed. Let's look at some dollar figures.
7521-05s normally retail for about $1,100 bucks. We are currently buying them for $189 from a place that bought out an ISP that went belley up. They are brand new in OEM packaging. Their address is www.imsales.com. So...
$400 for two APs
$800 for two good quality Parabolic Antenna'
$800 for excellent quality cable
$500 for two polyphaser lightening arrestors
Who knows for towers.
You got a long way to go before you reach 80 G's.
Now, the down sides. First, the speeds aren't going to be stupendous. You'll get between 800Kbps and 1Mbps. Still, not bad. The task of path surveying is not for the inexperienced. It requires lots-o-experience and knowhow, but there is certainly someone in your area that can do it (ask the local cell phone company who they use). Finally, antenna aiming is critical.
There are some other technologies that could get you higher speeds at a higher cost, but still unlicensed. Again, if you want to discuss this in more detail, e-mail me (rindeee@yahoo.com)
Anyway, I hope this helps. I will gladly give you more specifics, debate the virtues of various wireless technologies for this aplication, etc via e-mail at rindeee@yahoo.com. Be glad to help you accomplish your task...I think you will find it quite pleasing in the end.
PS. "Catagory 3" 802.11a (there are three classes of 802.11a the third intended for longer distance point to point) may be workable for this, but it's not on the market yet, so I don't know. The 2.4GHz stuff (Proxim RL2) is nice as the lower frequency than 802.11a (which runs at 5.8xGHz) is a bit more resiliant and has much better propegation over long distances.
For more info look at www.proxim.com and go from there.
I am not sure if you can use this frequency in Canada (we can not in europe). You could possibly use this with one relay. http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/witc/wt2700 /index.shtml
This works for both p2p and p2mp.
This is my point too. You can get an Internet T-1 for $1200/month for a tier 1. Go to a smaller ISP and you'll get it for far less and have very good reliability.
One of our Internet T-1s at work ends up in New York (from NC) and is only $1200/month.
Netopia has a multiple idsl unit, upto 576Kbps per unit (4x144kbps). Get 3 of these and combine the bandwidth for 1728kbps worth of bandwidth.
$1200 (3x) Netopia R3100-I
$600 (12x) ISDN line
$2500 ISP data charge
...because it would probably have worked. They had several customers at that range in Phoenix, AZ for several years. The published limit was 35 miles, but with the right terrain, it went quite a bit farther. In fact, they routinely picked up an interfering MMDS signal from Tucson at the Phoenix cell site.
Also, IANA RF engineer, but there are 2.4GHz (unlicensed) microwave dishes on the market in the neighboorhood of $25k each side, running DS-3 speeds, and maybe faster by now. Check American Multiplex (IIRC). It's unlicensed, but because it's a point-to-point shot with high-gain dish antennas at each side, interference is usually pretty manageable.
A while ago a story was posted on Slashdot about O'Reilly attempting a similar thing, except he was trying to get 802.11 to travel 20.9 miles using a standard .11 card and a very directional antenna.
The good news is that it worked for him, but the bad news is the he was going for less than half the distance you need. He did use a relay station after the 20.9 mile mark tho' so it might be of use if you want to build 3 of them (presuming that you own/can afford the land to build them on).
Oh, and his target was halfway up a big hill, making line of site no problem!
-- Mike
You might look into MMDS technology. It works well at long distances, especialy if you're just using a point to point link. Another bonus is that the FCC carved out a large chunk of MMDS spectrum specificaly for educational institutions. Alot of school districts hold licences for this spectrum and don't even use it.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
--Ambrose Bierce
Why won't Starband work?
...give all of the students qualudes. They won't notice the latency.
You can get a T1 for $1-$2k a month. Call up your favorite upstream (UUNet, Sprint, Qwest, etc), give them your address and they'll hook you up.
They get about 2x27Mbit (before error correction) over 100km distance, but they do it via one very prominent mountain. For those who know thier geography of the state of Victoria, Australia, LaTrobe University, Bundoora Campus (Melbourne), tansmitts 2x27mbit data to Mt Macedon, height difference is close to sea level at Bundoora to around a km at Mt. Macedon, here they would obviously pay rent for the space they use on whoever's tower; from there they go to the Bendigo campus, which just happens to be on the side of a hill, and on the top in the right place, on the southern side of Bendigo, thier they are about 2-300m above sea level. The distances involved here are about 50-60km from Bundoora to Mt. Macedon, and about the same from Mt. Macedon to Bendigo (by air, nearly twice that by road).
If you want to see these locations on a map, get out a good map of Australia, Mt. Macedon is also a great tourist location, so it should be on most good maps.
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
I personally wouldn't entertain any of these suggestions regarding 802.11b. 45 miles is a long distance, and more likely than not, you'll require at least one active repeater system along the way. Given the cost, and the fact that this will be your primary connection to the 'Net, it's important that you get a real microwave system with your own frequency.
;)
I'm not familiar with the States, but in Australia there are Telcos happy to provide these - I worked for Telstra doing Radio projects.
The designer/installer will be able to accurately model the path for you, taking into account fresnel, earth bulge, terrain, multipath, rain etc. Depending on circumstances, they may offer a 1+1 hot standby system with diversity antennae; for microwave links they will give you a reliability figure based upon environmental effects for the given path. They will also be able to negotiate repeater sites and assist with frequency licensing, equipment selection.
None of this is cheap, unfortunately, so shop around.
#1 Stuff in between the transmitter and the reciever. This causes problems
#2 Cordless phones. Some new phones use the 2.4 GHz range. I would hate to tell people that they can't use these phones/lose your connection every time someone uses one of these phones
Also remember that you have to pay to keep the equipment working and also pay for the internet access on the other end.
That's all I can think of now
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
Given that you were on a satellite connection before, and probably don't need low latency, look into Starband. Their standard packages aren't really broadband (150-500 kbps) but it's a start. IIRC, The dish and reciever are $700, and it's $80/month, but that was a while ago it may have changed.
I've never heard of a civilian high speed wireless solution going that far. If you think there's any chance at all that you could get rights of way before 2003, you should look into wired solutions.
Don't limit yourself to a point-to-point mentality, for the hassle of having a wire through their land, a person or locality gains the benfit of connectivity they would not otherwise have.
Realistically I am not sure 802.11b is for you, although it probably could do the job. I worked for a company that build networks within, between, and into corporate buildings. Assuming the phone company can't provide a T-1, I would look in to leased lines. A pair of leased lines between you and an ISP should cost around $100/month possibly less. A pair of leased line modems should come in under $3000. Depending on line quality, some of them can get a megabit of BW. Cat 5 or Cat 7 ethernet and fiber would be extradinarily expensive, cat 5 outdoor grade cable is something .30 a foot in addition to the several repeaters/mile you would need. Fiber actually might be slightly cheaper at that distance. Needless to say it would be enomously expensive
Don't try wireless unless you have a line of site. Givin a line of site, you are are on the outedge of of what microwave technology can do. Most systems top out at around 30 miles or so. However some off the newer stuff is running up to 50 miles. http://www.wmux.com/index.html, Western Multiplex's Lynx series is a good start, your best bet is to call them and explain your situation. They can set you up with a local contracter who knows their systems to set you up. Should cost aound $15,000 to buy and setup the equipment. Of course you might have to get a license and you need sites to build the towers. The manufacturer can probably help you with this as well.
Although 802.11b is a neat technology, outside of 10 miles relay stations will be needed. Multipling problem possiblilities within you network. Givin that 802.11b is really not used in this application often, you probably won't be able to find anyone who has done this to help you. Cost will be similiar if not more than microwave considering five access points/relays will be needed.
I don't work for any of the microwave guys, but I know they are established and know their stuff. Going into a situation like yours you definitely want easy to support established stuff. The microwave guys very often will send a salesman to hold your hand through planning the whole project.
Good Luck,
"before I became a drug addict I had so many problems, now I have it focused to only one"
...is painfully slow and noisy. Until proven otherwise, I'd imagine internet access through power lines would be the same. There's just too much noise from sudden power drains (such as applicances and factory machines) or surges. The power grid was built to carry power, not data, and it is singularly unsuited to the latter role.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Sorry if this seems a little self-serving, but may I recommend ADTRAN (www.adtran.com). I work as a co-op there, and we could take care of this for $80,000, no problem. We recently setup a wireless haul across the (I believe it was) Andes mountains in South America, going from peak to peak with our Tracer line of products. Just go and check us out. See what you think.
P.S. This is my first post, so please be gentle.
As an undergraduate I worked an a project that would be perfect for your needs as long as you do have long-rang line-of-sight. The the lab's page is not up yet (a lab was just created to work solely upon this research) but you can contact him directly, if you wish. His lab is the Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy and High-Speed Communication Lab (Prof. R. Martini)
t m
http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/physics/Research.h
Just realize that this is being worked on in a RESEARCH lab. I am unsure how far along in development this project currently is and may not be ready anytime soon.
Hope this helps
Actually I changed my mind again, it was GREAT!
Watch those packets fly with http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
Enjoy!
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
I've already budgeted out a very similar project for a rural ISP in Canada. Similar story, about 45 miles, no line of sight. We're going to do a two-drop radio shot with a tower in between on top of a hill for line of sight. This will work pretty well. I would strongly suggest staying away from the 802.11 stuff unless you really don't need more than a few mb/s, as the "rated" 11Mbps actually usually ends up being closer to 4 or 5, not enough to support a medium sized school district.
If you're interested, drop me an email at michael at dynavar dot com.
Good luck with your project. Your budget gets you there pretty easily...
Michael
Here are some URLs you might find interesting: HPWREN (featured here recently) have a 45mb backbone using western multiplex tsunami kit, and 802.11b access points. They use solar power and batteries to power some backbone nodes.
Some other people using mostly 802.11b kit who will have some information you can use: BAWUG PersonalTelco.net NoCat.net Freenetworks.org
Using 802.11b or similar tech, you should expect each wireless hop to add about 5ms of latency, maybe a little more depending on distance. You can quite easily build a repeater by connecting two bridges together by a X-over cable. You could probably do this with Linksys WAP11 or similar, but over this type of distance you will find it much easier to use something like the high-spec version of Cisco Aironet 350 bridges (the 100mW versions will push the signal a lot further - 25 miles with 24dBi antennas - you can use Cisco's own, alternatives include Superpass (based in Waterloo), HyperLinkTech and others.
Aironet bridges let you set the distance of the link which modifies timing parameters (a slight problem with standard 802.11b over long distances), and their security is better than WEP.
There's plenty of homebrew opportunities for antennas and other related kit, although I guess they're probably of more use to people who don't have a budget to play with (: There's a collection of links on this page with a particular focus on homebrew kit.
i work for an ISP owned by a 2-way radio company. they use Western Multiplex 2.4GHz and 6GHz equipment for wireless T1 (for data and voice channels). the WM stuff does require a license since it's direct sequence, but the 2-way place can probably help you out with that somehow. as an example, we do a T1 run using the 6GHz equipment from our main ISP office to the main 2-way office that spans about 60 miles via a hop on a mountain in the middle.
Such a system can't exist, except for the military, which has ongodly amounts of spectrum allotted to it.
The bandwidth of a connection is proportional to the data rate of said connection. i.e. high speed data links use more spectrum than slow ones.
As you get higher in frequency, you have more spectrum available.
Problem is, once you pass around 30-50 MHz (depends on time of day and solar conditions...), radio waves go through the ionosphere instead of bouncing off it. In general, the legal limit on bandwidth below 50 MHz is only a few kilohertz. (For example, amateur radio operators are only permitted to use FM at 50 MHz and above due to bandwidth restrictions.)
Now, at VHF, UHF, and even microwave, there is a phenomenon called tropospheric ducting that allows for long-haul non-LOS propagation. Unfortunately, this is dependent on a temperatur inversion in the atmosphere. (i.e. weather dependent) It cannot be relied upon for communications.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Nebulink does corporate accounts.
I've found their residential service to be quite good, and very reasonably priced. Plus their service works with Linux which may or may not be a factor in your decision.
Please stop spreading such misinformation. I install fiber in quazi rural areas for a living and your comment is offensivly WRONG. Hand trenching only costs about $0.90/linear foot. SM fiber (in high counts) is only $0.04/linear foot. You can easily do a rural path with zero bores (missle or directional). Your number are horribly inaccurate....
Now, I don't know if they could construct this link for $80,000 with fiber, but they could for three times that amount. Find 4 groups willing to throw in $60,000 (plus another $1500 an end for long haul 100TX gear) and you are set.
It appears that you're in rural Canada. Which province/territory?
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Try this. Get 1 Watt amplifiers, 24dBi directional antennas, and 50' of LMR400 cabling from Hyperlink Technologies as a kit. Get two kits. Then, get two Orinoco ROR-1000 bridges and Orinoco's 802.11b gold pc cards. You should be able to stretch that distance. We are using the same equipment, but with 15dBi wide angle and omni antennas for a ship to shore connection. We get about 10-15 mi. (we're using lower gain antennas than the 24dBi directionals.) You can check it out here. If you just need a point-to-point solution, using the Hyperlink 24dBi directional / amp kit and Orinoco ROR-1000s may be the way to go.
Don't forget that the horizon is only 3 miles off! 45 miles away means you won't have an LoS for a wireless connection assuming the sites are both at ground level.
$80k, that ought to be enough to buy up all the Metricom stock.
This was a very interesting article. A couple of sticking points come to mind immediately. I dunno, maybe I'm a pessimist.
- What if the guy with the DSL connection has his phone and/or electric service cut off for some reason?
- What if, aided by his newfound bandwidth, becomes hopelessly addicted to multimedia porn newsgroups and sucks up all the bandwidth?
- What if they guy moves and is a jerk and takes the Airport basestation and other equipment with him? Even though setting up the shared connection is not technically illegal, it might be a pain to press charges in such a case.
load "linux",8,1
You will need a clear fresnel zone of around 300 feet (back of the envelope figures) above the tallest obstruction in the path. So you are probably talking about a 400+ foot tower, or something like a 150 foot tower on a 300 foot hillside (cheaper).
A 45 mile link will be hard to align properly, you will want to hire professionals. Cell phone companies use this kind of gear and go these distances regularly, for their cell-to-cell backhauls.
A lot will depend on where in our country you are. Industry Canada has their Schoolnet Initiative in the past, and I don't know what they have currently, but spend some time at strategis.ic.gc.ca and see what you can dig up. I'm also interested in decent bandwith to rual areas in Canada...where I want to live, I am about 5 kilometers from the closest Cable (ick, Rogers@home!) feed. I don't think that bell has ADSL out there yet. A company is starting to deploy wireless in a number of rual regions around Ottawa, probably using 820.11b, but I haven't investigated them much.
Please make sure and follow up if you find a solution!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I'm not trying to join the grammer police. I'm only posting this for your edification.
Honest.
The word you are looking for is the Yiddish shmir, commonly spelled schmeer or schmear in English.
It does come from the same root as the English smear though, originally meaning to cover, or smear, with grease, and thus came to mean "covering the whole thing" generically.
KFG
My company installs wired and wireless networks nationwide and I really like the adtran tracer units. They are relitivly inexpensive units that will wirelessly shoot 2 T1's up to about 30 miles. You can stack them back to back for longer range or to reuce antennna size. you would (as someone menntioned b4) have to take into acount the Fresnel zone but if you use the 5.8 Ghz radios you only have a 60' zone.
check them out www.adtranwireless.com.
It seems to be the obvious choice here.
Unfortunately, 45 mile earth-based wireless is almost impossible unless you use some sort of relaying signal amplification. Your best alternative would probably be multi-channel ISDN or even some sort of T1 service. While it's not cheap, it's reliable and available almost anywhere. Unfortunately, cable and DSL haven't made it out to a lot of rural communities, and probably never will, seeing all the problems they're having even in metropolitan areas.
I used to work for an ISP and the majority of our business was still ISDN. Many of our customers left us for RoadRunner/Sprint Wireless Broadband, but 80% came back within 3 months because ISDN is so much more reliable. Many schools in Houston (where I'm from) STILL use ISDN, merely because it always works, even if it isn't terribly fast. Keep in mind what students will be doing-- mostly searching Encyclopedia Britannica online or Google web searches, not streaming pr0n.
"I, Cringely" has an interesting article here on rolling your own DSL connection. The basic idea is to rent a "dry copper pair," basically wires you can use for whatever you want. If someone on your side of your telephone companies Central Office has broadband available, this might be something to seriously look into.
The kids don't need to Play Quake or Half Life @ school(well I do but thats another subject :-))
I think you need to take a closer look at RFC 1149 the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP). According to this site Pigeons can fly 40-50 Miles per hour, so that would give you about 2 hours per webpage. I would reccomend some major caching servers on the school end. Also it would be a good Idea to invest in a Pigeon farm, this would also give your students great expereince in farm managment.
Another idea is to break some standards and perhaps use an UDP tunnel betweent he sites on your pigeons to make sure you don't have to do all the tcp handshake stuff. O yeah.. .perhaps using larger packet sizes would be a good idea too.
I'm not familiar with the Canadian Government's Grant system, but I know the US has government grants ranging in millions of dollars to assist rural communities. Being an educational entity may also help in getting additional funding. Also, asking all the 'Industry' corporations wouldn't hurt as some of them might actually donate equipment and services to help communities. They loved those big tax write-offs, especially the chance to plaster their logos and trademarks all over the place.
Somehow, we, as humans, can send data at reasonably high rates to some of the farthest places in the Solar System, yet sending Internet wireless over 45 miles seems far beyond our technology.
What happened to all those technology benefits the Space Age was promised to bring us?
I'm still heating my coffee with electricity and I still type TEXT message on a keyboard for Christs' sake! We're better than this, let's move it!
what an asshole
He didn't say "any sort of access", he specifically said "What I am looking for is a way to get highspeed Internet access into our division through either RF or microwave." No fiber, no DSL, none of that. Don't you idiots even read?
That being said, there was an article yesterday about folks in Maine doing exactly this sort of thing. I guess Cliff doesn't read, either...
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
It seems you are from north of the border, lucky for you. I have been looking into this gear from http://www.cambridgebroadband.com and they calim that they can go 20Km without a repeater. You should find someone between the city and the campus that would not mind getting free broadband for having a repeater on their roof. I cannot use it here because it operates in the 3.5 - 3.8 Ghz range and the FCC has not approved that range here.
Good luck
Ray
I can't remember but if this was ever true, but it isn't now.
Extreme Networks and Cisco both have long haul GBICs available, and have done for a little while.
I don't have info on the Cisco models available right now (Ciscos website is BIG!), but Extreme have a 1000BaseLX-70, that will do 70 km on singlemode dark fibre. On top if this they do what I could best call a gigabit fibre line driver in the form of a "SummitGbX"[tm]. They claim it will definately do 80 km, and possibly up to 100 km, I have heard one claim that these units managed to reach 120 km. Basically, you hook these up to your 1000BaseSX interfaces at each end, and it does some wibbly-bits to bridge the 80 km or whatever length of fibre :)
I would love to verify all this independently :) but I never even dared ask the prices :/
Of course, all this doesn't really help your cause much... you might be able to find a friendly telco that will blow fibre in for you. Apart from that, your realistic options might not include wireless.
At that range, you will have to go for some sort of microwave transmission, and even then you will probably have problems due to the Fresnel effect, which bends and scatters photons at the earths surface. The maths escapes me at this moment, but to reach 45 miles in one hop you would probably need to have each end nearly 200 foot up in the air in order to clear inconvenient obstacles in between, like buildings and trees (how careless to put them there!). To do it in several smaller hops might be easier, but then you have to rent or buy locations to put your repeater stations on.
Another possible thing to do would be to link all the schools locally to a central point using some easily available method. Microwave links might be suitable here, as well as optical wireless links, T1 leased lines, or whatever you chose. The most usefull central point would be a telco CO, which means that you will only have to rent backhaul bandwidth on the telco's network without having to pay for an expensive tail to anywhere else. Almost all CO's will be served by fibre now, which makes renting a fast connection very much cheaper and easier to provision. As you well know, it is that last mile that makes it expensive.
I wish you good luck :) maybe you'll let us know how it turns out?
btw, I don't have any connection with Cisco or Extreme, I just use their kit in my job
meow! Maria
I have a 22 mile hop using Wi-Lan 5.8 radios and Andrew 35dB dishes. The radios cost $2300 each, the dishes are $800 each, one is at 275', the other is on a little tower at 35'.
You'll need probably $20k by the time its done to get it working but you'll have no local loop cost and 600kb+/sec throughput.
I'd strongly suggest you find your local amateur radio club and ask them for help - they already know where the good towers are and they'll likely give you lots of assistance in exchange for a little bandwidth.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
The BBC have a timely interview here with Bertrand Hartman of Omnired, describing his rollout of internet access to a rural town in Argentina.
Also theres this describing such done by the Peace Corps for Luki, Bulgaria.
Finally, a former Ask /.:Internet Connectivity Options in Mozambique? may be of interest.
troodon.net
http://www.caperangewireless.com/
They promise a radius of 50KM at 2Mbps
Check out http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/44/jump/wireless. shtml IIRC you can take their AeroPOrt 350 stuff and put highly directional antennas on them and get good range from 802.11b.
You might want to search google for microwave bandwidth solutions, because I know of several ISP's (one in my local area) that carry bandwidth from a city to the rural area using microwave towers. I know it isn't cheap, and the process of getting the county to give you a permit for a communication tower generally isn't easy. In your case it might just be cheaper to lease a T1 from your local ISP.
Try Starband Starband.Com and get internet access via satellite. It works almost everywhere in North America. Equipment cost is less than $500. If you need more bandwidth, buy more than one subscription. I believe download is DSL or better, probably 1.5 MB/sec, not sure. Upload IS included (2 way); this isn't an 'upload via phone' solution. A friend of mine installed one 'cuz broadband access stinks in his area. This is a simple solution. No land lines required.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Does that hurt your back?
I suggest you talk to Alvarion. They specialize in wireless broadband networking.
http://www.alvarion.com/HomePage.asp
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Do what MMNET, Middle Michigan Network. They got a bunch of the area school districts to band together to build a fiber network. It contains about 300 miles of fiber.
The project worked so well, that they picked up the call to offer the region internet connectivity, through edzone.
It is politically and financially difficult to do, of course. But, Publicly Owned Networks are a good thing... right?
Check into the Tsumami products from Western Multiplex, you will most likely find a solution that will work for you in your price range. http://www.wmux.com/products/index.html
802.11A is good for up to a mile on standard non-directional antenna, as opposed to 1,000ft on 802.11b
ethernet 5-4-3 rule
MAX:
5 segments (100meters long, 350 feet each),
4 repeaters and,
3 populated segments ie. of the 5, only 3 can have hosts on them, the other 2 are runs between
This is due to latency, signal degridation etc. so cat v definately wont work
now this all changes for fiber, 1500m + depending on the type..
check out Charles Spurgeon's Ethernet Site for more info
Local Multipoint Distribution Services(LMDS) can provide two way digital communication. Applications of LMDS include voice, video, and high speed data communication. The bandwidth of LMDS is more than twice the total bandwidth of AM/FM radio, VHF/UHF TV, and cellular telephone combined. Using LMDS, transmission speeds of several Gigabits per second are possible along line of sight distances of several miles. Just set a few of these things in a line to the closet provider.
Can't you get a fractional point-to-point T1 from the phone company? They have to bring lines in somehow...
45 miles is nothing when you expect to pay about $1000 per month for a full T1 over 250 miles. I'd guess you can get a fractional T or link to a frame cloud for about $500 per month and about $2000 per point. If your budget is $80,000, that leaves you with $70,000 (in one year) to pay for Internet services from an ISP. You should be able to get internet services for less than $1000 per month. If you're looking at $80,000-$4,000 (for hardware) = $76,000 / $1,500 (per month), you'll be able to have that active for over 50 months (that's over 4 years for those counting).
Skip the huge outlay of money for a technology that will be sketchy at best in bad weather and go for something that works and is proven many, many times over. If you want equipment recommendations, let me know. You can pick up some standard T1 routers (Cisco) with an integrated CSU/DSU off eBay for close to $1000 each. Your ISP may not even require you buy one at their end if they've got space on their T3...
All money estimated in U.S. currency.
Eric
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
All I can do is point you to this slashdot article wich mentions an article by Cringley.h tm l
2 3. html
...
"Roll Your Own
Not Only Can You Do Your Own DSL, Here's How to Become a Broadband Tycoon at the Same Time"
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/24/0230225.s
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200108
get the copper wires etc etc read the article
and be the first who implements it.
D.G.
I don't see why you're stuck on microwave...
1. It's very very likely there is a cable company in the area (CableModems).
2. You certainly could get ISDN just about anywhere you are.
3. Two-way satelite goes EVERYWHERE.
4. Multiple dial-ups perform surprisingly well if the gateway is setup decently (approx. the same price as broadband per-bps).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
call or look up Morewave Wireless
Morewave.com
with a 8th million bucks you cound run fiber, and then pay for it by providing (pay) internet service to your community.
I work with PTP circuits everyday all day long. I know of one guy who is paying well within their budget for a much longer loop.
Currently in the US Worldcomm is waiving setup, they may do so in Canada as well, but I just priced an approx 120 mile T1, and the loop fees were only $670/month with 1 year contract. (Downtown Sac to North Shore Tahoe). The link up at the other end with a major ISP was $500/month.
With a $120,000 budget, even Canadian this should be doable.
What we did back when I was in HS (3 years ago) was we partnered with a ISP that wanted to expand their customer base to our town. The school paid for the installation of the T1 line and offered the ISP a 3'x3' closet in the school. The ISP setup their modem banks and server racks and the school got 256 KB/s from the T1 line. This cuts down on the cost of a broadband. In addition, the ISP wins out because their peak time was between 3-12pm (after the kids got out of school) so they had full usage of the T1 line during the peak hours.
This is just an idea of what we did at the school. I was on the technology committee that ok'd this deal.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Preface: I'm amazed at how poorly Slashdotters read the question. The post is about a 45 mile hop in rural Canada -- this is not the usual suburban nerd's home connection. No FCC, no RBOCs, and no, you can't just trench 45 miles of fiber optics for C$125k. (That's about what one mile of urban trenching costs, or maybe ten miles of rural Ditch-Witch burial.)
This type of application can, I'm sure even in Canada, use licensed point-to-point microwave. This allows lots higher power than 802.11 (forget the "b" which means higher speeds for even shorter distances). Typical rule-of-thumb is that frequencies under 10 GHz can go up to 30 miles (okay, say 45 km) on a single hop, if you can get line of sight. The site in question might need a repeater along the way. The terrain is all-important.
It probably is possible to get some microwave radios on that budget, though a repeater would possibly blow the limit. Harris, for instance, has a good selection, and a free program, Starlink, on their web site, which does path calculations for various radio - antenna combinations. (You can source the radios elsewhere, but Starlink is obviously geared to match Harris' own radios.) These would probably deliver 3 to 45 Mbps, depending on the radio in question. Industry Canada (which regulates spectrum matters) would probably be able to point you in the right direction for licensing and frequency/path coordination.
First, if anyone has considered dry-pairs.. remember that they need to run though the same telco building. This eliminates anything as far as 45 miles.
Wireless with a repeater would work, although it would be some work to find a place to put the repeater. But it could happen. Latency over this distance could be a problem. I found some 802.11b wireless bridges that will fill a 25mile gap, with some effort you may be able to find some that span greater distances.
Running fiber that far would be expensive, but possible. For such a distance, you would probably have to get special permit by your local authorities.
Satallite downlink would definately be possible, although it is unidirectional and you would need to get a line for uplink.. which could be a problem.
Of course there is always the option of hiring an intern, buying a cd burner, and a year worth of train tickets.
Just can't say much more than that...
(If I told you, I'd have to kill you...)
Shamir presented a paper that nukes WEP from orbit- in fact, there is an exploit program out there making the rounds...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Does your small town have a major railroad running through it? I'm a contractor with a major US railroad (producing newsletters, so I meet people across the company and in various departments), and know from various stories I've done that railroads typically have their own super-duper communications networks, rivaling the big shots like AT&T. Perhaps you could work out a deal with them and their microwave equipment, or if nothing else, talk to someone from the railroad who works in the telecom department (all assuming there *is* a railroad running through your town). If the railroad office has some sort of radio tower with a couple dishes on it, you're set. Talk to one of their telecom guys and, worst case scenario, they would likely be willing to give you a good idea on what type of equipment to use for what you're doing, as it's exactly what their telecom networks do.
Unless you build a lot more around it, you can still play man in the middle attacks, etc. with 802.11... However, for what they're setting up IPSEC would work with it with little issues.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I helped setup the wireless system for this school a couple years ago. We used BreezeCom and Tsunami equipment. They have done much more since then. At 45 miles though you will have deal with the curvature of the earth. All wireless/microwave systems require line of site.
We setup relay stations for the sites we couldn't reach by one line of site path. The director of IT at the above mentioned school has a great deal of knowledge in this area. I'm sure he would not mind sharing that information. Good Luck!
Propagation characteristics differ depending on the frequency involved. Energy density will determine whether or not a signal is degraded enough to detect it or not.
Line of sight is not a good rule of thumb for RF propagation- for some things it's a good rule, for others it's only a good determinant of the maximum possible range.
RF is an interesting beast, one in which at one frequency, you're absorbed by the media, in another you're scattered by the same. Sometimes reflection comes into play and the signal bounces all over the place getting where you don't expect it. Sometimes the signal penetrates some media and goes further than you'd normally expect it to. Sometimes the signal hugs the earth and follows it's curvature to some extent (Which is where people get the thinking of line-of-site from- some signals bend some don't.).
Low frequency can be propagated through water and rock. High frequency can't. Low frequency propagates along the curvature of the earth. High frequency propagates along straight lines from the emitter source.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Ok, I didn't read all the replies... So, I apologize in advance if this is a repeat. This solotion uses a combination of HAM and Commercial pieces. The commercial part of it is you'll need to license frequencies from the government. The HAM part of it is packet radio. There is a college in Italy that is using this. They have connection speeds ranging from 2Mb to 34Mb. Check out their web site here. The theoretical limit is 155Mb according to the site. If your interested in reading more about packet radio you can check out The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Club. I'm not sure what is entailed in licensing frequencies from the government. But, it can't be that much trouble.
You should try to implement RFC 2549 (updates RFC 1149). It'd be a good field test for the technology.
Just watch out for hunting season. Then you'll get several network timeout errors.
This just appeared on the BAWUG list, with some info on Canadian regulations for the 2.4GHz band.
I use to work in a remote Gov'nt office in a rural area in Ontario. Bell Canada provided us with a setup as good as a T1. From what I understand, they used 2 or more copper phone lines and placed repeaters on a pole every few miles or so. They spit the signal through that. I could see the repeaters as i was driving to work and you can follow the line into town. Mind you it was only about 15 miles to the nearest fiber I'm sure. It sill might be a solution for you. The performance was good, 15-50kbps at times. Call Bell and see what they can do for you.
Form a co-op? something tells me if this school is 45 miles from the nearest broadband access, that the citizens who live out there probably don't need it. if there are even that many to co-op... forgive the stereotype, but I envision tooth-less yokels yukking about what do to with this 'fi-beer'.
Don't you guys have cable out there? Who's the provider? my high school used cable simply because it was cheap and hassle free internet access.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Hams should be prime sources of information for practical aspects antenna placement and more. There should be at least one amateur radio op in your area.
Although you did not say anything about where this school district is, you did make reference to Dollars Canadian so I will point you to Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) as a good starting point to locating a ham in your area.
Additionally, the ARRL in the USA and qrz.com would be other good starting points for information searches.
While what you are looking to accomplish is utterly forbidden to do within the amateur radio bands, the techniques used in those bands would be adaptable to other, more suitable frequencies.
Best of luck!
Regards, NN5KS
There is no need for overpriced sattilite or line-of-sight 802.11b. The real solution to your problem is here. Imagine, speeds up to 500Mbps!
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
For 85k I could just tell you whats on the internet.
Run on pure emotion, driven by true insanity.
We have this thing working in Lithuania, between Vilnius & Kaunas cities (distance 100 Km). You need direct line of sight, so you need some high structure in the midway for anthenas. Chimneys of thermal electro station in Elektrenai worked here, and as far as I know a church on the hill in Kaunas. You won't believe things they are doing with WaveLANs in Lithuania, because the telco is a monopoly and its prices are exorbitant. WaveLANs are the only alternative...
Hmm, I think Lema (http://www.lema.lt) has lots of experience with WaveLANs over vast distances, you could try contacting them and asking how they did it. Damn, they don't have an english page.
1) Where are you located? What's the terrain?
2) What's the availability of local utilities?
On the US east coast, most of the terrain could be reasonably called "rolling hills." The terrain is not flat... Its either going up or going down. Eventually the slope gets steep enough and the heights tall enough that we stop calling them hills and start calling them mountains. And there's another phenomenon: Two story buildings and three story trees.
Not true of the great plains or even as far west as Nevada and Arizona. I'd read you guys describing mountains as if they were obstacles on the landscape, but I didn't understand until I visited. Your land is perfectly flat until all of the sudden without warning there's a mountain. And, there are few if any trees blocking the horizon. That's not true out east where our mountains are just as tall, but a mountain is nothing more than a slightly taller hill.
Yes, I realize you're in Canada, but I can only speak from my experience.
If you're in forested rolling-hills territory, you can pretty much forget going 45 miles with 802.11. You need -clear- line of sight and you're not going to get it. Two or three miles and a lucky path is a practical limit if you want any sort of reliability over time.
On the other hand, on nice flat terrain (or flat with the occasional mountain) all you really need is the right one or two repeater sites with solar plants and batteries. You're still into the project for $40k+ after building a couple self-contained repeater stations, but you can reasonably expect it to work well when you're done.
I don't know the Canadian telephone tariffs, but in the US you can generally buy an "alarm circuit" anywhere that you can buy a telephone line for around $20/month. An alarm circuit is a copper pair with no attachments between point A and point B. Drive the cable path in a truck and pick repeater stations along the same cable run so that the telco doesn't have to go all the way to the CO and back (the copper is laid out in a star configuration radiating from the local central office). Pick points a mile or two apart. Invest in a $4000 cable tester so that you can certify the copper pairs are clean (on the first or second go around they'll miss load coils and damaged cable, but by the third or fourth the telco techs will realize that you mean it) and then buy some cheap DSL bridges off ebay.
Which, incidentally, is very similar to how telcos in the US deliver rural T1 service these days... Except they have two-pair DSL equipment in addition to one-pair equipment for locations where they want to go further without a repeater.
As you get closer to the city, the cable paths will become more tangled or shift to mux-based systems making this method less practical, but by then you'll be close enough to order a real data circuit or (with luck) within reach of some ISP's local POP site.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
45 miles of cat 5? good one, how much will the repeater you have to put in every 300ft cost? will the connection still be valad even for 10bt after 4 hops.
Anyway the guy said he only had $80,000 to work with this wouldn't cover the layers fee to begin to do the leg work to dig for 45 miles...
I work for a small school system and we are in the process of installing a wireless link as you describe. Our link is 3 parallel 802.11 links accross 6 hops to reach 63 miles (18 links total). We are worried about latency but that remains to be seen. (It's probibly better than Frame anyway) The 3 parallel links will be joined using some Cisco port trunking equipment so the load should be balanced accross the three.
communication through HIGH power lines has been around since the 1920s and is still in use at certasin countries for communications between power production sites
at 45 miles+ your only choice is one of the licensed frequencies. I have a couple of shots that are DS3+ at 40+miles. This one is at 11Ghz and made by ICM. We have another one at the same speed/range made by Harris. Unless you are a Big RF head you need a project manager and a certified RF technician. ie: call Alcatel and have them do it. As licensed microwaves have to be setup correctly, and you also can get burned //dont put that hand infront of the dish!//.
--jboss
There is even an RFC on it.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
About 150 WAP11s in repeater mode.
"Miss, may I use your house to store my wireless access point?"
Not only would it provide your school Internet access, but everyone on any road within a mile of the WAPs. Har har.
(Note to Slashdotters with no sense of humor: read satire.)
Do you like German cars?
RF over a 45 mile distance will be difficult. A lot of people mentioned that having clearance in the fresnel zones would be a hardship. This is true, but the curvature of the earth is a bigger problem. You would have to have some very tall towers (probably in the 200 ft range) to overcome the loses you would get from the curvature of the earth. Also, you would have to have your transmitters pumping out a lot of power, which is more than you will get out of 802.11 transmitters.
"No Comm, No Bomb"
My uncle works for Minnesota Power, and electric utility in northern Minnesota. Apparently they're doing a bit of a side business by selling excess capacity in their microwave relay system that is used to control and monitor their grid. They've also started running fiber with their transmission lines that they've installed in the last few years to expand their broadband capability.
science is a religion
Talk with your local telco (Bell?) about services such as megastream. It's older tech, but should work. When I was trying to get higher spped service in a rural area (no cable, no existing high speed wireless, and an exchange that had not been upgraded to support DSL) this was about my only hope.
You can use the wireless ethernet cards from Aironet... we have successfuly used them (ptp) on distances over 50km. if you need them to go even further consider getting some amps. For aironet/routing software go to: www.mt.lv. We use amps from www.hyperlinktech.com, kinda expensive, but they work.
You people got it all wrong. A 45 mile hop is no big deal. You just need a hop in the middle. Any water towers around? 4 DS3 radios and you've got 45mbs of bandwidth.
I'm CTO for an ISP in the Caribbean, and the combination of distance/high speed/low price is something that I have to rattle my brains every day to solve.
.02Euro.
With $80K, you can NOT lay 45miles of fibre & maintain them (maybe between 2 points in the desert, but here we're coming out of a city, so probability is near 0). And you have to add in the equipment to light up the fibre, plus maintenance, etc...
I presume your local telco doesn't do ADSL, or else you wouldn't be asking.
Option "A" would be getting from your telco a point to point leased circuit. Setup fees for a T1 (1.5Mb) would probably be in the US$5K range, with a monthly of probably around US$2K. You would also have to add in a router on your end (just about ANY serial router can do T1 speeds, second hand on ebay a cisco 25xx series goes for around $300. New you should be able to find around $1K).
Option "B" would be wireless. Problem is that a microwave link (which does need line of sight -LOS-) covering 45miles reliably is going to cost quite a bit more than your $80K, then again it would be high speed...
If you need a few Mb of bandwith (something in the 1-5Mb range), maybe you should look at setting up a couple of intermediate hops (every 15 miles or so), which would mean you would have 3 legs, or 6 transmitter/receivers. Latency is practically nonexistant (it's not the medium that introduces generally the latency, but the distance, which is why GEO sat-links are high latency), but this would have extra complications in that you need to find a couple of intermediate hops, then again equipment is much cheaper for the 15 miles range, and the masts you have to set up would be much smaller.
My
Functionally, you're going to be limited to about 20 miles using a pair of 36" parabolic grid antennas and 10db amps. The total will give you about 34 db gain (less 3-5 db for cable & n-connectors). That's about the FCC limit.
You can, however, find someone along the way and repeat off another location. Essentially, you aim the antennas and go 15 or 20 miles, then have two more antennas on the other side, plus a computer with two NICs, and just route between the antennas. Since you're boosting gain each time, you can repeat essentially forever.
However, you will find weather can be a limiting factor. Also, you must have line of sight (NO obstructions, including trees, buildings, etc), and the 2.4GHz range is prone to interference by things like leaky microwave ovens and cordless phones.
You might check out http://uslinux.net/wireless/ for some more info. A good company to buy equipment from is http://www.hyperlinktech.com
Assuming you didn't have to pay for relays (eg, you could relay off a home or office building for free), the equipment cost is probably somewhere around $15,000. Then you still need to deal with bandwidth considerations. You may find it cheaper in your case to get a T-1. At least in the DC metro area, you could get a T-1 circuit of 45 miles for about $1300/month, including bandwidth.
I'm not sure about the specific technologies, but I know it involved 802.11 of some flavor...but occording to a cisco pre-sales rep friend of mine they have gear that could do this with a wireless link. The number that he quoted me was 30miles line-of-sight easily. This is something that they have not completely finalized as a common solution for people (as far as I can tell), but if you contacted your local cisco corporate presales integrator you'd find someone who would most likely be able to help you whatever your problem may be.
-Peter
45 miles is a long way for 802.11 I have personally gone 26 miles. You need to have line of sight and you will have to have amplifiers. Also you will have to have at least 60% of your fresnel zone clear.
One of the major suppliers for wireless amp's and stuff is Hyperlink.
http://www.hyperlinktech.com/
Also you will want to use the 600 series cable from them so you will not have as much DB loss.
The best way to get you alignment is to us GPS and a compass. Mark the site in your GPS go to the other side and get a bearing on the point you marked. Set the compass to the bearing a line the arrow up and your compass will be pointing directly to the other antenna.
The are a few really good vendors of Wireless bridges.
C-spec http://www.overlan.com/
Solectek http://www.solectek.com/
I've used both and they are both good.
Anyway good luck and I hope it works out for you
You could just move to Iowa. We installed fiber to every school in the state just shortly after Al Gore invented the internet.
Seriously, it's one of the best investments this state has ever made. Most of the taxpayers didn't have a clue what it meant, so it was just sold under the "our children's future is at stake" banner, but it's been great for our educational system.
I suggest you take it to the voters and see if you can't get the same thing for your kids.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The technology proposed in RFC 1149 should easily handle this kind of range. Latency is going to be a problem, as is rank odor. However, you should be able to scale up to whatever bandwidth is required.
http://www.interbug.com/pigeon/humor/rfc1149/rf
Rather than running fiber or anything wireless, a simple T1 is probably easiest.
Come to think of it, I seem to remember seeing some ISP (back when I was looking at options, before DSL and Cable -- "coming soon" for 5 years -- were in my area) who was selling DS1 access for $895/month for the line ($800 install).
Even figuring $1k/month, $1k install, that still leaves you with several years of access for that $80k figure.
Hughes has released DirectDuo, which we beta tested in Lakefield, Ontario. It worked above average... the upload speed is about that of a really good 56k modem connection, but the downlink is through the roof (Averaging 1.2MBits).
We've also setup Cisco AirOnNet systems.... but 45 miles is quite a distance. Cringly did some tinkering with this stuff and got it to go a REALLY long distance - check his archives for the exact post.
Slashbaby asks: "I am a net admin for a school division that doesn't have broadband Internet. We are a rural school division, so we don't even have a provider in any of our towns. What I am looking for is a way to get highspeed Internet access into our division through either RF or microwave. There is a city about 45 miles away, (max. distance) that has ISP's that would be willing to sell us bandwidth if we can find a way to get it the 45 miles to the schools."
In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women!-H.Simpson
As mentioned before, Wi-Lan, A company with alot of experience with wireless broadband in the Canadian context.
Also contact, CANARIE, http://www.canarie.ca/ they do fund projects relating to education and training or they may know of initiatives underway in your area to supply broadband to schools.
If you are in Alberta (which I assume you are not) then waiting for the Alberta Supernet implementation with dialup coverage might be a better solution than spending a bunch of cash now.
http://www.albertasupernet.ca/
http://wireless.oldcolo.com and http://www.tapr.org/
Don't give up.. the solution to your problem is out there.. If they could wire Mongolia to the net using SS, they can certainly do the same for you..
maybe you could get an NSF grant to do this...
For some interesting historical background on spread-spectrum, check out http://www.ncafe.com/chris/pat2/index.html
I'll forward your post on to some other people who might have some answers..
Chris
I would also ask folks to check out the Bay Area Wireless Users Group (http://www.bawug.org) mailing list archives for help as many folks on that list are doing long distnce 802.11 paths there and I am sure many of these guys will help you out.
Tim Pozar
The wireless idea is going to be an undertaking. :)
You need towers and power, neither of which will be easy to come by.
Seriously investigate getting a long-haul T1. These things exist, and since you actually have a budget, you might be able to get one.
If you can't - you'll have to built out your own network, which will be hard (and probably alot of fun!
Since you are part of an educational institution you'll have an easier time than otherwise getting people to cooperate with you.
I'd definitly recommend the co-op idea. If no one else has connectivity in your area, any high speed access is going to be in high demand (reselling could help your maintinace costs for a long time).
If you are going to go wireless, I definitly recommend using 802.11 (no b) gear, specifically the Range LAN 500mw gear listed above. Incredible stuff. There are some sites out there that illustrate turing old Primestar dishes into very high gain 2.4 gig antenna's. Cheap and good.
I believe that the methods recommended/described in RFC 1149 would work in this situation, though bandwidth might end up being less than with satellite.
After all, you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of 70 GB DLTs :-P
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
EMS is rolling out its new 2way broadband satellite internet using the new DVB-RCS open standard. I have had a chance to use this technology in the pre-release phase and was quite impressed. The latency is about .7 seconds because it uses geosynched satelites, and broadcasts in the Ka band, making it more sensitive to bad weather. It uses the standard 45cm dish size, so installation is quite easy. Overall, a good experience if you are not in range of other solutions (ADSL, Cable, RF, ...)
Remembering your name in the morning is already a good start...
The optical bridges I'm familiar with (which I think have gotten cheap, $1000US per or so) are good for 60 kilometers over single-mode, which is fairly close to 45 miles, I think. Single-mode fiber in quantities around 60,000 meters should be available for less than $1/meter delivered, so say $50,000US for fiber. If you had a place to trench (say a government or utility right-of-way) and experienced volunteers to trench and splice, you'd have a very fat pipe under budget.
If there is a railway between the school and the city in question, there may very well be bandwidth there that could be bought or donated (a great deal of the "dark fiber" in the US isn't just in empty office buildings, it's buried next to railroad tracks).
AC's cheerfully ignored
bk425
This was on Slashdot, check out:
http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/
They're connecting UC San Diego with rural indian schools in the hills around SD. They run a 45mbps backbone of microwave from the supercomputing center in town up to a tower at a meteorological station the school owns in the mountains and from peak to peak there, dropping 802.11 off at individual sites.
Free advice: Contact the guy on that page that runs the UCSD supercomputing center (or one of the sponsoring corporations, or both), do not say you want to buy services. -You- want to be part of "a study" "empowering" "rural education". This will still cost you heaps of money, but might ease the path a bit. Boyd425
I used to work for this company several months ago. They have technology for wireless broadband systems that would work for what u want. Tipically there systems are used in third world countries that need broadband services but don't have existing "wire" network that can be used. One thing to note is that when I left the company they were in the process of getting rid of some of there products because of the recent hard times that the telecom industry has seen... but if the no longer sell these products they may be able to point u to who they sold the division to if they did. rgds, tathta
Wilan in Calgary, Alberta offers a Point-to-Point solution that could work. It should be cheaper that running fibre. Companies such as Nortel use this between buildings in Calgary. The only problem is that you have to have line of site which means that you would need high enough towers to have line of site. I suspect that the tower costs will determine whether or not this is valid solution.
You could also use satillite. I know that you can get pretty good downloads but I am not sure if the bidirectional solutions are avaliable yet.
www.wilan.com
Tons of people talking about wireless technologies, which is not very secure. People along the way can steel your bandwidth for internet access if you're using things such as 802.11b, as well as fairly easily break into your network if you don't have the added security measures. Frame Relay is fairly cheap solution with as much bandwidth as you are willing to pay for.
If you want to go wireless, then you should get some Line Of Sight equipment. You will require 1 to 3 repeaters depending on locations and actual distance. The antennaes must be able to see each other, no buildings or hills can block it. It's fast and secure.
...then you give up the chief advantage of power line internet access: the use of an existing infratstructure, with no modifications or enhancements needed.
I'm the stranger...posting to
thanks
I'm the stranger...posting to
I'm not too clear on the technology... but for a while there was big talk in our City (Toronto) about Look Communications implementing High-Speed Wireless Multipoint. Supposedly, all that was required was a relatively unobstructed line of site.
What say you???
The University of Hawaii had a very similar problem in the 1970's... that's why they invented "Ethernet". Although it worked even better when shoved over wires and commercialized, the original Ethernet ran "through the ether" over RF links between islands.
(Disclaimer: I never worked with the original, nor have I had any significant contact with UofH -- I just remember the story.)
There are a number of possible solutions.
.
Wireless is one - there are a number of 10BaseT to DS3 (ie: 45Mbps) products available on the Market. Link price runs $30,000-$60,000 (link=2X antennas+boxes, etc). These solutions generally top out at 10-20 miles, a few do 30. So you could do it in 2-3 hops. Look for products that operate in unlicensed spectrum (typically 2.4GHz and 5.8 GHz Uniband) to speed deployment. Harris Microwave (http://www.microwave.harris.com/) and Western Multiplex (http://www.wmux.com/) are two that come to mind.
Another option is free space optical (fso) - companies like Lightwave (www.lightwave.com).
Higher bandwidth wireless and require line of sight. RF in fact requires more clearance - based on a function called the Fresnel zone radius - a shape resembling a stretched football - that makes required altitudes for longer links even higher. General rule is that 60% of the 1st fresnel zone must be unobstructed. At 45 miles and 2.4 GHz the middle of the zone typically requires a clearance of 100'-160'. At 5.8GHz this drops to 60'-100' roughly (the function is proportional to wavelength and thus inversely proportional to frequency) - one calculator is at http://wireless.ydi.com/calc.asp#FresnelZone - another simpler one is at http://www.ingenious-nets.com/fresnel-calc.html.
But a number of people claim getting 20 mile ranges out of 802.11b at 2Mbps rates. One sample calculation gives the required antenna height at abou 175 feet (about 100 feet for line of sight and 75 feet for the fresnel zone clearance) (see http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/197)
A 175' antenna height is potentially very expensive. More expensive than typical antennas for normal RF applications because of the fact that the antenna itself must be very solid in wind to maintain line of sight alignment. But a some water towers or a 15 story building would do it.
Net is that for RF wireless you probably need to drop to more intermediate links to manage LOS and clearance.
But there may be viable wireline alternatives. One source of help would be a 'national' ISP like MCI/Worldcom (UUNet), Sprint/Earthlink, or Verizon (GTE) (in the case of the US). Their local sales forces are often very in touch with various alternative data carriers to provide the backhaul. Pipeline companies, dedicated fibre companies and power companies are among the entities that often have a datalink business.
Almost any local carrier can provide at least a T1 level frame relay or ATM circuit. One nice technology for this application is Inverse-Multiplexed ATM. For instance - you take 3 T1 ATM circuits and run IMA over them and the link looks like one ATM link at 4.5Mbps. If individual links go up or down the IMA link stays up - the bandwidth just goes up or down.
There are federal programs available to help with school internet access. Many states also have programs geared towards both education and general rural data access.
The advice about a Co-op is good. If you don't want to be in the ISP business you could probably find an ISP that would operate your "POP" if you provided the infrastructure with some kind of kickback arrangement.
Good luck.
You are joking, right?
My mother-in-law works for Sting Communications and has described building wireless links like this. In this siliconphilly newsletter, they describe building a gigabit wireless link. I don't have any direct knowledge of the company.
...provided u have access to strong towers. A simple system can be set up using either 2.4m dishes (depending on type of terrain). A 2Ghz microwave system will easily cover the 72km (45 miles) distance. These systems typically cost around AUS$75k (about US$37). But the main problem u will face is finding towers that can support 2.4m dishes (the wind loading of 2.4m dishes is massive).
Try contacting your local telco, they might be able to help you with getting a feasibility study completed.
adios.
Hey, I'm typing into a Windows PC right now and I can even say that I am a huge fan of Microsoft's way excellent OS. I love Mac too. This being the case, I'm hardly an OS bigot, but the same can't be said for Starband. Having read the Starband Q&A pages, I found that they specifically do not support Linux or Mac and they say uploads are about 40k. That sounds fairly lame for a $500 setup fee.
This is especially the case when we consider that the 10GbE standard is being finalized next year and the 10GbE switches are aimed directly at the currently in-place dark fiber. Just one strand and one switch into a remote community would allow an 802.11 provider to offer a thousand customers 10Mbps wireless connections. This would be creeping up on hard drive access speeds and the costs aren't exactly going to be stellar if the 10GbE forum is correct in estimating these switches are going to be entering the market at about 3X current generation Gigabit switches. If installing fiber in rural areas is as cheap as previous posters have suggested, then it's hard to see where the costs emerge that would make Starband look attractive with such laggard performance and proprietary drivers.
Because it's the easiest to do of all of them (requiring linear time for bitspace used for encryption.).
WEP as a system is weak because of assumptions they made to make it easier to implement.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Huxley, Iowa:_ ca ble_hux.htm
m
http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/010305/010305
Palo Alto:
http://www.wbsmith.com/fiber.html
Clarksville and numerous other CLEC communities in TN, GA, AL, AR:
http://www.atlantic-engineering.com/projects.ht
Access Routers:
http://www.opticalsolutions.com/
http://www.alloptic.com/
1-866-ALLOPTIC (255-6784)
Approximately 50 fiber optic companies
www.ftthcouncil.org
Novaroam 70 miles LOS
Freewave (good for point-to-point, not so good for point-multipoint)
here's someone who /might/ be able to do consultation and engineering who seems to know his stuff.
DSL is a line protocol run on top of a dry line. The main difference between DSL you buy, and home-brew DSL with a dry pair is that when you buy DSL, the circuit goes only as far as the central office.
Using twisted pair, there's no line protocol that will go 45 miles and give you a decent amount of bandwidth. You can alleviate this with repeaters, but then you're talking more money. Another poster pointed out that you might be able to power the repeaters with solar power, but there's high equipment costs there, too.
Fiber is definately the way to do this, and even there you might need a repeater or two.