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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."
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.
83chrise.nuf
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.
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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.
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in a more seriousness, you could easily get donated cat5 as well as pvc, rent a trencher, and go for it, if there is a strait shot road you could do it in a few weeks easily, if you did only a mile a day you would make it pretty far.
but in another aspect, when a local elementry school went fibre optic, the armed forces came in and did it for the experience. perhaps this is something you can look in to?
and in a much more uprofesional method, whats the range on dry lines?
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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
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While DSL pipes might not work too well...
:) While that *sounds* expensive, I've seen the cost of fiber in some areas *massively* reduced. If you can run a fiber link straight from a choice ISP to your building it might not be too bad. As far as running wireless across 45 miles, that can't really be done for $80k with low-latency. You could daisy chain wireless by setting up access points, but that's too complex - what if you had to troubleshoot it?
Checkout with your local telco's on running 45 miles of fiber
I would really suggest doing 3 things. Contact your Local Telco (SWB, Ameritech, Verizon, whoever it is), Cisco, and *maybe* contact Lucent Technologies.
You may be able to setup a link like: ISPT1FiberT1School (that could be more than 1 T1) via your local Telco. This way you wouldn't have to run it entirely by fiber.
Cisco has got wireless shtuff. They may have new technologies which they are looking for people to test. A school would provide Cisco with PR and a testbed. Same thing with Lucent, but I don't like Lucent (personal pref). I do know Lucent has equip to run 10mb over 10 miles.
That's just my suggestions. I didn't give any real details because that would take too much time. But it looks like wireless isn't really the way to go imo.
I've been using a tachyon system for over a year and I find it works just fine for web surfing, email, FTP uploads, etc. May not be good for gaming, but students are supposed to be doing real work :)
ok, so, buy 5 dishes and a load balancer. that should be what, 250 - 500$ a month ? your school probably spends more on toilet paper
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...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.
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You need to do your homework. There are satellite providers that offer 1.5 mb forward with 512k reverse channels. They also offer guaranteed QoS. These are very different from the over-subscribed consumer services. These services work very nicely.
If you can get 30 phone lines into the school, why couldn't you get a leased line from the telco to the city? 45 miles is a long way but it's not that big a deal with repeaters.