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Mid-Range Wireless Deployment for the Home User?
ronin78 asks: "My father just bought a five-acre farm with multiple buildings. I am looking for a way to set up a WLAN that covers the entire property. All I have been able to find are commercial solutions from various providers, all of which are close to or above a thousand dollars and measure coverage area in miles. Do Slashdot readers know how to provide wireless access for more than one house without blanketing the entire neighborhood (hopefully for a reasonable price)? Are there single, high-powered routers that will do the job?"
RFC 1149
I'd just grab several WAP54Gs [or whatever your preference is in 802.11g APs], along with a single WRT54G [or whatever your preference is in 802.11g routers, again] and configure them for ad-hoc mode.
If you want something more complicated, configure one AP in infrastructure mode and configure the rest as repeaters.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/03/21 2210&tid=193&tid=222&tid=4 might be of interest
Did you just call five acres a farm? Hah! What city did you grow up in?
-Tolerate my intolerance
I have a five acre farm, and the wireless from my airport in the house makes it to my sheds, etc., about 100 ft. away - I do, however, have the external antenna.
I strongly suspect that, if you simply put a standard, commodity wireless access point w/antenna on the top of a mast, that will give you most of the coverage you're looking for - at least as long as you have line of site to the mast.
Alternatively, you can plant an access point anywhere there's power and link them together. But I doubt it's necessary.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
why not just string cat6 or unidirection wireless from point to point and normal wireless in each building w/ the gateway in the main building... Everything will route itself out. As far as I can tell there is no other real way of doing it since you need some connection between the buildings so its either wireless or wired.. since you dont need to cover everything make it uni directional wireless or just spend the day burying some cable between each building..
without blanketing the entire neighborhood
This is the part of your request that you're going to have a bit of trouble with. RF energy is a bit like water: it goes where it wants.
Sure, if you were spraying water instead of RF energy, you could put a different nozzle on the hose to change the spray pattern, change the flow rate to control how far you spray, dig ditches to direct the water, etc.
With the RF all you can do is put a different nozzle (antenna) on the hose (access point) and adjust the flow rate (power output). Unfortunatly there are no easy ditches to dig for e-mag waves!
The above only considers one approach to keeping your neighbors off of your network, which I assume is your end goal really. There are lots of other options that I don't know as much about. Things like WPA and captive portals.
Hope this hepls some,
Brett
I'd follow the use the cheap LinkSys gear (or build something fancy with a Soekris box) but also pick up some old 100M MultiMode(MM) transcievers that have a FE on one side and fiber on the other. Since you've got 5 acres (not that big honestly), i'd stick to wired for everything possible, it will also provide you the best reliability. Use some pvc pipe or conduit to keep it weatherproof outside and you'll be done and have reliable networking that can be upgraded in the future to gigabit and faster as needed.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=61816&item=5768462963&rd=1
we use them to cover the out side of out buildings. coupled with the correct airport they should go a couple of miles line of sight.
I would probably put in a master AirPort base station and rim it with AirPort Express units. That has flexibility because you can put the Express units only where they are needed, and they will serve as repeaters for the network. I'm an Apple guy, so I don't know if the Express would serve as repeaters for a non-Apple network. It might be worth a try considering the price difference between the Apple gear and cheaper solutions.
Also, the problem may be more inside your house than outside. If you have a large house and thick walls, as I do, the AirPort signal may have a lot of difficulty reaching every nook and cranny.
I think this solution would have the advantage of giving you more control over the signal than a gigantic antenna.
D
This is a non-brainer.
You should just need long-range 802.11 equipment to link buildings, especially as you probably have line-of-sight, or simply trees. In the latter case, and possibly in the former case as well, you probably want an external and top-of-building antenna. All of these are commodity items, so should be buyable off the shelf.
For example, most standard 802.11 gear is 18dbm. The long-range gear is 22-23dbm. One PCCARD I looked at quoted an outdoor range at 1200-2300 feet, and that's obviously without any specialised antenna. One specialised antenna I looked at claimed up to 12 miles outdoor!
Searching for "long range 802.11" in google produces plenty of results to get you started.
Depending upon the topology, you may need to use differing channels and set up intermediate hops for the fixed network. You may need to allow your roaming clients to use the different channels, so they get best coverage as they move around.
The work you're about to take on requires a bit more than the usual degree of technical ability and competence: you should you have easily been able to find and research long-range 802.11 equipment.
A dupe in Ask Slashdot? I'm impressed, they've reached new lows. I'm glad my subscription dollars are well spent.
WDS seems to be what you want. You just get WDS-compatible access points (Apple comes to mind, but there are others that escape me) and sets you up to use the Wireless Distribution System.
You might want to check out some of the Pre-N wireless comming on the market.
Pre-N Wireless Router Model WGM124 NETGEAR's Pre-N Wireless Router is the best performing router based on Airgo True MIMO(TM) available with up to 8x the wireless coverage and speed than standard 802.11g.
Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router 800% greater coverage than standard 802.11g - Belkin Pre-N provides the industry's best wireless coverage, extending your range with improved reliability and fewer drops.
The FCC limits 802.11 power so buying expensive access points isn't going increase your range.
soekris boards, if you can afford them, have the advantage of "power over ethernet" and no moving parts, plus they fit nicely into a weather proof boxes so can be mounted high up. If you don't need these advantages any old sub $50 access points should work.
If you're really on a budget you can build your own.
Mostly, it's all about the antennas. In some experimetns I've read about, directional antennas have enabled signals to broadcast and receive across several kilometers (line of site). Check out these guys to see what's available as far as antennas go.
Also, sign up for the bay area wireless mailing list while you're building this. This is one of the better lists I've been on. There are some people that really know their stuff and you'll get lots of help and advice.
Hope that helps.
eom
While five acres is small by almost any standard for a farm, a lot of a farm's productivity has to do with where it's located. Having grown up in the (very fertile) Willamette Valley in Oregon, I can tell you that a five acre "gentleman's farm" can be productive enough to generate a meager income if managed right, and certainly is large enough for sustinence living. Three acres in alfalfa (hay), an acre for small livestock (goats, chickens, sheep, pigs, etc.), half an acre in vegetable garden, and the remaining half an acre for living space and outbuidings is a good model for income (mostly on hay, eggs and vegetables). Carve another two acres out of the hay field for more garden and/or livestock area, and you've got a sustinence farm that will support two or three families quite well.
OTOH, five acres in the Eastern Oregon high desert makes for a good barrier between you and your neighbors and not much else.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
You don't want to mess with cables between buildings unless you are an electrical engineer qualified to deal with ground issues. This is much harder than you would think. Most network gear is not designed to handle this and will fry your computers. However it may work for a long time before trouble happens.
There are some wired networks that can handle it, but CAT-5 is not one. The length limits on CAT-5 is enough that your network may not work between buildings anyway.
There is any easy solution: glass fiber. You can get stuff on ebay cheap enough, and you won't have to worry, you know it will work.
Got any old digital TV dishes laying around? Some old soup cans? Sounds like some directional antennas are what you need for the point to point links.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Many wireless access points allow you to connect an external
7 454
antenna. This is the first thing to try.
You may also be able to have wireless access points repeat to each other.
Here's an article that clearly describes how to do this with apple airports:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=10
(note that these work with PC's and macs)
"My father just bought a five-acre farm with multiple buildings. I am looking for a way to set up a WLAN that covers the entire property.
Do you mean just around the buildings, or everywhere on the property? If it's the latter, use a handful of cheap WAPs and high tech Pringles can antennae on the out-buildings, pointed at the external antenna on the home.
Do Slashdot readers know how to provide wireless access for more than one house without blanketing the entire neighborhood (hopefully for a reasonable price)? Are there single, high-powered routers that will do the job?"
People are going to be able to snoop your RF communications if they want to. If you're worried about that, bury copper or fiber to the buildings. Otherwise, could I perhaps interest you in experimenting with laser communications? On the cheap? Now where did I stash those Laser Tag toys...
Here come da fudge!
Tis a shame that few people get the joke.
http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=18& rid=76&sec=0
First, this is do-able.
Second, What's the budget and what are the uses of this wireless LAN?
- Budget directly influences what you CAN do, and how easily.
- Purpose should drive the design.
Specifically, if you are on the cheap, then the number and price of the APs, the infrastructure (interconnect, authentication servers, other....) are an issue
The intended use is also critical. Do you intend to open this WLAN to the world, or do you want to keep it private?
As others have mentioned, the Linksys WRT54G series is cheap, capable, and extendible, both in erms of firmware (to modify and extend the capability and security), hardware (external higher gain and/or directional antennas), enclosures (for outdoor deployment) and community, i.e. lotsa hax0rs are doing neat things with them.
Now, as far as range, I personally know of a major chain of truckstops in the US providing wireless hotspots. Their standard (doesn't work in every case) deployment is a single (high dollar, from a large router vendor) AP with a properly positioned (read, up in the air on a pole, with Line of Sight to all potential clients) external antenna. This typically covers the parking lot of the whole truckstop, which is significantly larger than the area you're discussing. I can't think of any reason you couldn't do the same with a WRT54G and the right (non linksys) firmware and antenna(s).
If you can't get sufficient coverage with one AP, if it's a WRT54G, grab the appropriate 3d party firmware (there are several to choose from), read up on either MESH or WDS and buy another one or two WRT54's to link together without stringing cables between buildings..
It will wither work for you or not. If not, you haven't pissed away a lot on hardware.
On the security front, do yourself a favor, and make sure everything you deploy is capable of supporting WPAII (the marketing name for IEEE 802.11i). You want AES (CCMP) as your cypher and IEEE 802.1X authentication back to an authentication server, but you may not be able to get there (software and driver wise) for a few months yet. Make sure any hardware you buy is capable. Authentication Server usually means RADIUS, and you can slay this dragon with MS IAS (if you have a windows server), or any of several free RADIUS servers on unix or winderz.
If you run TKIP or CCMP with preshared keys (WPA personal, or passphrase authentication), choose your passphrase carefully, lest you be subject to an off-line dictionary attack on the passphrase.
I hope this helps.....
Red
I'm working on building experimental WiFi setups for long range. Since this is rural (read: mountians) area, I'm going to attempt 30+ mile shots on 802.11b.
I last test (using a Linksys WAP11 at base camp) and a full desktop computer with a Linksys WMP11 PCI card hit 12.7miles. Top of a local mountian to the roof a building (let me stress, this was line of sight!).
Of course this is not stock antennas of course, the rubber duckys sure is not going to hit any range. But I find Hyperlink Antennas are sweet. (www.hyperlinktech.com). I'm using the 8 degree beam parabolic grid antennas @ 24dBi gain. And these things are long range. But may i stress that these are highly directional for point to point.
For your setup, I'd recommend setting up access points in all teh buildings and using the directonal papabolic gird or yagi's (Hyperlink has a very small and cheap backfire antenna i like too, $35 bucks.). The Linksys WAP11 (40 bucks at walmart) has ports for 2 antennas... Use one for the directional and one for a small omni antenna for each building and surrounding area. For your man Acess point use a wider beam parabolic or a the professional Omni antenna to connect to the building's Parabolics.
This is serously do it yourself... but will end up about 500 bucks total. (Theres no need for the massive antennas here, the smaller, 35 buck parabolics are good for you in this application.). But you might get stuck on the one professional omni (around 60 bucks). After that the WAP11 are online or at staples, walmart, bets buy, etc... pretty cheap.
Good Luck
Digital-Madman
www.digital-madman.com
if the house is dead center.
and the land is perfectly round
if a g router goes 100 ft
thats 31,400 sq ft of coverage
800% greater coverage is
251'200 sq ft
but that's only a point 282 from the house,
or 2.82 times as far away as the G...
(it's 5am, if my math is wrong, apologies to Mr. Nambu in LA-this fault is mine, not his)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
this guy specialises in this in aust ive used him before he really knows his stuff http://www.freenet-antennas.com/ he uses 802.11 standards over longer range then your average d-link or netgear AP
If for some reason you really want to keep your signals, for the most part, on the property, you could add some reflectors behind the antennas of whatever radios you end up using. They'll get you some increase in strength on the property and really cut down on 'escapee' radiation.
If you did high school physics and remember raytracing and interference from the optics portion, you can easily design your own reflectors.
If not, use your favorite search engine to find the hyperphysics book at gsu.edu I forget the exact link.
Another option for keeping the signal on te property requires wire in the form of a 'leaky line' antenna. This is a transmission line that is designed to leak some portion of the applied power/unit of length. Some research will get you the design parameters.
Here, I just run a wide open AP. Karmic balance sought as I make use of any opens I find when away from home.
The favorite suggestions seem to be either 1) using a (roof-mounted, I assume) medium strength omni-directional antenna to boost the router signal (we currently have a WRT54G, but are open to upgrading) or 2) linking access points using WDS. To clarify, we want to blanket the entire property, including the outdoors. For those who asked, my father is a beginner roboticist, and we want a system that will let him take his creations for walks anywhere on the property using the network.
The main house is close to the center of the property, so we think the single antenna has promise both for functionality and cost. This is the solution we will try first, as it seems to have worked for Fished, and RedLeg also suggests that this is feasible. The only problem we may have is with line of sight: we certainly want every part of the outer buildings to be covered, and these are full-sized houses with thick walls. I will look into, and would be interested in more input about, the likelihood that we can use AirPort for adequate indoor coverage.
If we decide to use WDS, it seems that we would either have to get enough penetration into the buildings to hit a WAP or AirPort device (quite possible); or have a small antennae for each WAP, which would also boost the signal to the area around the houses (although we may not need it because of the central antenna). We could use the reflectors suggested by sans blanket to contain the signal if necessary.
Does any of this sound reasonable? It certainly seems cost-effective and relatively painless (barring any unforeseen incidents regarding me and the ladder). Thank you to everyone for your valuable input, and in advance if you can make additional recommendations!
Is there any chance you could put a rough map of the property and building online somewhere? People can probably give you a better idea of some strategies to use if they know the shape of the property, where the buildings are, etc. Also, if you can, diagram any terrain issues (hills, ravines, etc).
Also -- are you adverse to running some cabling outdoors if necessary?
The buildings are probably your first priority, particularily the main house. This is because you really have two main obstacles to your wireless range: walls inside the buildings, and overall distance.
The best way to deal with the walls is by giving each building in which you know you'll need acccess its own access point. Personally, for this sort of use I'm also a fan of Apple's Airport Express, as it's a small box which plugs directly into the wall (think of it as a slim wall wart). It's small, out of the way, with no power cables or wall mounting to worry about. How you connect these to your main network depends on the distance from the main house: if they're close enough that you can get a wireless signal from the house, go with WDS and use them as wireless repeaters (with the added benefit that, if you find you need to, you can just unplug one and take it with you to a different location, plug it in and continue using it). Or if a wireless signal isn't feasible (some back-lot shed), run cabling to it to extend your signal. As an added benefit, if you use an Airport Express in either of these manners, you can plug a stereo system into them to permit you to broadcast iTunes playlists to any location you want to.
A good powered access point with an external, roof-mounted antenna is probably best for the house -- but again, a lot of this really depends on how the property is set up, which is why a map, even a rough one, is helpful in such situations.
Without a map, as very generic advice, go for a distributed set-up that uses a mix of wired and wireless (WDS) connectivity to your main router.
Yaz.
Thanks, BilliamBlake, for the tip!
This http://www.senao.com.sg/Products2.asp?EID=133
( SL-3054CB3 Plus Deluxe - 802.11g Client Bridge and Access Point with WDS capability
* Wi-Fi Compliant to 802.11b and g (in AP mode)
* 4 functions in 1 box: Access Point, Bridge, Client Bridge and Repeater
* Supports both modes, Bridge and Access Point simultaneously with WDS (Repeater Mode)
* Up to 54Mbps data transmission
* DHCP Server/Client (in AP mode)
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
* Support Power-Over-Ethernet
with a few of these
http://www.senao.com.sg/Products2.asp?EID=132
( SL-5354AP Aries - Dualband Wireless Hotspot Access Point (Enterprise version)
* Wi-Fi compliant to 802.11a,b and g
* 3-way bridging for 802.4 and 802.11a/g networks
* Supports up to 108Mbps data tarnsmission (in 802.11a and Turbo mode)
* Up to 152-bit data Encryption
* Supports Power-Over-Ethernet
* Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
* Supports DFS and TPC
sounds like the ticket for a job i'm looking at as well.
sorry if this post comes across like a plug, though it isn't but those are feature sets i don't see in many high end AP products from more recognisable names, so i thought to post it here for those who skimmed over the names, or who tried first to google for and couldn't find (as i couldn't, not quickly anyhow) a page detailing Engenious products.
Cheers!
Build one here: http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.ht ml
Or buy one there: http://www.cantenna.com/
At least look at these ideas
wifi-base's cheap antennae
I have a large old house with more than 5 acres and by putting the WRT54G reasonably high up with a 12dB parabolic reflector made from a dried milk carton (same foil lined cardboard as pringles cans, but bigger) I can easily get a good signal everywhere, and no dicking around with expensive baby coax cables.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.