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?"

Comments

I've not yet implemented this, but...

[rincebrain]

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.

Re:I've not yet implemented this, but...

[BilliamBlake]

Forget linksys for this job - if you want coverage. Their radios are the worst in aspects of sensitivity and power output - *both* are very important. If you modify the firmware and up the power they tend to run hot - and still at only a third as strong as better ones. I don't know why the IT industry is so slow to wake up to this. Go with SMC Elite Connect or Senao/Engenious for your AP. You can get a Seneo for around $150 and with a good antennae it will probably cover almost the whole area. They are the legal maximum for power output and have better sensitivity than either cisco or orinoco. SMC is practically just as good. Don't even ask how they compare with linksys. They also do wds so if you want to expand or add later then you can. In addition the build quality of these things is excellent, much nicer than linksys and much more value for your money, IMO.

But take my word for it, check it out for yourself or take a suggestion from seattle wireless. Ask the pros what they use.

Previous "Ask Slashdot"

[Mendy]

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/03/21 2210&tid=193&tid=222&tid=4 might be of interest

Five Acre Farm?

[mrgrey]

Did you just call five acres a farm? Hah! What city did you grow up in?

5 Acres isn't all that big

[Fished]

An acre is roughly 40000 square feet, meaning a square acre is only 200 ft on a side. That means that your father's farm, if it's roughly square, is probably only 300 ft from center-to-edge. (Obviously, if the shape varies, that changes.)

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.

Controling where the RF goes

[WonderSnatch]

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

OT:Five Acre Farm?

[jdray]

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.