Wireless Network Solutions for a Metropolitan Area?

An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a company that is expanding into multiple buildings within the same office park. We have line-of-sight between the buildings and are looking into wireless alternatives. Does anyone have experience with products such as Proxim's Tsunami or Bridgewave's GE60 Gigabit wireless link? The point-to-point links will need to support the usual LAN traffic (SMB, HTTP, SMTP, etc.) as well as VOIP. The buildings are not large--up to 140 users, whose main network use would be e-mail, printing, and saving Excel documents to file servers, as well as the aforementioned VOIP). Are these connections any more secure and reliable than using something in the 802.11 family of protocols?"

Comments

Laser Link

[MBCook]

At one of the schools I once visited, I saw something cool while helping out with their computers. For some reason they had a point to point laser link. This was years ago. From what I could find it was token-ring and I assume 10 megabits. It wasn't working at the time (half the system was just on a desk).

Still, someone must make something like that today. It would fit your situation perfectly. First of all, it's not broadcast. You can't stand 5 feet from the thing and intercept the signal. Second, even if you did manage to intercept the signal somehow, it is much harder to mess with than if you use some kind of 802.11.

Point to point laser links may be your answer.

Re:Laser Link

[aderusha]

The technology you are talking about is called free-space optical and is fairly mature. For the distances you are shooting, you should be able to run gigabit reliably. They are relatively secure, but you'd still want to run some sort of VPN over the link (at gigabit speeds this may be difficult). For shorter distances (such as those listed), you will find they are plenty reliable and can handle even heavy rain if installed correctly.

Re:Laser Link

[HavokDevNull]

Saw this at a trade show this year (see boss I do learn from these things) http://www.lightpointe.com/home.cfm and from what I saw they have the technology and the bandwidth to handle most LAN's today. I did ask the rep if fog, rain, and snow etc... plays a part in the reliability of the connection. He said yes it does but you have to have major conditions (hurricane) for the connection to drop completely. If you go this route I would ask for a demo of it and research more QOS issues.

Don't rely on inherent "security"

[TCM]

I would always run a VPN on top of anything wireless, especially when carrying sensitive information for a company. If you are unsure about the security of a solution, run security that you are sure of on top.

At this level - pay the money

[ejoe_mac]

If its all in one complex see about the options to having fiber pulled inside existing conduits. Otherwise it's time to justify the cost over a number of years, and allow for a redundant pathing setup & better hardware. Do 3 links and run OSPF on the back side - that way you're safe in the event of one link failure. Also consider CanoBeam (Canon) free air optics http://www.usa.canon.com/html/industrial_canobeam/ canobeam/canobeam130.html which may also work better for you, depending on needs.

Keep in mind that fog and tall buildings can impact performance on laser based systems, but compare this to everyone 's wifi APs as background noise. Just make sure to go to either licenses bands or the 5.8ghz range if you go the radio path.

Addition - locate as much as close to the user

[ejoe_mac]

Also, do what you can to cut back on cross building traffic. Make sure each building has a local print server, and locate user files closest to the users that will access them. Sending a 100mb print job to the copier around the corner shouldn't involve data leaving the building.

Considered fiber?

[Spazmania]

Have you considered fiber? Consider it again.

You're entirely in a private office park you say. Less than 2 km between buildings, right? Has the telco laid any cable conduit? If so, its now a fixture of the property and belongs to the property owner. This means you can use it. Pick up some spools of direct-burial multimode fiber on ebay at around 20 cents a foot, pull it yourself and pay a fiber expert to come in and attach the connectors.

Even if there is no pre-existing conduit, you can use something like the $250 borit tool to get under the parking lot without disturbing the surface. http://www.borit.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=details& prodID=98 Digging yourself is more expensive than pulling through conduit but it could well be cheaper than a decent laser link and its a whole lot more reliable. And oh yeah -- it'll handle your bandwidth needs for the next 20 years instead of having to be replaced in 3.