DSL Range Extender

Yes, the basic technique is to have the DSL headend in the friends business, and then use a high-gain WiFi type connection back to your home. There are a multitude of such products for point-to-point links on the market, at varying prices!

Charlie

(Who looked into doing exactly this five years ago, when I looked at buying property two miles out of town and needed internet access. Found a solution at the time with a cost of around $300 for the two ends...)

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:35:28 -0700, Jim Thompson

So, Jim, You getting blown away in the dust storm?

Charlie

It was momentarily windy... plus nasty thunder... BLACK out toward Casa Grande. Then, in inimical Arizona style... nothing :-)

I'll have to check the news. Did the rest of the valley "get it"? ...Jim Thompson

Water jet plastic tubing right under the big tank? Water jetting works good to go under concrete too.

Utility contractors just ran orange 2" tubing for fiber right through boulevards and around thousands of individual house gas lines here.

If you take an 8' length of 1/2" NPT pipe, thread it onto your standard 3/4" garden hose, and put a water jet nozzle on the end, you can "horizontal drill" the pipe under most sidewalks.

As a kid I stumbled on this trick when I water jetted the garden hose about 12 feet straight down into the ground below the lawn and it would not come out. My Dad was not very happy. One of those nice old fashioned brass nozzles and most of that 12' of hose is still buried in that yard.

Later I learned that this trick is used to shoot pipe/wire/cable under sidewalk.

For wider concrete there is a horizontal drilling machine that you can rent from most equipment rental stores. They also use 1/2" NPT iron pipe.

When it comes to long distance wifi, it is mostly about the antennas, not as much as about the power. Obviously directional antennas give you power. But shooting through foliage is troublesome because it acts differently when wet.

You need outdoor type wifi dongles such as

Then directional antennas. This is discussed on the DSLreports website. Laird L-com makes decent stuff. More gain the better in general. The higher the gain, the more difficult the alignment. You need to watch out for side lobes. The more directional the antenna, the firmer the mount since the wind will blow on the panel antenna.

Note that the wifi standard will degree to slower comm schemes as the SNR or signal quality degrades. So to get 1mbps over distance isn't so tough. Getting the full 54mbps is harder.

There are wifi distance calculators online.

Just ran across this one:

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:15:35 -0700, RST Engineering wrote: (snipped)

Look at the 'Engenius' stuff

On a sunny day (Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:51:47 -0600) it happened hamilton wrote in :

Good find, typing the part number in google found many places that sell it, here is the German version:

Must be made in China or something.

I am sure they are all dropped shipped from China.

Yup, that's how it is done if you have no time or can't get permission to trench. Which is why I pointed out a radio in my first post. It's not very expensive considering the value you get out of it.

Oops. Did dad put down a plaque saying "Greegor dunnit!"? :-)

Yeah, the pea shooter. But it won't work here. We have rocks the size of a VW Beetle in the ground.

Is there a snowball's chance in hell you can just drop (lay it on the ground) ruggedized outdoor Cat5E cable across the gap? If that is realistic there are Ethernet extenders than will get you maybe a = megabit/s connection at 3,000 feet, more on shorter lines. If you don't mind = saving up a little more fiber optic cable will go for miles. Both cases work best if covered up by a few inches of dirt.

?-)

Backhoe? Like hell, they're damned expensive. Trenching machine, 1/4 = the cost and faster. Won't work in pavement though. The backhoe ain't so good there either.

?-)

modem/router

night.

That is actually a really good idea for that part of the run.

The slot required for the heating tubing would be rather longer that the room dimensions and quite a bit wider than needed for a small cable. Vastly more expensive per unit length that the narrow slot for a cable.

?-)

I prefer the panel antennas. They have a radome, making them better suited for outdoor use. Laird does make a radomed yagi, but the panel antennas work really well, and birds don't like to perch on them.

Backhaul grade:

I have an old MMDS parabolic similar to that Laird backhaul. It works fine, but the panel antennas are so much easier to deal with. However, backhaul grade is what you want for point to point, and they are often parabolics.

I see pro grade laird antennas on ebay occasionally. Good deal if you are trying to set up a zone of wifi (personal hotspot). I have some of the Laird omnis that I've found at swap meets or surplus shops. Omnis are good for war driving.

I've used the PA24-16 for a 7 mile link at 54mbps.

Some of these panel antennas, especially those made in China, are just etched PCBs. The more expensive panel antennas are wire with a low loss support system. A lot of the cheap Chinese panel antennas leak. The Laird PA24-16 is a typical WISP client antenna, which is why it is so cheap.

On a sunny day (Thu, 28 Jun 2012 10:04:42 -0600) it happened hamilton wrote in :

There are a number of things once should check when using these antennas for long range.

First WiFi USB sticks are out, ?normally? those have no antenna connector. At least not the crap I have (Sweex).

Those antennas should work great on the Linksys WAP54G, I have 2 of these, BUT, these use diversity antennas, so it has 2 antennas.

The trick is that you have to tell it in software to switch to one antenna I think this is not normally possible from the GUI web interface, but I recompiled the firmware and added a telnet server, I can then telnet to the box and control about everything, because internally it has the 'wl' program, where 'wl' stands for wireless, and it has a zillion options,

It is a command line tool, and the following options are interesting:

antdiv Set antenna diversity for rx 0 - force use of antenna 0 1 - force use of antenna 1 3 - automatic selection of antenna diversity

txant Set the transmit antenna 0 - force use of antenna 0 1 - force use of antenna 1 3 - use the RX antenna selection that was in force during the most recently received good PLCP header

As for power, the thing has max 84 mW I think, but not in the modified software, I think I had it up to 500 mW. This is what you need to cover more distance (see arrow below).

Power related command line options:

txpwr Set tx power in milliwatts. Range [1, 84]. (Deprecated: Use txpwr1 instead)

txpwr1 Set tx power in in various units. Choose one of (default: dbm): -d dbm units -q quarter dbm units -m milliwatt units Can be combined with: -o turn on override to disable regulatory and other limitations

The first thing to try is a portable with one of the long range Dynamax or equivalent USB WiFi adapters with swappable antennas in and see how far from the business park you can pick up their internal Wifi signals.

That will be a pretty good indication of what you might expect - and you only need to buy/make one high gain antenna to establish proof of concept. Decent weatherproof high gain antennae run to about £40-50.

I managed to get away with a lower bit rate and one high gain antenna at the remote station. YMMV

Sure, but when I hear people around here talking most of them know someone who owns a backhoe. Lots of people out here live on 5, 10 or more acres and they collect all sorts of stuff. Numerous large trucks, tractors, farm equipment, bulldozers, backhoes, and so on. But no trenchers, those would have to be rented which costs more money than the crate of beer for a favor.

ter

ight.

n.

Joerg > Oops. Did dad put down a plaque saying "Greegor dunnit!"? :-)

No. But a future archaeologist may be puzzled.

G > Later I learned that this trick is used to shoot G > pipe/wire/cable under sidewalk.

Joerg > Yeah, the pea shooter. But it won't work here. We Joerg > have rocks the size of a VW Beetle in the ground.

Does the OP live on top of a rock quarry, too?