wireless bridge no line of sight

Has anyone tried setting up a wireless bridge NLOS? My friend's house gets a cable connection but the phone company won't deliver it to my house. We live about 1500ft away from each other with a lot of trees in between us. I was thinking of mounting something on my roof and her roof to try to get a signal but the tree tops are still in the way though. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

Well, I'm by no means an expert at this sort of thing, but I figured I'd take a stab at it, because nobody else here has, and it piqued my interest, which I suppose is what being a "Major Geek" is all about

You don't necessarily need perfect line of sight for a WiFi link. Here's how I would proceed, if I needed to do this, as a "proof of concept".

First, I'd mount a WiFi NAT/router/switch at the destination site, at or near the permanent location, using Velcro: Stick one side to the house, the other to the router. If you don't have a spare router, or don't wish to purchase one, you can use the one at your house temporarily: Move it and mount it as described. You don't have to run any Ethernet cabling to it at this point, all you need is access to power (a long extension cord will probably do the trick - run it into an upstairs window close to where you stuck the router): All we're trying to do is to establish whether or not the WiFi aproach is even feasible.

Remember, this is "cheap and sleazy" - don't worry about weather proofing, etc., but I'd pick a nice day to do it, to avoid exposing the router to rain while you test.

Before you mount the router to its temporary location, make sure it is configured so that you can attach to it using a laptop. The nice thing about using your own router is that it is already configured for devices that you own, so that eliminates a step.

Take a laptop and get as close to the location on your roof as you can, and is safe: Safety first! Don't try to hang off the roof with a laptop, for example, to do this.

Then, try to connect to the WiFi access point (WAP) at the destination site. Look at the signal strength, quality and speed, when you do so. Since all you want is Internet access from the destination, signal quality is paramount, and signal strength and speed are secondary. After all, a slower, stable link is better than a faster, unstable one: You can afford to sacrifice speed for stability, so long as the resulting speed is acceptable. I'd define "acceptable speed" as "faster than what I get now".

If you can't get a stable link, with acceptable signal quality, then you're pretty much done, unless you want to invest in directional antennas, etc., in an attempt to improve the signal between the sites.

See below for suggestions.

Assuming you can get a connection to the WAP on the far side with your laptop, and the connection is acceptable, you can then proceed.

The next step is to test the connection from the far side. You can run a cable from the WAP you mounted on the far side, to whatever device services the network in that house, and then do Internet speed testing from the laptop on the far side. This may entail the purchase of a long Ethernet cable that can connect the two devices, or making one that can.

Note: You'll want to be sure that the two routers on the far side (your temporary router and your neighbor's router) don't conflict at this point. The easiest way is to put the temporary router into bridged mode, and let it just pass all network traffic to it to the internal network on the destination site. There are other options, but at this point, it's best just to try to bridge the temporary WAP/NAT/Router to the internal network and go from there: You can reconfigure your side of the network later, as needed to co-exist, should you not want the two to be permanently bridged (which I highly advise for many reasons, not least of which is to prevent unnecessary traffic from consuming bandwidth across the link).

So, let's assume that at this point, everything tests OK: You get a clean, stable link to the Internet in this configuration from your laptop, at your house.

Now what you need is two new WiFi/NAT/Routers, one for each side. You can bridge the two together, creating one network, but I'd do a three subnet setup: One subnet is the existing network on the neighbor's side, which connects to the Internet. One subnet is your home network.

The two new WiFi/NAT/routers talk to each other over a third subnet, dedicated to the WiFi link: This assumes that the two new routers can be configured this way: Pick two routers of the same model that can do this, or permit third party firmware to be installed: DD-WRT can do this, I think (Sorry, I don't know for sure - I'm now a "Cisco fanboy", as a result of my current job, and, while I know that the "low-end" Cisco WAP/NAT routers, such as the 891W, can do this, I doubt you're willing to spend the money for such, nor will be able to configure them without help if you do).

The configuration I've described accomplishes a few things that are better than just bridging the networks together: Local network traffic on both sides of the link doesn't pass across the WiFi link between the two houses. This is HUGE, when doing things on either side such as copying files between 2 computers in the same house (or from a computer to a NAS both on one side or the other) The traffic won't go across the link, it will stay local to its subnet.

So, that's "best case", based on your request, but, we aren't done. Now that you have the two new routers working, you need to weather proof them and permanently mount them. There are a number of manufacturers that make weather proof enclosures - you can Google for them: You need 2 enclosures rated for the weather in your location, that will fit the routers you bought. Then you need to mount the enclosures, put the routers into them and then seal the various openings for power, cabling and antennas against the weather. You also need to run Ethernet cabling on each side, from the new access points, to the existing NAT/Router/Switches in each house.

Me? I'd look into a wired solution. The distance is too far for pure Ethernet, so, fiber is your best bet. Are your properties adjacent to one another? If so, you can trench between them, and run fiber. You can pick direct burial multimode fiber, or you can install conduit and run the fiber in it.

If they're not adjacent, can you get permission from the property owners in between to run a fiber line? If not, then you're screwed.

Let's assume that you can run fiber. Use multimode fiber, and buy at least 2 pair: 1 pair to use, 1 pair as a backup. Since this is a single, point to point link, there's really no point in getting more, unless you want to: Anything that would break one pair will almost certainly break the rest. Bury the fiber /conduit DEEP - below the frost line, if such applies and is possible.

And, bury it below the reach of things such as plows, if that applies: This is also one reason to use conduit, instead of direct burial: It's a LOT tougher than fiber.

Once the fiber is run, it will need to be terminated. Unless you have the means and tools to do so yourself, you will need to hire this out. Any good local network company can do this for you for a price. All you need is to specify the connector types, and they can help you with that, too, so long as you tell them what devices you are using and the type of fiber... which leads to the next paragraph.

To connect the fiber to each home network, you will need a fiber to Ethernet transceiver on each side. These are relatively inexpensive, and basically are two-port devices: One port is Ethernet, the other is fiber. The transceivers you buy will dictate the fiber connectors.

Fiber to 100 Mbps transceivers are fairly inexpensive. If you have Gigabit networks on each side, and want a Gigabit link, it will cost more.

100 Mbps Ethernet should suffice for your purposes.

So, that's about it!

Myself? Assuming that the WiFi route isn't possible, and you can run fiber, I'd call around and get advice from local networking companies: Explain the situation as applies, ask for a quote to do a site survey to establish the feasibility first. If it is possible, tell them that you will do the "grunt work" of trenching, etc. - that will reduce the price to simply terminating the ends of the fiber (and testing - you should have them test it).

And if, at this point, it seems to be a lot of work, costly, etc.? Well, yes You then have to determine how badly you want to use your neighbor's Internet access, balance it against the cost involved, etc.

I hope that this has proven to be useful, at least as a means to detail, in general, the issues involved, to at least give you a place to start.

I wish you the best! Let us know here what happens, if you would? I'm curious to see the outcome.

Regards,

dj