Moving to a remote property in Alabama. No Cable/DSL. Father lives on property. Building a house about 500-1000 yds in Line of Site from his house. He has satellite access (HughesNet). Wondering about best option for WAN/AP so that we don’t have to install second sat system and incur extra expense.
Moving to a remote property in Alabama. No Cable/DSL. Father lives on property. Building a house about 500-1000 yds in Line of Site from his house. He has satellite access (HughesNet). Wondering about best option for WAN/AP so that we don’t have to install second sat system and incur extra expense. Any thoughts/advice greatly appreciated.
— Bill Hunteman
There are several ways you can accomplish this. It will come down to ease of implementation, cost and some potential risk.
The first option is to use wireless to link the two buildings. However, you won’t be able to buy just any old access point – you’ll either need to get one that includes a wireless bridge or get a dedicated bridge.
In wireless bridge mode, the wireless units will talk only to another wireless unit they’ve been configured for. Some consumer-grade APs have this function but with the distance you are looking to cover, you may have to look at business/commercial grade units to get more transmitter power and external connectors that will allow for directional high gain antennas. Getting the most signal out of the transmitter to the best antenna for the job will help get the best performance from this type of connection.
Be aware of that the higher the gain the antenna is, the more directional it will be. When you have high winds in the area, the antennas may be “blown” out of alignment either for the duration of the wind burst or permanently if the antenna has become loose on the mount. Make sure that you keep the signal path clear with no obstructions such as trees or worse yet, the leafy branches of the trees, which could attenuate the signal enough to make the link barely usable.
Another option is something that is called an Ethernet extender. This can take a given length of wire and turn it into your own private network. There are also versions of this that can use fiber optic cabling as well. Fiber will be more expensive but with the length of run that you are looking at, it could prevent electrical problems, bad grounding or a nearby lightening strike from damaging the equipment at one or both ends of the connection.
Once you have the connection in place, you should be able to plug it into the router at the other end of the connection and have Internet access to your end. Since this may be a little pricey to put in, it might be worthwhile to buy an extra piece of equipment based on what you are putting in so that if the device at one end or the other possibly could have a problem, you can temporarily swap out to help eliminate a piece of the puzzle that might be the cause of the problem you are trying to fix
