Wireless Network Solutions for a Metropolitan Area? 37
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?"
Laser Link (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:1)
Re:Laser Link (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laser Link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Laser Link (Score:2)
I remember seeing a very cheap device like this that hooked up to AUI some time ago. Not sure if this is the same project or not, but Ronja [twibright.com] is a plan for a device that they claim costs $68 in parts (must be used stuff, but I haven't even looked at the spec yet) and does 10Mbps full-duplex over 1.4km.
Won't help here, but very interesting, and very low-cost. Plus,
Don't rely on inherent "security" (Score:5, Insightful)
IPSEC is trustable, cheap, standard (Score:2)
Depending on the bandwidth, you either need a pair of Linksys routers or maybe a pair of PCs running Linux to do IPSEC for you. It's cheap, trustable, standard, and reliable. It may bloat your bandwidth a bit for some applications like VOIP, but that's generally not a big deal (or if it is, you're running your bandwidth too hot anyway.)
Re:IPSEC is trustable, cheap, standard (Score:1)
This is true, you don't want just anyone using your network to download porn.
Reliablity and security (Score:2)
Are these connections any more secure and reliable than using something in the 802.11 family of protocols?"
There is nothing inherently unsecure about any wireless link - you ALWAYS secure it separately with something (WPA2 certificates/tunneling/VPN etc).
The kind of throughput and safety margins you're looking for, you wanna go higher frequency and licensed band for those anyways regardless of how possible it could be to deploy such links with, let's say multi-channel 802.11g, for example ... that is,
The US's oldest metro-area mesh (Score:4, Informative)
At this level - pay the money (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
802.11 + Firewalls (Score:3, Interesting)
Network0 -- Firewall -- AP -- [AIR] -- AP -- Firewall -- Network1
Setup a VPN/Encrypted tunnel between the two firewalls, to secure the traffic. To secure the wireless network, your options are limited something with WPA/WPA2 as long as it has AES encryption would be a good start as long as you have good passwords on the AP and on the PSK (or use RADIUS instead of PSK for even better protection). This will prevent people from connecting to the APs and changing their passwords or something malicious like that.
Security for wireless (Score:2)
If 802.1x is out of the question, then the next best solution is to use heavy encryption on the firewalls that connect the wireless access point to the rest of the network. Most
Not really a metro question, it is point to point (Score:4, Informative)
If price is irrelivent, a free space optic (like gigabeam) with an RF backup (like a Tsunami) will give you massive amounts of bandwidth, low latencies and lots of 9s for uptime/reliability.
Price is rarely irrelivent. A more economical option would be to skip the FSO and just use something like a Proxim QuickBridge. Another alternative which hits a nice price/performance/reliability is a Trango Atlas (45Mbps, about $3k). Most inexpensive (ala 10k) and the licence may be an annual recurring cost. Licence costs depend on location (city/county/state).
So for rough ballparks...
FSO w/RF backup, 1Gbps, $25k +
Licenced P2P RF, 100Mb, $12k + Licence
Unlicenced P2P RF, 54Mb, $3k (Trango)
Unlicenced P2P RF on-the-cheap, 54Mb, $1500 (Microtik, other 802.11x based systems)
Unlicenced P2P RF ultra-cheap, 54Mb, $400 (WRT54Gx2 w/Sveasoft firmware, external antennas)
Re:Not really a metro question, it is point to poi (Score:2)
Not sure what happened there, my paragraph about licenced freq antenna systems got chopped up. Weird.. but you probably don't want to go with lic
Re:Not really a metro question, it is point to poi (Score:1)
Can You Use an FSO Link? [broadbandproperties.com]
California City Uses FSO to Bridge 200-Foot Gap [broadbandproperties.com]
- Steve Ronan
3 words (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Priced right. Feature rich. Linux under the hood. Capable of supporting 16 separate networks per AP/Controller. Radius authentication. Active Directory integratable. Etc. Switches, routers, full spectrum industrial wireless solution hardware provider.
ps. I work for a reseller/installer and I am versed in the support of the Colubris back end.
The wireless radio spectrum is full, go for laser (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Because there are too many other users with radio links which interfere with our with our links. Don't get me wrong, they have served us well in the last seven years, but right now the game is over. There is only one radio link left, between the 62nd and 36th floor of two buildings, because the signal has to punch through a concrete wall which laser can't do yet
And I like the speed improvement. Going from 2.2 - 5.5 - 11Mbps to 100Mbps is nice for the users
Motorola Canopy (Score:1, Interesting)
http://motorola.canopywireless.com/ [canopywireless.com]
Muni WiFi Policy (Score:2)
Airaya and Redline gear (Score:2, Interesting)
Our preferred short distance solution was from Airaya - http://www.airaya.com/products/p2p.asp [airaya.com]
We used the AI108-4958-O model mainly. It comes with (50,150 or 300ft) of external grade CAT5e attached to the sealed unit.
Mount that sealed unit on the building or a tripod mount ($100USD in Home Depot and RadioShack parts for a decent DIY tripod). Run the CAT5e into one of your roof access areas (look
Re:Airaya and Redline gear (Score:3, Interesting)
Due to the frequencies and power in use, do NOT stand in front of the units for longer than 20 seconds when they are powered on. You will get the most severe pounding migraine-level headache you have ever experienced.
Tsunami (Score:1)
This was under similar load to that which you described. About 100-150 users at each location, VOIP, and lan traffic. I'm an RF engineer, I work on radios. The Tsunami is a we
Considered fiber? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Considered fiber? (Score:4, Insightful)
Doing it yourself--
There are a whole lot of liability issues that you don't want to take on by running your e-bay fiber yourself or boring your own holes in the landlord's property. Hire the proper entity to do this (after getting the landlord's permission) and make sure they carry enough (or what is required by the property owner) liability insurance.
He's not running fiber to the cabana next to his pool at home -- let the professionals take care of it.
--Mike
Some answers to common questions (Score:1, Informative)
Rain fade on 38 GHz microwave (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Some answers to common questions (Score:1)
Re:Some answers to common questions (Score:2)
While not laser-based, it is one of the best homebrew FSO systems I have seen:
Ronja - Twibright Labs [twibright.com]
1-10Gig wireless connection (Score:1)
GE60 (Score:1)
Experience with 802.11b LoS Point to Point (Score:2, Interesting)
Avian Carrier (Score:3, Funny)