« Building a Wireless Farm »

In Southwestern Ontario, there's a black hole where no highspeed internet shall traverse.  No amount of fixed wireless, nor cable, not even a squeaky DSL line can penetrate. Despite the benefit of having an 80 ft silo on the property, there isn't a provider who can get connectivity to AQB Farms.

Really - I've been researching the problem for over 3 years now.  Almost got close with Execulink's fixed wireless, alas, the line of sight requirement alluded us.  Barret Explorer's Satellite service is our last hope - the alternative - holding our breath and waiting for BELL to appear, despite CRTC mandated rural broadband service, is unappealing.

So - 2 way satellite isn't the fastest, but it's faster than 56k dialup. It's more expensive than cable or DSL, but that's likely related to the hardware investments needed.

I've been kicking around an idea, as there are 3 houses on AQB Farms, and all want high speed internet,  but all are more than 200 ft away from each other. Picking a more expensive Satellite package, and splitting it among the 3 houses would be ideal...This translates to the need for wireless networking, and wireless accesspoints, to get the signal to where it wants to go.

I need to find wireless accesspoints that can live outside, and behave properly.  And getting power to them is going to be no easy trick either.

Ayone else have experience with building a mini wifi mesh outside?

technorati tags:wifi mesh, Appin, AQB Farms, Wreless access points

Comments

[tinfoil]

Depending on where you are, Execulink's wireless service isn't any better than dialup at this point. I'm in an area that's affected (Springford, but I'm told the Courtland tower is in the same shape) and the service has degraded horribly.

Zorra TV in Woodstock has a wireless service with good coverage, but they don't want to sell to me for some reason, possibly a non-comp agreement with Execulink.

Setting up 3 houses within 200' of each other should be a cakewalk, it can be done with off the shelf Linksys routers, antennas and possibly some all-weather boxes.

Of course, your post is almost a year old, so who knows if this advice is even needed.

[jules]

Thanks tinfoil - it's actually pretty timely - I still haven't gotten around to fixing all the wireless woes on the farm.

[Bill Moffitt]

I stumbled on this post another year later (sept 2008) and wanted to ask - have you gotten this sorted out? If so, what did you do?

[IM]

Hi,

The Execulink installers came to my house to install but could not obtain a reliable signal. I have done some basic calculations on fresnel zone and determined that there is no reason that the signal will be too degraded for service (unless there is a source of 900 MHz interference). They did manage to get a signal for a few minutes on and off... and the best explanation the expert installer could give me is that the "good" signal was reflecting of vans on the highway as they passed by to go around the trees that are on my property.

After hearing a few other little expert pieces of information like that from the so-called radio expert, and how they could not add any type of high gain antenna to the equipment, I am now glad I didn't install with them. This was on their 900 MHz service with the Triango equipment.

Long story short, the installers are incompetent. They really need someone that has training as an RF engineer to do the sight surveys and determine the best possible solution. They had no interest in making it work for me since it wasn't an easy install.

[jules]

Oh! You need Johnny O - Xplorenet service seems to rock in South Western Ontario!
http://www.johnnyos.com/johnnyos.htm

:-)

[Jeff Bourdeau, owner, techwaves]

Give me a call. We offer customized wireless solutions to assist you with the portion of your needs on-site.....we should be able to assist you in the wi-fi portion that would be on-site.