Networking two houses together through fibre optic cable possible?

[Slimline]

Hey guys, I have a question for yas. I imagine this may turn out to be too complex a setup, but my wife and I are going to be building a house about 900-1000ft away from my parents house on their property. In the rural area we live we only have one realistic internet solution that required me to erect a 70ft tower on my parents property. I dont like the idea of erecting a second tower for me when we build, and I would love to have our two houses on the same LAN network so they could directly access my home server. At this distance it seems my only route would be to run a fibre optic cable between the houses, he has a tractor so we can properly bury the cable and do that without too much of a hassle. My question is, can the houses be networked together that we could share his internet connection across the fibre network and hopefully be on the same lan/subnet? If we were able to obtain any sort of good internet I wouldnt even entertain this idea but we cant.

If I were to lay the cable, what sort of equipment is needed to terminate the fibre at the houses and convert back to cat6 to our routers/switches? Also, there seems to be a lot of specs on fibre, and I am not overly sure what I should be looking for. We are about 2 years out on this project but I am trying to figure this out so I can budget accordingly.

The internet my parents currently have is 3mb down and .25 up. They can get 5mb/.640up from the same provider which I currently have with the same ISP. The isp is horrible though and on the current 5mb plan I speedtest at a whopping 0.6mbps down. There is another ISP we could get with his tower that would be 10mbps down and 1mbps up which would be great for us.

Any information would be fantastic.

Thanks
Slimline

 

[azazel1024]

A transciever at each house and an SFP transceiver, similar to this http://www.amazon.com/MC200CM-Conver...rds=sfp+module

Or you can get switches that have SFP module slots. A lot of semi-managed 16+ port switches can take a couple of SFP modules (mine can).

Depending on the type of fiber you get, OM1 will do 1000base-SX (gigabit over fiber, Multimode) to 275 meters. OM2 and OM3 fiber will do 1000base-SX to 550 meters and OM4 will do it to 1,000 meters.

Likely you'd want to look for transceivers, 1000base-SX SFP modules with LC ends on them and OM2/3 fiber also with LC ends. Probably want to get a custom cable done up for you. A lot of places will make cable to a requested length.

Alternately instead of doing all of this, is it mostly line of sight? If it is, why not setup a couple of wireless bridges? It doesn't sound like you are working with particularly high bandwidths for the ISP and if all you want to share is the internet connection and don't care much about LAN speeds, a couple of N150 or N300 wireless bridges, like these http://www.amazon.com/EnGenius-Techn...eywords=enh202 should work well even at 1,000ft. You may have to tinker with a few settings to get it to work really well as the distance is a little high, but it also might just be plug and play.

I would think that 1,000ft, clear line of sight, would be roughly within the capability of those bridges to setup at least a 10Mbps wireless bridge. Just set the bridges to a channel that is not used on the internal wifi network of the houses. Like, say, setting them to channel 1 and the wifi router in the houses to channel 6 or similar.

 

[Slimline]

Thanks for the great post! This gives me lots to look into now. I debated the wireless bridge idea, but it is not line of sight, there are trees between the houses. I also hate wireless and find it finicky at the best of times. However, I will not rule it out as a solution. 10mbps would work ok between the houses given the internet speeds, and my plex server plays well over a 5mbps homeplug setup I am currently using. I am worried 1000ft would be awfully long. One solution that may work with the wireless bridge you suggest is I could run 300ft of cat6 to the edge of the tree line and mount the ap on a pole with direct line of sight to my parents place. I would really like to have a stable, decent throughput connection though. I am going to scour the amazon reviews and see if anyone has run them at the distances I need. I am not shy from a bit more expensive wireless solution as well if you have any other suggestions.

Slimline

 

[Fardringle]

If you have clear line of sight between the two houses, a point-to-point wireless connection would work well and would be a LOT cheaper than laying 1000 feet of fiber.

 

[Slimline]

I am thinking I can finagle a line of sight with some crafty cat6 burying within its limitations at the place I will be building. Looking at azazel1024's suggestion, I saw this in the related catergory: http://www.amazon.com/EnGenius-Technologies-Wireless-Bridge-ENH500/dp/B006M1PM22/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Some of the amazon reviews mention 700ft without line of sight and great connection. That sounds almost perfect for me. I get horrid interference from baby monitors with my current 2.4ghz wireless router, the 5ghz would be nice not having to worry about that.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

I would go with Ubiquiti for a line-of-sight wireless bridge. The Ubiquiti NanoStation loco M5 can do 150Mbps @ up to 15km range (one at each end).

 

[Wabbitzzz]

I would go with Ubiquiti for a line-of-sight wireless bridge. The Ubiquiti NanoStation loco M5 can do 150Mbps @ up to 15km range (one at each end).

I'm 3 feet from my router and not even getting 150Mpbs connection speed, wow that's impressive

 

[drebo]

The Ubiquiti NSM5 Loco won't do 150mbps at 15km. Hell, you're hard pressed to get 150mbps at 15km out of a Rocket M5 w/ 3-foot dish.

That said, a NanoBridge or NanoBeam will do 1km at 300mbps no problem.

However, burying CAT5/CAT6 cable is a lot more difficult than burying fiber. You need a conduit or gel-filled cable, and you need shielded cable that's correctly terminated. Fiber is much simpler because it's nonconductive.

 

[Slimline]

That ubiquiti unit sounds fantastic! It's also 5ghz which I like. I can get a pretty damn good line of sight I think, should make this a breeze. Man am I excited. I almost want to buy these now and try and play with them. I am about 5km line of sight from my parents now, I could rig one of these on their 70ft tower and one on my current tower, may be able to get a signal. That would be beyond awesome!

 

[kevnich2]

The ubiquiti line is very nice. Geared toward enterprise and WISP usage but affordable enough for home use. I use a nanostation M5 unit with a few trees in the middle and sustain a solid 100mb/s without an issue. If you have towers to mount them on with one being 70 foot in height, you shouldn't have any issues. I'd suggest mounting one up and pointing it toward it's destination then going to the other side and using a laptop, get it oriented using the web based site survey tool for signal strength. Once you get it, you're set.

 

[Slimline]

Absolutely, I am way too excited about this. I had done some searching a few months ago about wireless solutions, but I must suck, as I could only find what looked like ancient setups with less than 10mbps connection. Thanks guys, I think I am all set. I may just order these now so I can play with them.

Slimline

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Their products are so impressive and affordable I wish I had a reason to use it myself. Check out their other products if only to drool over them (website changed overnight and threw me off for a few minutes).

 

[Mark R]

I planned doing this for a friend who needed to run a cable for about 6 miles from the edge of his land where it bordered a village where the nearest phone line was, to his house.

We worked out it was doable. Options were to find a contractor to use a cable plough to bury ducting, and then get single mode fiber blown in. We'd have to do it in about 6 segments of 1 mile each, with some sort of cabinet or access point.

We also experimented with getting some flexible MDPE water pipe in 500 foot segments, and just pulling fiber through it, and runninng the water pipe along a fence above ground. This would have been a ton cheaper, but probably much less reliable and much more unsightly, as deeply buried, purpose designed ducting, would be much more resistant to damage

The ends of the cable would be terminated in single mode (GBase-LX) SFP transceivers in either a switch or a cat5-SFP media converter box. These can be bought for pennies used on ebay. You would then get a dude in to splice connectors on to the fiber, and if you'd run it in multiple segments, get them spliced together. We'd install a cabinet at the edge of his land, get the phone company to run a new phone line to the box, and the power company to run a power supply. We'd then put an ADSL modem in the box, and a cat5-SFP converter with an LX transceiver in which would then transmit the PPPoE signal to the house, where there would be another cat5-SFP converter and LX transceiver connecting to a router.

In the end, we worked out that getting the ducting, fiber, getting a ploughing contractor in, blowing contractor, and fiber splicing contractor in would cost more than the budget -mainly because of the distance. We were able to find a low-cost self-powered (solar and wind with battery backup) tower solution.

If you're only aiming to go about 1000 feet, then the costs could be much lower, and potentially even doable yourself - rent a hand pushed trencher, and install direct burial fiber, or flexible ducting and even pull the fiber through yourself. 1000 feet is just about pullable with kevlar reinforced fiber cables - longer lengths need to be "blown" because the cable will be too heavy to pull - you'll just snap the fibers.

You'd still need a contractor to splice connectors onto the fiber, as you won't be able to do this yourself . You can buy the fiber with connectors pre-installed (but this is an expensive option, and gives you very little flexibility if you need to change the route). Even so, you'd still be looking for a budget of $2.5k at the bottom end - and more if you wanted it done to a better standard (deeper trenching) or a service contract.

 

[Slimline]

Thankyou for the detailed reply. It sounds like fibre, as I imagined is the better more reliable solution that comes with an equivalent price tag. I think I will try this wireless solution out, and if it doesnt meet my needs I am out less than 200 bucks and will do it the proper way. My dad does have a tractor with a mini hoe, so trenching wouldnt be bad at all, I am still going to consider a hard line if the house building plans dont blow our budget.

 

[kevnich2]

If you do go with fiber, get ahold of a wire install contractor and use them. Use someone that does this for a living. They should move you to 6 or 12 count multimode fiber given the distance.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

If you have clear line of sight between the two houses, a point-to-point wireless connection would work well and would be a LOT cheaper than laying 1000 feet of fiber.

Maybe so, but the fiber is going to be MUCH more reliable and MUCH faster. Laying cable isnt that bad given the correct equipment (tractor is one)

 

[azazel1024]

Yes expect it sounds like the requirements on the link are sharing a low speed internet connection and possibly doing some other low bandwidth activities like streaming movies stored locally. Not things like needing to transfer huge files at high speeds.

More reliable, probably so. However, with a proper setup the reliability of the wireless link will probably never be an issue. I've had several routers on a UPS that have maybe been rebooted once or twice a year solely because I made changes that required a reboot, not because of stability. I've also seen wireless bridges that haven't been rebooted in years.

Weather could be an issue, but over that distance even a blizzard or hurricane probably isn't going to cut in to the link budget that badly.

So if the speed is enough on a wireless bridge, reliability shouldn't be an issue and it can be done significantly more cheaply than fiber. Ignoring your own work or any rentals you might have to do on equipment, just conduit and a single MMF OC2 cable is probably looking at around 30-40 cents per foot laid. Plus transceivers and SFP modules that is something approaching a resonable part of a thousand dollars to do it all. A couple of good 2:2 2.4GHz 11n outdoor wireless bridges runs around $120 for both of them and are completely returnable if it proves to not work well.

I am personally laying fiber to a single car dettached garage I am replacing my large shed on slab that I am redoing/building in a couple of years, but it is only ~100ft from my house, I have the SFP modules already, easy to trench that short of a distance just by hand (granted a weekend of work) and my switches take SFP modules so all I'd need to do would be buy a transciever for the garage side of the project. My total cost is probably going to be ~$200 at most and I'll probably run two fiber lines out for redundancy sake, plus I need to trench anyway to run power out...so really its just the cost of conduit, fiber and one transceiver. I also have a need for high speed connection as I'll move my outdoor AP to the dettached garage instead of being hosted on my current attached garage (a bit better coverage of my backyard with such a setup plus then I'll have good coverage inside that dettached garage), plus I'll likely host a semi-offsite backup file server/NAS in the garage to get some physical seperation from my main house, mainly in the event of fire/flood, slightly less theft (server is in my basement right now, 4ft off the floor, but it is still below grade, not that I am within 50ft vertical of any flood area near me (near a river valley that floods sometimes, but I am about 80ft vertical from the river and 50ft above the highest flood stage recorded from a hurricane about 40 years ago. On theft, at least a modest chance if they break in to my house, they might not also break in to a dettached garage...but maybe they would).

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Wey-ull, Pil-grimms!! Ah jus' hav ta throw in here.

Let me explain the problem I've faced for good part of a year.

I live in California; I was appointed Treasurer of a condominium association board of directors . . . in Virginia. I had joked with them -- "If we could arrange a SKYPE connection for the meetings, I'd be willing to do it." I didn't expect it to happen, but you have to understand the problems with that sort of real-estate, when you can't get people to volunteer or participate.

First we tried to do it on the cheap. The friend who roped me into the board duty lives across the street from the community clubhouse -- direct line-of-sight. Official meetings must take place in the clubhouse. We ordered a wireless extender (Engenius) and my friend was able to walk around the property in VA with a Netbook while we were SKYPE-ing -- was able to get all the way down the street before the signal became too weak. But once he'd get inside the clubhouse and close the door, we realized they'd built the structure like Iron Mountain: inside the clubhouse, cell-phone connections go dead, and we would of course be unable to keep any connection with my friend's router at his condo-unit across the street.

Comcast is the cable-provider in No. Virginia, or at least for our neighborhood back there. The association pays them $80,000 per year to provide basic cable-TV to all the units in the condominium. They advertise their plain-vanilla cable-internet for about $30/month. We couldn't negotiate a feasible solution with them: They wanted to charge us a business rate -- something like $80+/month, and they wanted a three-year contract. No way!! The board on average meets about six times a year for two or three hours at a whack. They should've given us the internet connection in the clubhouse for free, but so far -- no cigar!

So now, we've retreated to the first idea: find a way to get a wireless connection between clubhouse and board-member's home, SKYPE-ing through his DSL or Comcast cable internet connection. [Even the DSL worked pretty well with my friend walking all over the place with his netbook.]

NOW I STUMBLE ACROSS THIS FORUM THREAD, AND THERE ARE SOME GOOD IDEAS HERE. No intention of hi-jacking slimline's thread, but any thoughts on this are welcome. The distance between clubhouse and condo buildings is between 50 and 100 feet -- and y'all are recommending to slimline that he could traverse 1,000 feet wirelessly with the right parts. I think all we need to do is get a wireless transmitter of some type just outside the door of the clubhouse and secured under the eave of the roof to protect from the weather.

 

[kevnich2]

Just get a few airmax nanostation's from www.ubnt.com and hook them up as P2P wireless systems. Then bring the cable inside and hook it to either a switch or a wireless router and that'll get you your internet inside.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

possibly doing some other low bandwidth activities like streaming movies stored locally. .

Movie streaming is hardly low bandwidth, depending on quality often times even G and some N devices struggle with 1080 content.

 

[azazel1024]

Movie streaming is hardly low bandwidth, depending on quality often times even G and some N devices struggle with 1080 content.

Um, yeah, its pretty low bandwidth. You are looking at maybe around 10Mbps for a typical good quality h.264 1080p movie. I'd consider that pretty low bandwidth.

Sure 11g sometimes struggles, that is because you are looking at sharing 20-25Mbps of usable bandwidth so if 10Mbps of it is getting slurped and something else comes along, it might hammer it under.

I don't think I've had an 11n device struggle with streaming in ages. That said, I have very good coverage in my house were the SLOWEST speed my slowest 11n device sees is around 20Mbps real bandwidth on my wife's iPad 2 in the worst part of the house (it is 65Mbps 11n device). Most other devices worst case see in the 30-50Mbps range (and best case is around 400-440Mbps over 11ac and even on 11n 300Mbps best case is 180-200Mbps).

At call it 1,000ft with line of site a couple of decent Engenius N300 wireless bridges should be able to handle at LEAST 30-40Mbps if not quite a bit more in a rural area where they don't have other networks to deal with, even on a 20MHz network.

At WAYYYYYY lower broadcast strength (probably 100mw) with just 5dBi omnis on my outdoor AP at 100ft from it, my tablet (Asus T100) is easily capable of hitting 40Mbps. Now move to 14dBi directional antennas on both side of the link and that gets you roughly the same signal strength (direct line of sight mine you and assuming the internal antenna is something like a 2dBi omni in my tablet) at 1,000ft as I have at 100ft. ten times the distance means 1/100th the signal strength, but 14dBi on both sides of the link is 28dBi of gain, versus around 7dBi of gain for my setup, 21dBi higher...which is around 110x higher antenna gain. That is also 1:1 on my setup versus 2:2 with an N300 wireless bridge. Then you also have something like 2-4x the broadcast power on those wireless bridges as what I am working with. Mine is also 20MHz, not 40MHz, which you could also play with.

So...yeah, I'd be shocked if you couldn't setup a nice reliable 40Mbps minimum speed wireless bridge with some decent outdoor bridges at 1,000ft for 2:2 bridges even in 20MHz channel width mode. NOT line of sight and things change dramatically for that equation.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Just get a few airmax nanostation's from www.ubnt.com and hook them up as P2P wireless systems. Then bring the cable inside and hook it to either a switch or a wireless router and that'll get you your internet inside.

I assume your post here was answering my rather lengthy explanation of my condo-board-clubhouse problem? Just wanted to be sure because my colleague back East should be following this thread to resolve our problem. There's little hands-on I can do from here (So. Cal) except offer advice or point to this thread.

But it's the same identical issue that the OP stated. I think -- because of the tentative nature of my personal "officialdom" -- a three-year stint -- we'll try and avoid any permanent modifications to the clubhouse. I suggested they get a hook to screw into the wooden eve of the clubhouse near the door, hang a wireless extender or AP from it, and run twisted-pair Ethernet cable through the doorway. Then -- move the equipment inside after a meeting to secure it from theft or tampering.

 

[jay long]

I can not supply other solution, and i think you should ask the professional people