Two house network

mtrox

I have a client with two houses next door to each other: one with a cable modem, the other has nothing right now. There is about 120 feet between them, perfect line of site…in fact there is a little bit of a valley between them.

So one year of cable modem at house 2 would be $540. If I can get the wireless reliably* from house 1 to house 2 for less than that, the job’s a go. If I can get them both on the same DHCP server (i.e. subnet) now I can network the printers and computers in the two houses and then it’s more than a cost saving project.

Anyone done this? Do I need a transmitter on one house and receiver on the other…then I repeat the wireless in house 2? Or is there a way I can transmit from house 1 and just have any device in house 2 pick up the signal with no repeating?

* I cannot get a call in a couple months telling me that it drops out every few hours

Kwitko

Would it be feasible to hardwire them with weatherproof CAT5 or CAT6? I was contemplating doing a wireless connection between our two buildings, but ultimately decided on hardwiring.

mtrox

I dunno Kwit. Can you just bury CAT5? Certainly can't string it from poles....it would be ugly and there's no way it would take that sort of tensile stress.

airbornflght

just go to lowes or home depo and get some conduit. I dont know if they make direct burial cat 5 or not.

edit, here is some direct burial Cat 5e cable. It is $25 per 100ft, but you can buy the 200ft section for $50+shipping. With that you don't even need to run it through conduit. If you do want to run conduit then just get some regular cat5e cable as the conduit will keep it protected.

The wireless could work, but I just don't trust its reliability, especially over long distances. and I don't think that this will cost much more, and the cat 5 will offer a much better and faster connection. If it is 120 feet I would recommend renting a trencher from your local tool rental shop, as digging an 18inch deep trench will not be fun for 120 feet. If you do this, I would make sure and call your local utility company to have all the lines marked, and ask them how deep they are. at 18" you shouldn't run into anything, but you never know.

Kwitko

You could bury it, but I wouldn't bury plain CAT5. It definitely should be weatherproof.

//EDIT: Air beat me to it.

mtrox

I've got to admit, I like the cable idea in terms of being able to guarantee reliability. If I rent a "trencher", is that the deal that's kind of like a giant chainsaw...meaning we're going to have to backfill it and have a dirt trail till the grass comes back in? Or can I have someone kind of "push" the cable into the ground the way cable TV guys do?

Kwitko

You should see what you can get at Home Depot or some other equipment rental place. You might be able to get a cable layer, not just a trencher.

airbornflght

yeh, the trencher resembles a giant chainsaw if thats how you see it, and yes, it will leave a dirt trail until the grass grows back. I've personally never heard of a cable layer. The pusher, I don't know if you could afford to rent, you would probably have to hire a contractor that owns one to do it for you as they aren't as simple to operate as a trencher.

Missileman

I have 3 houses linked up here with wireless. Never have any issues at all.

I have a USR5451 linked to my network. It handles my laptops, and other stuff here in the house. It is bridged to a USR5441 Repeater that sits up in the very front corner of my garage. It bridges to 2 USR5432 bridges. 1 in my neighbor acrossed the street. The other to my in-laws acrossed the street and other end of block (4 houses down). The system stays up 24/7 with 48-54 Mb speed. Runs WPA2 encryption. I have a 7db antenna on the repeater, just because. Otherwise everything is stock.

I only use the repeater because I couldn't get a clear line of site to the in-laws because of trees. It wasn't a power issue. USR products run 100mw out of the box (instead of 25mw). LOS is the biggest thing on wireless from my experience. I have systems set up over 2 miles apart in some places. The next biggest issue is when the signal must penetrate you must try to hit the object square on. The more the angle, the thicker the object appears to the signal.

I have run cable under ground too, but it always ends up getting wet and shorting out down here. Even when run through buried PVC. Water table is less than 3 ft in a lot of places. 6 at most. (Whole state is a friggin swamp with grass and sand on top)

Cable is always the best try, but wireless can be almost as reliable if it is planned out right.

mtrox

Missileman wrote:

I have run cable under ground too, but it always ends up getting wet and shorting out down here. Even when run through buried PVC. Water table is less than 3 ft in a lot of places. 6 at most. (Whole state is a friggin swamp with grass and sand on top)

Cable is always the best try, but wireless can be almost as reliable if it is planned out right.

Nice post Missile. I'm going to look up the USR stuff. If you can make all that work in your application ("four houses down", trees, etc.) then I gotta believe I can do a 120 foot straight line of site deal. I've also seen what you see with the angle of the object you're trying to go through.

As for you comments about LOS, sounds like your range extender is in your garage, and and your inlaws pick it up from inside their house across the street (are you Ray Barone?). There is are no attenas on the outside of the houses?

I listen to your comments about wet cable with interest. You aren't the only state that's half under water. "Land of 10,000 Lakes" right on the license plates. And these two houses I'm talking about happen to be 200 feet from the shoreline of a good size lake here.

Missileman

mtrox wrote:

There is are no attenas on the outside of the houses?

No I didn't put any antennas on the outside. The inlaws house has the antenna sitting in a side window. Ethernet cable goes back into middle of house to the WAN port of a Netgear wireless router on a different channel so they have wireless in their house too. House acrossed the street has an antenna in the front window. Ethernet cable from the bridge to his computer.

USR stuff ain't fancy. Doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. Real stable and very strong signal though. Support all the encryption you would want for now.

If yoy go with good LOS and outside antennas you won't havw any issues at all. Especially if you use directional antennas aimed straight. Almost no interference then. My stuff is all omni since I change direction a lot.