HOLY $H!T - Long Distance Wi-fi

[-Old-Tom-]

3 hours ago, Micim987 said:

So if one were to get two of these how would one go about aligning the two over a long distance?

basically line them up best you can by eye for a start (hopefully so they can connect at least intermittently). then while running their alignment tool at one end pan the dish say horizontally to find the maximum signal strength then with the dish on the horizontal maximum pan the dish vertically to find the maximum. repeat the same procedure at the other end and you're done.

don't try and work on both ends at the same time if you can get away with it as it ends up being luck to get them right if you do this.

[iPolymer]

On 2/23/2016 at 0:32 PM, xnamkcor said:

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So would having consumer internet have like a data cap?

[xnamkcor]

24 minutes ago, iPolymer said:

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That is an outright lie and you know it! I am offended!

[RGB_Silva]

Do you think there would be an issue with a large number of connections being sent over this thing? For context, we're trying to figure out how to get super-high-speed internet to our 400 person LAN party, and this actually might be our best option at the moment...

[-Old-Tom-]

11 minutes ago, The_Silva said:

Do you think there would be an issue with a large number of connections being sent over this thing? For context, we're trying to figure out how to get super-high-speed internet to our 400 person LAN party, and this actually might be our best option at the moment...

it should handle the connections but you're ping times will suffer if you're gaming over it. also i would suggest using the built in routing functionality to stop unnecessary traffic going over the wireless to try to reduce ping times.

[notloc]

So the only option at my house is DSL, which has recently become unreliable and never really got above 2Mbps (not to be confused  with MBps, which I would consider godly fast). I'm seriously considering getting a set of these to go from my office to my house, as my office has a 25mbps connection. It would be clear line of sight as I live on what is basically a small mountain (400ft higher than my office, no other tall objects anywhere to be found), but it's about 8 miles, so it should be in range. The thing that worries me is that I would lose internet during a storm or even just light rain. Anyone know if rain or fog or anything would affect these?

[-Old-Tom-]

59 minutes ago, notloc said:

So the only option at my house is DSL, which has recently become unreliable and never really got above 2Mbps (not to be confused  with MBps, which I would consider godly fast). I'm seriously considering getting a set of these to go from my office to my house, as my office has a 25mbps connection. It would be clear line of sight as I live on what is basically a small mountain (400ft higher than my office, no other tall objects anywhere to be found), but it's about 8 miles, so it should be in range. The thing that worries me is that I would lose internet during a storm or even just light rain. Anyone know if rain or fog or anything would affect these?

Rain and fog isn't an issue as at that distance with clear line of site as you say. The small 300mm dish version at each end would be more than ample for this. we have a 13 km link set up with the 300mm ones with some trees and things around, so not optimal. and we've never had the link go down in 2 years and we've had some really bad winds go through (150 km/h+).

At that distance you shouldn't need to be too fussy with pointing them either.

[xnamkcor]

1 hour ago, The_Silva said:

Do you think there would be an issue with a large number of connections being sent over this thing? For context, we're trying to figure out how to get super-high-speed internet to our 400 person LAN party, and this actually might be our best option at the moment...

As long as all the connections are going through a switch first, it should be fine.

[-Old-Tom-]

5 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

As long as all the connections are going through a switch first, it should be fine.

well obviously you will need a switch to connect 400 computers together unless you want to daisychain everything... but you definitely need a managed switch or a router before each side of the wireless bridge to stop every message on the network being sent over the bridge.

[xnamkcor]

9 minutes ago, -Old-Tom- said:

well obviously you will need a switch to connect 400 computers together unless you want to daisychain everything... but you definitely need a managed switch or a router before each side of the wireless bridge to stop every message on the network being sent over the bridge.

How big are the messages? I doubt they're big enough to cause any real delays.

[-Old-Tom-]

1 minute ago, xnamkcor said:

How big are the messages? I doubt they're big enough to cause any real delays.

it's not really the size that matters so much its the quantity. As with the way wireless works is that you will always have to wait to send and you have a minimum talk time so like anything sending lots of small packets takes a lot longer than one big packet of the same size. And if you are gaming over it you want your ping times to be as small as possible. typically one of these bridges will add about 10ms to your ping at a minimum which isn't a problem for people that are just browsing or doing file transfers but with lots of small packets such as those generated by gaming (400 is a fair few) I wouldn't be surprised if that figure climbed over 400-500 ms if the traffic isn't managed properly. whereas adding a router or managed switch is unlikely to increase ping times on the wired part of your network unless you're running 1000's of them and they will definitely decrease the number of packets going over the bridge which will keep ping times as low as possible. unfortunately most consumer switches are unmanaged but with a bit of time spent it's not to difficult to set the radios up as routers to take care of this problem but doing a simple bridge setup like in the video would not be ideal.

[xnamkcor]

15 minutes ago, -Old-Tom- said:

it's not really the size that matters so much its the quantity. As with the way wireless works is that you will always have to wait to send and you have a minimum talk time so like anything sending lots of small packets takes a lot longer than one big packet of the same size. And if you are gaming over it you want your ping times to be as small as possible. typically one of these bridges will add about 10ms to your ping at a minimum which isn't a problem for people that are just browsing or doing file transfers but with lots of small packets such as those generated by gaming (400 is a fair few) I wouldn't be surprised if that figure climbed over 400-500 ms if the traffic isn't managed properly. whereas adding a router or managed switch is unlikely to increase ping times on the wired part of your network unless you're running 1000's of them and they will definitely decrease the number of packets going over the bridge which will keep ping times as low as possible. unfortunately most consumer switches are unmanaged but with a bit of time spent it's not to difficult to set the radios up as routers to take care of this problem but doing a simple bridge setup like in the video would not be ideal.

It sounds like you are making assumptions about how a point to point wireless connection works based on the WiFi standard.

 

And all you would have to do to remedy it waiting for the minimum is to make the link always send data at a constant rate, even if some of it is dummy data.

[-Old-Tom-]

Just now, xnamkcor said:

It sounds like you are making assumptions about how a point to point wireless connection works based on the WiFi standard.

 

And all you would have to do to remedy it waiting for the minimum is to make the link always send data at a constant rate, even if some of it is dummy data.

You'll find that keeping an open channel like that is against most if not all General User Radio Licences around the world and that gear like this does not support open channel communications like you are talking about here. If you want to keep an open channel like that you would need to move to a private licence and the gear becomes much more expensive.

[xnamkcor]

9 minutes ago, -Old-Tom- said:

10 minutes ago, -Old-Tom- said:

You'll find that keeping an open channel like that is against most if not all General User Radio Licences around the world and that gear like this does not support open channel communications like you are talking about here. If you want to keep an open channel like that you would need to move to a private licence and the gear becomes much more expensive.

You'll find that keeping an open channel like that is against most if not all General User Radio Licences around the world and that gear like this does not support open channel communications like you are talking about here. If you want to keep an open channel like that you would need to move to a private licence and the gear becomes much more expensive.

And stopping certain data from traveling across the link somehow speeds up the link when a lack of minimum data is what slows it down?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, notloc said:

So the only option at my house is DSL, which has recently become unreliable and never really got above 2Mbps (not to be confused  with MBps, which I would consider godly fast). I'm seriously considering getting a set of these to go from my office to my house, as my office has a 25mbps connection. It would be clear line of sight as I live on what is basically a small mountain (400ft higher than my office, no other tall objects anywhere to be found), but it's about 8 miles, so it should be in range. The thing that worries me is that I would lose internet during a storm or even just light rain. Anyone know if rain or fog or anything would affect these?

For what you're wanting to do, contact a local networking company to do a site survey. Rain and fog can certainly affect these however it depends on the density and the distance - in your circumstance it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

What you'll basically be doing is having a WISP scenario - you'll want to P2P from your workplace to the site and then have a router there do all of the routing. What this prevents is DHCP and DNS requests having to go back and forward across the wireless link and increasing latency in the network. How competent are you with networking?

[-Old-Tom-]

24 minutes ago, xnamkcor said:

And stopping certain data from traveling across the link somehow speeds up the link when a lack of minimum data is what slows it down?

you are confusing packets with data. You are stopping packets that doesn't need to flow across the link. i.e. any packets that only need to go out to PCs on the the wired network. If you operate the radios in standard bridge mode they may or may not know what side of the link the destination address is on (depending on the switches and routers on each side of the bridge) and so have to send any data they receive over the link slowing things down as each unnecessary packet ties up a whole time slot.

Also you have to remember that 802.11 is inherently a half-duplex standard so only on end can be sending at any one time so any reduction in traffic you can make the better

[xnamkcor]

10 hours ago, -Old-Tom- said:

you are confusing packets with data. You are stopping packets that doesn't need to flow across the link. i.e. any packets that only need to go out to PCs on the the wired network. If you operate the radios in standard bridge mode they may or may not know what side of the link the destination address is on (depending on the switches and routers on each side of the bridge) and so have to send any data they receive over the link slowing things down as each unnecessary packet ties up a whole time slot.

Also you have to remember that 802.11 is inherently a half-duplex standard so only on end can be sending at any one time so any reduction in traffic you can make the better

Unless the data is being sent to an ip address yet, the switch knows exactly what path it should take and which port to send it out. Except for broadcasts. There's no reason why a unit of data would go out the port the wireless link is on unless the switch knows that's the path to the destination, or the destination has gone missing and it needs to find it again.

[notloc]

19 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

For what you're wanting to do, contact a local networking company to do a site survey. Rain and fog can certainly affect these however it depends on the density and the distance - in your circumstance it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

What you'll basically be doing is having a WISP scenario - you'll want to P2P from your workplace to the site and then have a router there do all of the routing. What this prevents is DHCP and DNS requests having to go back and forward across the wireless link and increasing latency in the network. How competent are you with networking?

I'm competent to understand everything you said, so effectively, the site dish at my house would act as nothing more than a modem (purpose wise) and then it would run to my home router, which would handle my DHCP and DNS requests. Also, what would the purpose of a site survey be? I've used my local free GIS to do all the geographical planning.

[richardsim7]

Speedtest.net wasn't the best idea for testing speeds. Linus should have used iperf to test local network speeds

[antonrr90]

Thanks for this video. I getting mine in 2 days, and now have Charter Spectrum 100/20Mbit internet, bypassing municipalities in my area, since only Mediacom is available at my home, I contacted a buddy, and had my Charter service installed at his house, and will be beaming it to mine, at just over 4 miles away, and according to all the instructions I have been reading, it should be a breeze.

[UnleRico]

Just by way of informing, most if not all ISP s service contracts say that you can't send the internet to a different location.

Also, Linus PLEASE re do this video! Find some flat place to show us the real world throughput at long distance. Can you do a file transfer instead of a speed test to verify the real world experience.

 

Thanks!

[PianoPlayer88Key]

So I was just watching the video again ... and check out at 12:49 - did the censor miss something?

[calefaccio]

I'm thinking to use one of these between the office and the factory of the company where I work. The link would be 200 meters with Line of Sight. My boss is obsessed with reliability. Are those reliable, I mean, how much time could they be down during a whole year?

[-Old-Tom-]

On 4/4/2016 at 9:50 AM, calefaccio said:

I'm thinking to use one of these between the office and the factory of the company where I work. The link would be 200 meters with Line of Sight. My boss is obsessed with reliability. Are those reliable, I mean, how much time could they be down during a whole year?

we put a 500m link with the 300mm version of these a couple of weeks ago. 380 Mbit through put... no worries. no drop outs or anything even in stormy conditions, the people working at the far end of the link swear that they have a wired connection back to the main office.

[wiput1999]

I want you to try full power that antenna can provide it for you.