Internet over amateur radio practicality

[Jwalbrecht2000]

At the moment, my internet connection situation is less than desirable; we pay through the roof for home internet metered at 30GB/mo (extra cost for overages) because we have no better options. We have no access to cable or DSL, and satellite is unreliable and way overpriced, even compared to what we have. Since we haven't had contract restrictions for quite a while now, I have been looking for better options.

This brings me to my idea for internet over ham radio. I live in a sort of hole in the internet coverage in my area, and many people nearby have unlimited internet and good speeds. First, I would find a friend that lives nearby, has good internet that could accommodate my small household, and would entertain this idea. We would each have to get an amateur radio license, at this point, which has its own costs. I would then proceed to build two radio transceivers (one for each of us), find a way to secure and encode the signal, and connect each to their respective router.

 

Diagram: My computer(s) - My Router ---> Decoder ---> My radio setup ~~~ Their radio setup ---> Encoder ---> Their router ---> ISP

 

I would like to hear everybody's opinions on this idea. Would this be a practical means to a good internet connection? Do you think that the signal would be fast, with a tolerable ping? Are there any flaws in my design, or do you have suggestions to make it better? In my opinion, cost will justify itself if the connection is on par or even a little slower than my current connection, as long as this costs me < $1000.

[Skiiwee29]

Would it not be more efficient and cost effective to go with a cell provider and get a hot spot with them?

[Droidbot]

psst

 

https://www.ubnt.com/products/#airmax

 

it's wifi over satellite, 450+Mbps bandwidth over 20KM (~12.5 miles) range

[Jwalbrecht2000]

Just now, legacy99 said:

Would it not be more efficient and cost effective to go with a cell provider and get a hot spot with them?

That's basically what I use now, we go through Verizon Wireless.

[kalnick]

7 minutes ago, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

At the moment, my internet connection situation is less than desirable; we pay through the roof for home internet metered at 30GB/mo (extra cost for overages) because we have no better options. We have no access to cable or DSL, and satellite is unreliable and way overpriced, even compared to what we have. Since we haven't had contract restrictions for quite a while now, I have been looking for better options.

This brings me to my idea for internet over ham radio. I live in a sort of hole in the internet coverage in my area, and many people nearby have unlimited internet and good speeds. First, I would find a friend that lives nearby, has good internet that could accommodate my small household, and would entertain this idea. We would each have to get an amateur radio license, at this point, which has its own costs. I would then proceed to build two radio transceivers (one for each of us), find a way to secure and encode the signal, and connect each to their respective router.

 

Diagram: My computer(s) - My Router ---> Decoder ---> My radio setup ~~~ Their radio setup ---> Encoder ---> Their router ---> ISP

 

I would like to hear everybody's opinions on this idea. Would this be a practical means to a good internet connection? Do you think that the signal would be fast, with a tolerable ping? Are there any flaws in my design, or do you have suggestions to make it better? In my opinion, cost will justify itself if the connection is on par or even a little slower than my current connection, as long as this costs me < $1000.

 

Did you see this video?

[Jwalbrecht2000]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

psst

 

https://www.ubnt.com/products/#airmax

 

it's wifi over satellite, 450+Mbps bandwidth over 20KM (~12.5 miles) range

Ok, who's supposed to provide the internet access here?

[kalnick]

They connect to an existing network so your plan is sound but maybe use these instead of the ham radio setup.

[Jwalbrecht2000]

2 minutes ago, kalnick said:

 

Did you see this video?

I saw the video, this wouldn't be as reliable here as we have many trees that would block the signal.

[Droidbot]

Just now, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

Ok, who's supposed to provide the internet access here?

Your friend, off his connection, through an ethernet cable to AirMax device 1. 

Device 2 takes the signal (you will maybe have to make it high up depending on land shape, etc) and provides you with the connection from device 1.

 

[kalnick]

Just now, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

I saw the video, this wouldn't be as reliable here as we have many trees that would block the signal.

Regardless of what you use don't you still need to get above the terrain for it to work?

 

 

[kalnick]

3 minutes ago, kalnick said:

Regardless of what you use don't you still need to get above the terrain for it to work?

 

 

Are your neighbors close enough that you could setup some sort of hard line, some pvc pipes and cat6 cable or even HFC cable between the two location.

 

 

[Jwalbrecht2000]

3 minutes ago, kalnick said:

Are your neighbors close enough that you could setup some sort of hard line, some pvc pipes and cat6 cable or even HFC cable between the two location.

 

 

No, they're a couple miles away, I would have thought of that at this point

[SCHISCHKA]

1 minute ago, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

No, they're a couple miles away, I would have thought of that at this point

how much is a couple of miles and do you have line of sight?

5GHz and a satellite dish can get over 20km, but it needs line of sight. Ubiquiti has a pretty good range of outdoor long range networking gear.

 

[Jwalbrecht2000]

I don't have line of sight, no. If you guys don't think radio would work, then I guess I'll just forget the whole idea.

[straight_stewie]

1 hour ago, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

This brings me to my idea for internet over ham radio. I live in a sort of hole in the internet coverage in my area, and many people nearby have unlimited internet and good speeds. First, I would find a friend that lives nearby, has good internet that could accommodate my small household, and would entertain this idea. We would each have to get an amateur radio license, at this point, which has its own costs. I would then proceed to build two radio transceivers (one for each of us), find a way to secure and encode the signal, and connect each to their respective router.

 

Diagram: My computer(s) - My Router ---> Decoder ---> My radio setup ~~~ Their radio setup ---> Encoder ---> Their router ---> ISP

A friend and I played with this idea a while ago after we both got our Amateur Extra certs (btw, to do what you're thinking of you will need atleast General License). This was before we had heard about Ubiquiti. 

We needed to transmit internet from my house to his parents house (20 miles) and then repeat it to his grandmothers house (another 20 miles). The difficulty lied in that there was no direct line of sight between either house. We opted to use a carrier wave in the 30 MHz band and to Amplitude Modulate our data. We could get data transmitted from my house, to his house, through his repeater, and to his grandmothers house, but we couldn't ever get the hashes to line up (in other words, the data arriving at his house wasn't the same data that left my house).

The problem in doing this with HAM is that you'll need to use higher frequency bands, and the higher the frequency, the more "line of sight" the signal is (this is the problem with Ubiquiti). At very close distances (maybe 5 miles in a rural area) the lower frequency bands that can take you beyond line of sight will probably work better than our very long distances through two cities (one with a college in it), but Your Mileage May Vary, ours sure did.

 

How close are your neighbor(s)?

 

P.S: In either case, you should still think about getting your HAM certs.

[mariushm]

You should look into radio links. 

A company sets up a couple of antennas on a tower or some high point and then you and your friend orient some antennas towards that point which is visible by both at same time.

The third party (the company with the antennas on a tower) just passes the data between you two and charges you for that and maybe for renting / leasing the equipment

 

Also look into microwave connections (but they require line of sight)

[Jwalbrecht2000]

I should clarify, my nearest neighbors are very close, like a few hundred feet on either side; the person I'm thinking about doing this with lives about 2 miles away (and doesn't know about the idea yet), through some trees and brush, maybe a couple small houses.

 

On 4/23/2017 at 10:46 PM, straight_stewie said:

The problem in doing this with HAM is that you'll need to use higher frequency bands, and the higher the frequency, the more "line of sight" the signal is (this is the problem with Ubiquiti). At very close distances (maybe 5 miles in a rural area) the lower frequency bands that can take you beyond line of sight will probably work better than our very long distances through two cities (one with a college in it), but Your Mileage May Vary, ours sure did.

 

@straight_stewie: Great, so I'm not the only person that's thought of this before; nice to see I'm not crazy for wanting to use low frequency waves. How much do you think this would cost me (not including the licensing costs), and would you do anything different than what's shown in the diagram?

 

I might be able to get line of sight (with no leaves on the trees) if it weren't for a small hill in the way (Will the hill affect even the low frequency waves, or can they travel over it and be fine?).

[mackncheesiest]

On 4/23/2017 at 6:39 PM, Droidbot said:

psst

 

https://www.ubnt.com/products/#airmax

 

it's wifi over satellite, 450+Mbps bandwidth over 20KM (~12.5 miles) range

I have some experience helping a friend setup two of the Ubuquiti Bullet to serve as a P2P wifi bridge to collect data from remote farming sensors, and while I don't know the specifics of how pricey they are, I can say that they work quite well and they're pretty easy to setup.

 

Each end essentially presents itself to the user like a standard WiFi AP -- it's just that they also have the ability to bridge over miles. And all of that tuning is basically done for you. You just say "You guys both have SSID X, etc, I want you to be the main, and I want the other guy to bridge", and their software takes care of adjusting the transmit power and such so that they'll reach.

 

One fairly large benefit I can imagine is the fact that since they're already built to 802.11 spec, they also take care of things that you might otherwise need to implement, like forward error correction.