Point-to-Point Setup Questions

[imSafeboot]

Hi everyone, I'm currently residing in a semi-rural area where there are no ISPs (DSL, Coaxial or Fiber) and I have a cousin down the road (about 1.75km away) who has about 650Mbps coaxial network and was thinking of setting up a P2P network to move away from 4G.

 

Essentially, there are two houses in my neighborhood (one is mine and the other is my friend's who also doesn't have stable internet). We were looking at the Ubiquiti airMAX LiteBeam 5AC. What I'm wondering is can a single antenna (from the source house) connect two of these antennas? Or can I put a base station on my house (like Rocket Prisms) to send internet to my friend's house?

 

Whatever gets me over 100Mbps I am happy as I can barely load YouTube and the cost isn't worth using 4G here in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

Your help would be much appreciated!

 

EDIT: There might be an issue of optical visibility between my friend's house and the source house, but will check soon and confirm.

[Eigenvektor]

4 hours ago, imSafeboot said:

What I'm wondering is can a single antenna (from the source house) connect two of these antennas?

From what I can find on Google, the 2^nd gen version of the airMAX LiteBeam 5AC supports Point-to-MultiPoint (PtMP), so you should be able to connect one antenna to two other antennas.

 

However, the angle of its beam isn't that wide. So the important thing to figure out is whether it's beam is able to reach both others at the distance you're thinking about. Buying four antennas instead of three is likely the better, more flexible option.

 

~edit: you'll also want to look into whether that kind of radio equipment requires a permit where you live

[kirashi]

6 hours ago, imSafeboot said:

Hi everyone, I'm currently residing in a semi-rural area where there are no ISPs (DSL, Coaxial or Fiber) and I have a cousin down the road (about 1.75km away) who has about 650Mbps coaxial network and was thinking of setting up a P2P network to move away from 4G.

 

Essentially, there are two houses in my neighborhood (one is mine and the other is my friend's who also doesn't have stable internet). We were looking at the Ubiquiti airMAX LiteBeam 5AC. What I'm wondering is can a single antenna (from the source house) connect two of these antennas? Or can I put a base station on my house (like Rocket Prisms) to send internet to my friend's house?

 

Whatever gets me over 100Mbps I am happy as I can barely load YouTube and the cost isn't worth using 4G here in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

Your help would be much appreciated!

 

EDIT: There might be an issue of optical visibility between my friend's house and the source house, but will check soon and confirm.

What @Eigenvektor said above, combined with using a tool like Ubiquiti's ISP Design Center will likely help with your planning.

https://ispdesign.ui.com/

 

You can indeed use a single source antenna / device to feed multiple destination antenna / devices - the source just needs to support Point to Multi-Point (PtMP) and be mounted high enough up that it has a clear line of sight to both destination antenna / devices within its coverage cone. Keep in mind that most of these design tools cannot account for obstructions like trees or buildings, so you'll need to plan for this.