Line of sight broadband

Tash.777

Hi all,

I hope I have posted this in the correct section, hopefully I have.
I have a problem, I am building a new house and hope to move in soon, the problem is that its in a rural part of cork. My only option at the moment is Satellite broadband but I'm not to keen on that as the Neighbours already have this and although its called broadband the speeds are poor.

There is a Broadband transmitter roughly about a mile from me. I think Solar and airwave use this for their 'Line of sight broadband'. The problem is that there is a hill between me and the base station. Is it possible for me to get a 'Deflector' or some type of antenna that will re-transmit this from the top of the hill.
From the top of the hill there is a perfect line of sight to both the base station and to my house.


Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Dazza

What part of cork is it?

Tash.777

Its the knocknascrow base station. Just outside Mitchelstown.

Capt'n Midnight

is there a building or at least a source of power on the hill ?
do you have access rights to it ?

yes technically you could put one of their receivers there and then hook it up to the WAN port of an access point of your own for a connection to your house.

But not sure if they would support it

Tash.777

Hi Capt'n Midnight,

Yes indeed the power aspect does cause a problem as there are no houses near. The access should not be an issue.
Depending on the power needed to operate the units, I had in mind 2 x 12V large capacity batteries with the addition of solar keeping the batteries charged.

Not sure how this would work out?

Should I just go for the Satellite broadband?

bhickey

Tash.777 wrote: »

Yes indeed the power aspect does cause a problem as there are no houses near. The access should not be an issue.
Depending on the power needed to operate the units, I had in mind 2 x 12V large capacity batteries with the addition of solar keeping the batteries charged.

Not sure how this would work out?

Should I just go for the Satellite broadband?

What you describe would certainly work but it will take time and money. If you haven't done this sort of work before then it will be a big challenge to do it right. It is a nice project though

If the local wireless providers' broadband service is regarded by people using it as significantly better than satellite then it might be worth the effort.

Maybe you could manage to bounce it from a nearby house that has line-of-sight to both you and the base station rather than going for the whole remote solar setup on the top of the hill?

Big Lar

Your going to need clear Los for the likes of Solar and Airwave, You could use deep discharge batteries and they should keep the whole kit up and running for about 2 - 3 weeks, I would forget about solar if I was you and purchase a small generator and head up to the hills every couple of weeks and charge up the batteries using a battery charger. You could use wind also but the generators are fairly expensive. You could also put a battery monitoring board on the equipment so that you will be able to check the power remotely.

Also this option may be the project for you: A passive reflector

I'd love to try this, in theory you could get two 5Ghz dishes, connect them up directly via jumper cables to each other(No electronics in between) and line em up so that one dish will pass the signal onto the other one and forward it to a receiver on your house.

They make em bigger also

Big Lar

Double post

Tash.777

Thanks for all of your help. Just to ask the question is the solar broadband on 5Ghz or 2.4 Ghz. I was talking to a guy who supplies point to point systems. He has a system that he says will work for me. Each link would use 15w, batteries would work well with this. The cost is €200 + vat for the system and range isn't a problem.

I will investigate further about the ideas in the previous posts. Money wise the above system and batteries wouldn't be too bad especially if I had a good connection.

Thanks again for the help.

Big Lar

Well all the solar gear I have seen in West Waterford is 5Ghz

Capt'n Midnight

Forget passive reflector unless the hill is very near you or the base station. The reason it works with TV is that TV transmitters pump out ~ 100,000 watts. The limit here for most WiFi kit is 0.03 watts.

€200 sounds cheap if it includes the batteries, chargers and so on.

If it's only for the WiFi kit then rip off, because you can plug the RJ45 cable from the provider into the WAN port of you access point. (OK you may need a crossover cable if the WAN port doesn't auto sense)

The wifi kit is likely to use 12V 1A between so 48Ah per day. It's not good to go all the way down so figure 60Ah per day. And given the variability of wind / solar you probably want a few days for cloudy weather. (also turn on all power saving features) Also solar has to charge the batteries in a few hours (count on one hour of full sunshine average per day in Donegal during bad weather) so you would need a lot of solar panels.


How far is the hill away, if only a hundred meters or so it may be possible to use power over ethernet.


Have you ruled out 3G - check out side your house. comreg / siteviewer will show nearest 3G mast - if you are lucky and close it could be an option (slow but better than satellite)

satellite BB is when all else fails, it's not too bad for downloading large files but painful for anything where latency is important.

Mr. G

Try the national broadband scheme. If mobile broadband with them is not 3g, they can install a satellite dish for you. It's meant to be fast enough because nobody is on it. Its €20 a month and satellite doesn't cost anything more and is free to install with it.

Tash.777

I am in the NBS as I have no 3G coverage either. I would be entitled to the satellite system but I have used it in the past and found it to be painfully slow.

Has anybody recently tried satellite and found it ok?

The hill would be too far away for a physical connection as it roughly 1 km away.

As its a new build I wont be moving in untill a few months time so I will have a bit of time to investigate a little more.

Again thanks for all your help and I will keep any developments posted.

Big Lar

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Forget passive reflector unless the hill is very near you or the base station. The reason it works with TV is that TV transmitters pump out ~ 100,000 watts. The limit here for most WiFi kit is 0.03 watts.

Don't be too fast to knock the passive reflector at all, cell phone towers also operate in the milliwatts range and passive reflectors (car Antenna's) work very well with those. Most of the country have passive reflectors on the side of their house in the form of satellite dishes picking up a signal 36,000Km away.
The OP is only around 1Km from the mast which would have theoretical range of 15Kms. Two 30dbi dishes back to back would pass on that signal with minimal effort and no solar, wind or batteries to worry about.

Capt'n Midnight

The transmitter is 1 mile away
The hill is 1Km away

The problem with passive reflector is more that the ISP probably won't support it.