Long Range Wireless w/ hills and trees

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hello.

I’m new to the forums here, and I have a problem that I was hoping you guys could help me solve.

We live in an area where we cannot get high speed internet. After doing some extensive research on this, I’m looking into finding someone in town (about 40 miles away) that is willing to let me install fiber on their property, and use their roof of a very tall building or something, to attach an antenna which would go for about 20 miles, to a repeater, which would go the rest of the way. OR, I could get a wife bridge that would work for up to 50 miles.

My concern, however, was that because we live in upstate, NY, we are dealing with a lot of hills, trees, and buildings. The roads are very winding. There’s hardly a road around here that runs true north, south or west, east. And, I’m well aware of the fact that you need ‘line of sight’ and of course, if you have hills… its hard to get line of sight. Plus I read that if you are running a signal for more than 6 miles, you have to deal with whats called “earth bulge” because the earth is in fact… round.

What is the best way around this? I suppose, logically, I might need to have several repeaters (or more) so that they are closer together and thus, can get around the hills. But since I was going to try to bargain with the person that is letting us use their property (giving them free internet), I might have to give several people free internet. Still, Its something I’d consider. But what I see as a worse problem is that currently, I have no idea whether I really have ‘line of sight’ for miles, or not. I suppose the only way of finding out is to try your best, and get it setup… hoping it will work. But, I don’t like working in the dark… and there’s got to be an easier way.

If any of you guys could help me figure out how/where/when to install the antennas so that they have line of sight, that would be great. There’s got to be a way. Somehow.

I would also like a rough idea as to how much this is going to cost equipment wise. Also, I understand there’s a lot of math involved in this… maybe someone could shed some light on that. It looks like I’d be using a 50Mb/sec down, 50 Mb/sec up connection.

My plan is that if I can get high speed internet out here, I’ll sell it to our neighbors… and it should be a very profitable business.

Thanks a lot!
Shawn

2

I suggest your starting point will to download the latest version of Google Earth.

Then Google Earth opened to your area, you can draw a line between two points and view the profile, this does not include earth curvature adjustments though.

Then using a neat add-on which works with Google Earth found at http://www.heywhatsthat.com/ you create a “viewshed” (areas viewable from a specified point) to see coverage area from a selected point (possible high-site?).

From a technical point of view, all links MUST be direct line of site, or you will encounter problems. Trees seriously reduce signal at 2.4Ghz, so you need to go over/around trees for a solid network.

Hope this helps getting you on your way.

3

I did a link at 34 miles once with 4 foot dish’s. It was very difficult to aim the dish’s because they were so far apart you cant see what you are aiming at and that’s not counting that they were mounted 250FT above ground on both sides. I had to climb each tower twice by my self with a hand held internet tablet that i setup so i could check signals while on the tower. After aiming each side twice using Google earth, topo, and my hand held gps unit the link was able to do 45Megs both ways.

I think your best bet would be to stay away from 2.4 and go with 5ghz. Out of all the links i have setup using MT, canopy, and trango height was everything to have a good stable working link.