Internet over a long distance - 1.5 miles

[bdog]

Is there anyway to wirelessly with some kind of super duper high power antenna towers transmit an high speed Internet connection over approximately 1.5 miles?

Where I live our fastest option is DSL and it is horrible. I had a faster connection back in a rent house in 2002. We can barely watch you tube and streaming movies on roku give us dozens of buffering messages.

My mom lives about 1.5 miles down the road in a rural subdivision and they have blazing fast cable internet which she doesn't even really use. My thoughts were to sign up for a new account at her place and broadcast to my place if possible. Any ideas?

Our DSL provider has been promising fiber upgrades for the past five years with no progress. I call them every six months or so and get the same old run around. The people that offer the fast cable at my moms place won't serve us because we are rural.

 

[CNGsaves]

Search is your friend as there were 2 threads on this very topic in last couple weeks.

If your DSL is from rural telco that is receiving Universal Service funding, then I'd really raise a stink and have them put in new copper plant (ie last leg to house . . . or old outside "plant" . . ie segments of multi-pair cable that might be shared with neighbor, or just bad copper pair) to improve your DSL. Often, they can just switch you to better pair and DSL problems can be cleared up. When properly implemented, you should get rock solid DSL up to 18,000 ft from the nearest remote or central office.

Threaten to complain to your state's corporation commission that had jurisdiction over monopoly telco in rural area.

Update GJ Profile with your City/State/Country.

 

[bsg]

Microwave internet.........I have no idea on the cost, my guess it would be very expensive, here's what I have.

http://airadvantage.net/

I know you have to be line of site and trees do affect the signal.
It is the only option here in the boonies, tried satellite and hated it!

Good luck


Kevin

 

[rockwithjason]

how much money do you have? speed costs, how fast do you want to go?

 

[gungatim]

I was researching this but didn't get too far myself, supposedly you can make an antennae a couple of ways to pickup signals to 5 mile range. one is a cantennae made with soup can, the other uses an old small satellite dish with modified LNB. I haven't tried it yet but it seems promising...i'll see if I can find a link to what I was looking at...

edit: 8 miles with this: http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/

 

[G-ManBart]

Over the years I've had dial-up, cable, DSL, satellite and microwave internet. Dial-up was only in the early days. Aside from that, satellite internet was the absolute worst...just a little bit of weather and it would go down. Microwave was reasonable, but you have to be pretty close to the tower for it to work.

I don't know of any way you can send the signal 1.5mi from your mom's house and be even remotely affordable. I dabble in microwave transmitters and receivers at work, and they're ridiculously expensive. I have one on my bench the size of a pack of cigarettes and it cost $20K....and it will only go about 1mi on level ground with line-of-sight to the receiver.

You might want to look into 4G wireless data. My wife telecommutes and has to be able to get online pretty much no matter what is going on, so we have cable internet at the house, with a Verizon 4G hotspot as backup. When the cable goes down we can run all the computers/phones/iPads in the house off the hotspot and it's not quite as fast as cable, but more than good enough (we're actually in 3G coverage so yours might be better depending on where the towers are).

 

[gungatim]

if you get it to work, please post back with your results. I need to "borrow" internet from the mickey D's 5 miles away and am on the lookout for a used dish...

 

[nehog]

Line of sight? Absolutely possible using directional antennas. But has to be absolute line of sight (no hills, trees, nothing in the way) or the cost jumps really fast.

 

[gh0st]

people have had really good luck making their own directional WiFi antennas or cantennas as they're usually called. If you want something more turn key with support Ubiquitihas their airFiber antenna/radio
http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/

 

[Kaizen]

a couple things. If you do get this to work you can't be bragging about it as I'm pretty sure this constitutes rebroadcasting=illegal for mom.
That article where it worked had line of site.
The local tel co does not have to provide fast internet or any at all. Its an optional service so they are not going to be scared by threats.
Doesn't your cable co have internet you can use?
I would have liked that ariticle to stream some you tube videos. didn't see any of that just that they saw the signals.

 

[Dodge]

I set something up like this a couple of years ago. I didn't go that far, but the antenna I used had a 5 mile range. It is a Luxul FP-24. I had a Linksys router with the Luxul connected to one of the antenna plug ins. At the receiving end, I had a Linksys Access Point set up as a receiver. It took me awhile to fine tune it, I am not an IT guy. Worked great. I don't use this set up anymore and would sell it. It was fairly inexpensive. I agree, you have to be careful using this type of set up, the internet provider might not like it. Pay half of your Mom's bill, that way you are just "sharing" the service!

 

[Streetbu]

If you don't have a line of sight, don't bother. You'll just be wasting your time and money. That being said, I used to have a reliable, reasonable speed to watch videos, connection from 2 miles, WITH straight line of sight.....

 

[ishiboo]

a couple things. If you do get this to work you can't be bragging about it as I'm pretty sure this constitutes rebroadcasting=illegal for mom.
That article where it worked had line of site.
The local tel co does not have to provide fast internet or any at all. Its an optional service so they are not going to be scared by threats.
Doesn't your cable co have internet you can use?
I would have liked that ariticle to stream some you tube videos. didn't see any of that just that they saw the signals.

It's not illegal.

 

[atty5420]

people have had really good luck making their own directional WiFi antennas or cantennas as they're usually called. If you want something more turn key with support Ubiquitihas their airFiber antenna/radio
http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/

+1 for Ubiquiti

I'm running on a 5.5 mile link with a bullet right now....dish to dish. A friend of mine recently established a 30 mile link using bullets and dish antennae for a weekend Amateur Radio event. The cost is in the $200 to $300 range depending on how fancy you want to get into the dish arrangement. As many have pointed out, however, line of sight is an absolute necessity.

 

[My Old Tools]

A couple of yagi antennas and a signal booster (amp) should do 2 miles easily.
http://www.ubnt.com/broadband/

 

[iadubber]

I've done 1.25 miles with yagi antennas on both ends. We had direct line of sight though.

 

[Vinci]

I have had pretty good success with Ubiquiti dishes as well. I can't go that sort of distance around here because of trees and buildings, but the hardware is pretty solid. For the money, you can't beat it.

 

[Kaizen]

It's not illegal.

under the impression amplifying a signal more then its original level is. just saying don't brag about it as he technically is not paying for it so has no title to having it. Now if he was paying it at his mothers house that's a different story.

 

[ishiboo]

under the impression amplifying a signal more then its original level is. just saying don't brag about it as he technically is not paying for it so has no title to having it. Now if he was paying it at his mothers house that's a different story.

Not sure what that means or where you are getting that.

In terms of the FCC, the Ubiquiti product discussed is legal in the US for unlicensed users with the power they provide. I think all of their products are probably in license-free bands with acceptable power outputs.

In terms of using his mothers Internet, there is nothing illegal about it... though it could be in violation of her contract, which would be a civil issue.

 

[ngonerogwu]

I work for the largest point to point wireless ISP in the US.

Those suggesting ubiquiti products are correct, easy to use, and will handily do what you ask.

A couple nanostation m2's would do this easily, and can be had for 70/ea. We've got a ton of those things running reliably and have been for years.

 

[Duk007]

+1 for the ubiquity m2's . We have them running remote ip cams with less than perfect line of sight (through a couple of trees) at the distances your talking about. Great product. You need to know what your doing to some extent but most anyone than can properly set a static IP address should be able to handle it

 

[DC73]

as he technically is not paying for it so has no title to having it.

The OP said in post #1 "My thoughts were to sign up for a new account at her place and broadcast to my place. . ."

DC

 

[Kaizen]

The OP said in post #1 "My thoughts were to sign up for a new account at her place and broadcast to my place. . ."

DC

I missed that. My appologies

 

[dowmace]

About 10 years ago a friend of mine lived 2 miles north of me and had zero internet availability other than dial up. I shared my at the time blazing fast DSL using dish network dishes. I lived on a hill but there was a large amount of trees in between so we built a 20ft tower on top of my garage to clear the tree line. In clear weather his speeds almost matched mine other than he had a very high ping. When it was raining he had zero connection. This was all done on 802.11b technology I can't imagine how much better it could be with the new wifi standards.

 

[Falcon67]

Nanostations will do it easy and cheap. No need for air fiber.

http://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanostationm/

We have 3 remotes and a 120 sector antenna that links them to a 3 story building. We were using nano stations for two point to point links. All worked like a hose. The nano station on top of the building survived last Junes hail storm that blew out every window on the north side of that building and beat the **** out of the roof. Never dropped the connection. I know of nano stations shooting 20 miles on ranches in west Texas. And these run at high data rates. I have network, video and phone running over those links. Works rain or shine.

 

[americanthunder]

I agree with the above...Ubiquiti

My current rented shop space has only one choice for internet through the phone company and its slowwww. My shop is approx 2.4 miles measured on google earth and I use two of these to shoot from my house to my shop:

Ubiquiti AG-2G16-HP AirGrid M2-HP 16dBi Grid

Setup was pretty easy if your familiar with wifi. Set your base up as an access point, the remote location as a client, aim the antennas and your set.

My particular link is not line of sight and the client end is up the hill. There are some power lines, a couple trees, and scrub brush in the path but for the most part its just like I'm sitting at home. In fact I'm using it right now Depending on the density of the vegetation YMMV.

Once my new garage is built I plan on using one of these to shoot a measly 50 feet. Kind of overkill but I already own the hardware!