I live on a farm in new jersey and i’m trying to get high speed internet but i’m not quite sure how to do it. DSL isn’t provided in my area and i can’t use cable because my house is a quarter mile away from the road and the cable was never run to our house. I’ve done alot of research and i’ve been told that satelite internet isn’t worth getting because its so expensive and doesn’t work well. I thought about running a coax cable to my house for cable but found out that i’d need amplifiers and all kinds of junk thats over my head. The people i’ve talked said that a point to point wireless 802.11g router was the way to go. So the router and antenna would be in a box at the end of my driveway where the cable wire is and it would send the internet to my house. The guy at best buy told me that the netgear super g router with a long distance antenna would have no problem going 1500 feet. The only problem is that theres no transformer untill my house so theres no way to power the router with 120 ac where the box would need to be. Both my parents do alot of work from home and we’re willing to do just about anything to get high speed internet. Any help would be greatly apreciated.
I’m pretty sure you should check with the cable company before you decide your house is too far from the road. My dad is a general contractor and we build houses all the time. I can think of at least 4 occasions where we called the cable company to have wires buried to the house. They have to do it if you want their service, and one time it had to go over 2 miles!
As far as amplification goes, you would leave that to the cable company too.
Your idea of using wifi is a good one, however you will need more than just a high powered access point and large antennas. That 1500 feet you mentioned is in a circle, not one direction. You would need a repeater to re-send out the signal towards the edge of the “bubble” of wifi access.
I think your best bet is to run the cable to your house. Deal with ampliflication issues later on. In fact, I would consider it the cable company’s problem if there was any amplification problem.
Running electricity 1500 feet is no more fun than running the coax. I believe the wireless would be more expensive after you run the electricity there, and the waterproof box, and buy the wireless gear. You will also increase the latency of your internet connection by using wireless. There’s also the problem of security, wireless isn’t as secure as a land line.
If you want to make a bit of a project out of this, you could power the wifi router/cable modem with solar power. A quick search turns up this page with a bit of help: http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-sizing.html#loads. I would also definitley recommend using a directional wifi antenna, not just a “high power” antenna. 1500 feet may be in the official specs for that antenna, but with wifi, unless you are in a desert without any obstructions, expect like 1/2 the maximum rated range.
magnasmific has it right. Call the cable company and get the cable extended out to your house. If they won’t it will be worth it to pay for it yourself in the hassle you’ll save in trying to get wireless set up out there.
Satallite may be an option. It works ok, except in thunderstorms, and isn’t all that expensive anymore.
The cable company should have no problem at all getting a cable into your house. If it’s only a quarter of a mile, RG6 coaxial cable should do alright (although RG11 would be much better). If they won’t provide the cable, you should be able to get 1000’ spools for ~$125-150. RG11 does great over very long runs. I used to run the TV station at my high school, and we would broadcast many events live, from all around the school. The longest distance from one side of the school to the other was easily 1200’ worth of cable, and we’d get pretty strong signals coming off the RG11 runs, although any more than that may need a signal amplifier. There’s some good info on cables here. Of course, check with your cable company first, to make sure they offer service in your area, and have them check the quality of the signal to make sure that particular tier can support broadband. If the signal is good at that point, you should be essentially home free into getting broadband to your house.
Ben,
The experience here in Chicago and surrounding areas is that if the cable company provides Internet, you can just sign up for that service without signing onto cable TV. As with any utility, the provider runs the wire to allow you to pay him for the use. Call the local cable TV provider and talk to a salesman. They will fill you in on all the details. Expect to sign up for at least a year of service as part of the package. Cable modem is about the only choice you have at this point unless there is a wi-fi provider that covers your area. Rural coverage is not a priority.
If you do decide to go the wireless route, I’d go with 802.11b since it’ll be much cheaper, assuming you’re not going to get much more than 3mbit from your ISP, it’d be over-kill to use a 54mbit wireless connection. Like someone said, use a directional antenna to get good reception… there are actually instructions to build them online out of things like old satellite dishes or PVC pipes. Using ebay and some parts-scrounging, you could probably pull this off for $30-$40.
I’m fairly certain that if you use a wireless G router you will be able to pick up the singal further away than if you were using a B router. Therefore it would not be ‘overkill’ to use the 54mbit wireless, since he would have less need for another repeater halfway up this driveway.
Plus, to add to the b vs g wireless route, let’s say you bought a laptop and wanted to connect to a wireless network at say the championship event.
G would let you connect, while B would not. (Been there, tried that )
G is the next generation wireless standard after B and is a lot more useful.
edit: If you do ending up hooking up to the Cable line, run a speed test and let me know what your results are… Mine is 2595.4 Kbps and I am in the middle of a city area right now.
I’m just curious as to if it is reletively the same in a rural area with a 1500’ individual cable line.
Actually, 802.11g has about a 10% shorter range than 802.11b. Also, any type of 802.11g device should work with any 802.11b device and vice-versa… the 802.11g spec was designed to be backwards-compatible. I know this from experience since I have an 802.11b router, an 802.11g AP, 802.11g card, and an 802.11b adapter. They have all worked just fine together (the problem is between 802.11b/g and 802.11a). Also, if you’re going to be using directional antennas, you’re not going to get very good reception if you’re moving around with a laptop.
I know from experience that there are G devices that do not work on B only devices. My roomates HP laptop has built in G, but does not work with B access points. I’ve heard of other people having problems, but I’ve seen the problems Justin has had. He got a USB B and uses that.
Wireless devices are back-wards compatible, whether it be like the new internal HP wireless G cards, or an external B/G/pre-N card that you have installed in PCMCIA slots. Yes, you may have to configure setting with your router, or with the computer BIOS to have everything working flawlessly (as I to know there are “bumps” along the way). But everything flows in a wireless world. With networking and emerging technologies classes under ones belt you find ways to get by obstacles. I currently manage 3 wireless networks, and one hardwired network. I run internal b and g devices, and external b, g, and pre-n devices on Cable, DSL, and dial-up from Netgear to Linksys and beyond.
As for your communication dilemma, Ben - definitely start with your cable company. Check around with more than one office in your area, and you might have to contact several people in the process to make the correct contact. If cable is available to at least the main road, you may have to pay the price, but there is no reason you cannot be “hooked up”. I have also dealt with situations where cable was not available, and you can contact neighbors and petition to have it run at the company’s cost.
I think some of this wireless myth and lore should be cleared up as there seems to be much of it in this thread. Where to start:
802.11g does not go further in distance than 802.11b. It all depends on the Amps and Antennas you have connected, nothing to do with the ethernet spec.
802.11b is not cheaper than 802.11g. Seriously, I have heard this one before and it in all honestly just depends on what you buy and where you buy it.
802.11b hardware DOES work with new 802.11g hardware because 802.11g is backwards compatible, I’m not sure what the problems you had were but it wasn’t because the access point was 802.11g and you had an 802.11b card.
Now back to the subject at hand. Aside from calling your cable company (which is the easy way out and is what you should do). If you wanted to set up a wireless access point at the end of your driveway and run it to your house it wouldn’t be all that hard. The first thing you need to get is a cable/DSL modem. After that you need an access point of some kind on the driveway end. If you can find an older access point that was made to use with the prism2 chipset PCMCIA cards then I suggest you get it (yeah it’s only 802.11b but since when does a cable/DSL connection get more than 11mbs?) then I reccomend you pick yourself up some 200mW Senaeo Engenius cards (probably two of them). Now for power, you don’t need 120vac… what you need is the combined DC voltage of the modem and the access point… this can be done in many ways (to name two: solar and power of ethernet). You are also going to need some sort of directional antenna, a good cantenna will work excellently. Now you are done on the driveway side of things. Next up you need something to recieve the signal and split it off to your various computers but this is why you bought the other wireless card. (also probably going to need a PCMCIA to PCI adapter) I reccomend a pentium 2 machine as a router… add about 512 of RAM and you are set. Use a crappy HD and set up a small router linux distro on it. Throw in another ethernet card and run it out to a switch/hub and you are done. Now plug the rest of the machines in.
Now if this sounds like an absurd amount of work, well it is. I have done similar setups before and they aren’t much fun to trouble shoot but it does make you feel good to put something like this together. Anyway, I reccomend calling the cable company, it’s a lot less headbanging and frustration.
BTW the total cost for all of this crap would be around 200 bucks… not bad I say.
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