To share wireless from 1 house to another 250m apart

BadCharlie

I have wirless in my home.
And my brother who is about 250m away maybe a little less maybe a little more. We want to share wireless between one another.

At the moment he cant pick up any signal from my self.
So what do we need to buy?
Any one can link me the gear I would need ? or know of anything that would be powerful enough?

So far what we have are
Wireless network + wireless cards in our computers.
Just need something to send my signal over to his house.

Maints

One of these at each house

http://www.wi-pipe.com/nanostation2-p-313.html?antenna=c8caa2d7593e095381d2bcd10963ef75

Paul.

BadCharlie

That one looks good.

Just 3 more questions.
Do i need to get 2 nanostations or can i get away with just the 1?
And the internet will work over this?
Will i need to have my computer on all the time for my brother to get onto the net?

Thanks

Some_Person

The nanostation 2 is overkill for that distance, the Loco2 or Picoststion 2 would do.

Maints

Do i need to get 2 nanostations or can i get away with just the 1?
Yes, one at either end. One set for APBridge and the other in Station/Client Mode.

And the internet will work over this?
Yes.

Will i need to have my computer on all the time for my brother to get onto the net?
No. Plug the Nano/Pico/LocoStation into your router.


Pico/Loco Stations are cheaper than the NanoStation but order from Wi-pipe today and you will have it tomorrow.(if you are in a hurry, that is!)

Paul.

KeRbDoG

Word of warning for those of you who don't like breaking rules/agreements

IceBroadband;
6.1 When Customer’s use the Service for Internet access, they may not:
6.1.1 resell or provide access to the Service or to any other Ice Broadband service to any third parties or parties not located on the same Premises...

I would expect other ISPs have similar agreements

BadCharlie

Thanks for all that guys.

Will check out Eircom T&C and see.

Capt'n Midnight

Do you have line of sight ?

put the existing AP in the window and try a laptop at the other end, it just might work, if it does you could try a usb adaptor in the client window

does the existing AP have two external antennas

if so then you can cut a 2L coke bottle in half to make a semicircle, cover with thin foil and use it as a reflector to send the signal out the window , you can do the same with the usb key at the other end

KeRbDoG

BadCharlie wrote: »

Thanks for all that guys.

Will check out Eircom T&C and see.

Good news or bad news depending on how yea read it:)
Once you don't sell the service your OK, but I'm unsure about the whole "customer's own use"...if the bill is in my name, could my kid use it? Its not in their name, they aren't a direct customer The house 250m apart could be yours for all they know

7.10 The Facility is provided solely for the Customer’s own use and the Customer shall not resell the Facility (or any part of the Facility) to any third party.

Good luck anywho, broadband sharing is the way to go btw

Capt'n Midnight

kerbdog wrote:

7.10 The Facility is provided solely for the Customer’s own use and the Customer shall not resell the Facility (or any part of the Facility) to any third party.

EU law means you can share bandwidth

and anyway he isn't selling it

KeRbDoG

Do yea have a link to the EU law? I'm sure it would be useful to many folks to know should an ISP get wind of someone sharing a connection

BadCharlie

My brother went and ordered 2 nano stations. And we think they will get to us tomorrow. So will keep u people updated on how we get on.

Thanks

bushy...

Here's the login to a demo one of them ( if you haven't found it already ) , be good to have a play around with it before you start.

http://demo.ubnt.com/

Log in as user ubntdemo , no password


Don't worry about making a mess of settings on yours tomorrow , there is a little "RESET" button on them to put them back to factory settings if you need to.

cadete

Hey i have the same problem, let me know how you get on with it

thanks

bushy...

cadete wrote: »

Hey i have the same problem, let me know how you get on with it

thanks

All the above will work no problem at all really .

Is yours much the same setup ? Two houses near each other , one no hope of broadband ?

cadete

Yeah its about the same distance and im not pickin up a signal, i was gonna get this http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6757357/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7COffice%2C+PCs+and+phones%7C12108629/c_2/2%7Ccat_12108629%7CWireless+networking%7C12108636/c_3/3%7Ccat_12108636%7CModem+routers%7C12108639.htm

What you guys think

bushy...

That might work , but you'd probably have dead spots and all the rest.
I'd be much more in favour of doing it in the way above , it will work properly and be solid.

BadCharlie

Got it yesterday. Had a quick play around with it. Anyways I think I have mine in my house set up fine. But not yet in my brothers.

Just want to know is that both nanostations should see one another ? And then I just have my brother connect to mine.

Might have to raise the height of them as they might need a good line of sight of one another. At the moment I just have them inside the house and was hopping that it would work that way.

Will do more testing over the weekend.

bushy...

It will go through some stuff but way better to have them " seeing " each other.

You'll see the little lights on the back come on as the signal gets better.

This will only happen if the "SSID" s are the same in both.

If you want , leave off any security until you get it going for a few minutes , then you can change both sides in one go

( change the far end one first though , as the link will break until you have security on both sides )

Set your one to "AP" mode and the other to "Client"/ "station"

Change the IP address on one of them ( eg if its 192.168.100.10 change it to 192.168.100.11 )

You need to click "Apply " in the top corner or your changes wont do anything. < --- could be yer problem


( sorry for bitty post , been up late )

BadCharlie

Thanks will try that tonight.

BadCharlie

Well we got it working. Brother was on the internet for a while. Then somehow we lost connect and had some problems. Going to try tomorrow again in the day light.

Had to place both nanostations outside. We would like it if we could keep them inside the house but this prob wont work.

Some_Person

It's not going to work inside unless they're looking out a window. What was the signal strength (in dbm)?

bushy...

BadCharlie wrote: »

Well we got it working. Brother was on the internet for a while. Then somehow we lost connect and had some problems. Going to try tomorrow again in the day light.

Had to place both nanostations outside. We would like it if we could keep them inside the house but this prob wont work.

Success ! Depending on what the roof is made of , they might work if they are in the attic ( not pointed directly at timber ) . Easy to test anyway , the little lights on the back of them will give you a guide.

When you do get them working and in their "final position " log in to them and check the Signal Strength.

Rough idea of the scale :

It goes from say -105 to 0 , -50 is "better " than -80

If its "too high" , say -30 log in and reduce the Tx ( transmit ) power

PogMoThoin

bushy... wrote: »

Success ! Depending on what the roof is made of , they might work if they are in the attic ( not pointed directly at timber ) . Easy to test anyway , the little lights on the back of them will give you a guide.

When you do get them working and in their "final position " log in to them and check the Signal Strength.

Rough idea of the scale :

It goes from say -105 to 0 , -70 is "better" than -50 .

If its "too high" , say -30 log in and reduce the Tx ( transmit ) power

Heh? a -70dBm is not better than a -50dBm

Both Nanostations should be placed outside with line of sight to each other for the best signal otherwise there'll be lost packets

Some_Person

Although a -50dbm signal is stronger than a -70dbm signal, bushy is right. It's better to have it good instead of too strong which my cause extra noise.So try getting the signal to -70.

PogMoThoin

Some_Person wrote: »

Although a -50dbm signal is stronger than a -70dbm signal, bushy is right. It's better to have it good instead of too strong which my cause extra noise.So try getting the signal to -70.

Rubbish, set it to G mode only and horizontal (as most domestic wifi routers are vertical). Also do a scan on the one in station mode to see what channels are in use nearby and pick something away from whats already in use. I install 20-30 of these a month.

There are other settings to optimise things I could tell You, but these are trade secrets

bushy...

Fixed up sleepy post above .

+1 for Horizontal since a mot more stuff is vertical etc etc

BadCharlie

Not sure what is causing my problem.
But one problem i have is when i set my Station to Access Point. after a few mins is goes back to station. I do the change + apply option but still a few mins later its back on station. So me and my brother are both on station. Im sure it happens on my brothers also... any idea what is causing this?

Going to have a look at the Fourms over at nanostation

PogMoThoin

You need to click change, then click apply at the top of page to make it stick. Might be easiest to set both in Station WDS and Access point WDS and set both as bridges. Not a good idea to leave the two on 192.168.1.20, change one to 21

Some_Person

You should upgrade the firmware to the latest version too(3.4 was just released but is buggy so use 3.3.2 instead for now).
http://www.ubnt.com/support/airos.php

BadCharlie

Have done change then apply but no good. Goes back after a few mins.

Yes we also change the ip of one of the stations. But will check to make sure this does not get reset to default.

Will do the upgrade as i think mine is well old (and is prob what is causing the problems). Was thinking of doing this but have not got around to it.

Prob is i dont have much time to mess around with the system as im always busy. But this weekend i plan on setting a few hours aside and getting it sorted.

Thanks all for the help so far.

bushy...

Upgrade or "downgrade" should sort it out , i've used a good few of them with no problems , Pogmothoin said he installs a load every month so should be no worries.

PogMoThoin

I always flash to v3.3.2, its only now I've spotted there's a v3.4, not tried myself

BigEejit

They look really good. What sort of range are they are maximim with clear line of sight? How do tree branches etc effect range/packet loss etc?

Some_Person

Ubiquiti say the range is 15km(base station dependant) which would be with a full LOS too.If there are too many thick leaves then that would weaken the signal and could cause packet loss.

BigEejit

Thats really good for a moderately priced unit like that ....... but it seems a bit overkill for a 250 meter link :pac:

I used 2 buffalo high power routers to do a 100meter link with no issues, external antenna would bring that to 250m no worries .... but surprisingly that would probably end up more expensive than these jobbies :rolleyes:

bushy...

BigEejit wrote: »

Thats really good for a moderately priced unit like that ....... but it seems a bit overkill for a 250 meter link :pac:

I used 2 buffalo high power routers to do a 100meter link with no issues, external antenna would bring that to 250m no worries .... but surprisingly that would probably end up more expensive than these jobbies :rolleyes:

If you use directional things like the lads above , you don't need "high power" at all. It will go for many many miles on the tiniest bit.

Some_Person

Did you get everything working properly BadCharlie?

BadCharlie

Hi

Ya got it all working good about 2 days ago.

Then yesterday we got it working better. We need to stick at least one of the nanostations outside and my brother has his in his attic. With this set up we have almost all bars. He will move his outside maybe the weekend im not sure....

The only thing is that my internet drops every so often. Im sure its his wireless modem on his end that is causing it. It be fine for 15min then the net will go down for about 1min. Will do more testing over the weekend again :P to stop us from dropping every so often.

To set up the nanostations we used the UBNT.com web site. Lots of good info on that site. If we did not go to that site we prob would not have set it up correctly.

Thanks all for your help.
Steve

bushy...

BadCharlie wrote: »

Will do more testing over the weekend again :P to stop us from dropping every so often.

"Sorry hun , can't paint the walls today , this is a very sensitive technology ya know and needs careful setting up" :P

Check to see if it has a "watchdog" - it might be set to watch an unreachable address.

Easy way to know is log in to it just after it comes back up and check the "uptime"

Some_Person

When the connection drops are you sure the Nanostations are still connected?
Check the signal and try pinging your brother's Nanostation to rule out the problem being there.

humaxf1

at the remote building, can you plug the nanostation into a switch and feed multiple PCs getting DHCP addresses from your BB modem?

cheers.

BadCharlie

It looks like its the modem/rooter on his side all right. We just upluged it from that and its fine. No more time outs ect...

bushy...

BadCharlie wrote: »

It looks like its the modem/rooter on his side all right. We just upluged it from that and its fine. No more time outs ect...

All good after all the work ? happy days.

humaxf1 wrote: »

at the remote building, can you plug the nanostation into a switch and feed multiple PCs getting DHCP addresses from your BB modem?

cheers.

You could , or there is a DHCP server built into the little yokes themselves


There are others similar sort of devices out there if you a slightly different job in mind / need more speed etc etc

humaxf1

bushy... wrote: »

You could , or there is a DHCP server built into the little yokes themselves

So the remote "Nanostation B" kinda acts as router (wrt54G for eg) of sorts taking in bandwidth from your BB modem via "Nanostation A" and then redistrubutes on a different IP scheme (if you want).

Most videos on youtube are in czech language (I think). Would be nice if they had an english dude explaining about them.

bushy...

They are very easy to setup ( not really much more difficult than a "normal household router")

The live demo. site seems down at the moment , i'll post up a link when I find another

Some_Person

The Nanos are routers themselves if needed or you can just use bridge mode.They have a POE connection so they are powered over ethernet.

Some_Person

No, since it is a router itself but since there is only cable you'll need a hub or switch to connect multiple computers.