Right, I (with some fellow conspirators) am buying a farm.
The farm in question is on a ridge, with most of it on the east side of the ridge, where the buildings are, and part on the west side. The buildings are more or less in the centre, with the land extending about
250-300 metres in every direction.I'm thinking that an omnidirectional wifi aerial on the top of the buildings should cover most of the east side of the ridge, but I don't know how much power I need to get 300 metres effective range on an omnidirectional. To get to a useful place to put a mast on the west side of the ridge, I'm going to need either to run 200 metres of some kind of cable, or to have a repeater station on the top of the ridge that I would need to run power to (or possibly have solar panel and/or small wind turbine).
Sticking an omnidirectional aerial on the top of the ridge is not likely to work since the ridge is too steep, and the signal would be above the level of the rest of the farm. Also, wind speeds over the ridge can be very high indeed. It might be possible to put two slightly tilted omni aerials on top of the ridge, one to 'light' the east side, one to 'light' the west, but finding a place where that would work effectively would be tricky given the land shapes.
I could run either cat 5 or fibre optic cable along the existing fence line; I know this doesn't give much protection from mechanical damage but it would work in the short term. Going along the fence lines means I'm going to need to go about 250 metres, possibly as much as 300. Cat 5 probably isn't going to go the distance - the longest distance I can find for a reliable 10base100 link on cat 5 is
177 yards, so I probably have to go for fibre, which is something I've never installed before.So - what sort of fibre do I buy, and where do I get it? What sort of tools do I need to terminate it? I see I can get reasonably priced media converters off ebay (e.g.
I'm in the UK, if that makes a difference to your answer.