Replacing DSL with Pt-to-Pt wireless link to FiOS

Construction is usually described by the materials used, not the age. Line of sight means you can see the other end. Since you can't see the other end through 3 floors, you do NOT have line of sight.

I'm also wondering about these 3 floors. Floors are usually 10 to 15 ft seperation. Unless you're shooting at an angle, 100ft would be 8 to 10 floors.

Make my life easy and kindly describe your situation clearly.

If the 3 floors are wood, with not much else in between, you have a chance. If the 3 floors are concrete, give up now while you're still sane. Other possibilities will have varying levels of attenuation. In my experience, 100ft through 3 floors at an angle isn't going to work because of all the inside junk it has to penetrate. At an angle, it also has to pass through walls, which often have aluminum foil backed insulation inside.

Ok, no numbers. In order to get 20Mbits/sec thruput, you'll probably need a 48 or 54Mbits/sec wireless association. That's difficult to do even in a single room, much less through 3+ floors or walls. Check your wireless connection (association) speed. I don't think it can be done.

Typical consumer wireless bridges run about 100 mw output. 600mw will get you perhaps twice the range. For such power to be effective, it needs to run 600mw at both ends of the wireless line. Otherwise, you create an "alligator" (an animal with a big mouth and small ears) which creates more RF pollution.

I don't think it's possible. You might be able to get a connection at some really slow speed (i.e. 1Mbit/sec) but not at 48/54Mbits/sec association.

Of course there's always the ethernet-powerline-ethernet solution.

A matched pair of consumer grade units will range from $75 to $200 or thereabouts.

one typical unit:

Promo video is watch-able and well-done. Is the product itself equally good?

Can't speak about that specific unit, but the general concept works pretty well.

I used a mumble mumble Linksys set three years ago to handle the connection link from my TiVo to the cable modem. (I've since picked up TiVo's own wireless unit)

The speed was adequate to not only handle the daily updates, but worked ok for the video downloads.

Less than 100 feet slant distance; but right, not "LOS".

OK, for numbers, I presently get 48Mbps association between the Thinkpad laptop 3x2 antenna and the Actiontec. Pretty reasonable, actually.

Thinking Engenius EOC-2611P or EAP-3660, both ends @ 600mw.

On further consideration?

(Can't do powerline; have tried this and find my 200A panel not friendly.)

Unfortunately, my 200A panel isn't friendly to powerline ethernet throughput.

Unless it's got some wierd type of grounding, surge protections, or other separations, there shouldn't be an issue.

You might, emphasize might, have to make sure both units are on the same "leg"s, (either a 50/50 or a 33/66 chance depending on the input), but that should be the only complication

Whatever the problem or odds are, they are terminal.

Is it just lath and wall board, or lath and *PLASTER*? Anything with water inside is difficult to penetrate. I ran wireless in the SCZ City Veteran's hall, which was all lath and plaster on the inside walls. It was totally impossible to penetrate even one wall, much less 3 walls. However, it worked well down the hallways, and would penetrate the wood doors easily. So, I stuffed the place with access points and antennas. It works, but not through the walls. However, if it's just wallboard, you have a chance of making this work.

If it were not for the slant path, I might suggest going through the outside of the building. I've run CAT5 out windows and back in again in desperation. Wi-Fi will also exit through one window, bounce off the neighborhing building, and re-enter through another window. However, with a slant path, forget it.

Yep. It's not LOS.

Impressive. Is that while moving traffic, or just at idle? 802.11 tends to slow down as the errors increase, and then speed up when the traffic stops. Measure your thruput with Jperf (or Iperf) and see what the wireless link can really do.

You'll need a 2nd machine to act as a server. Use TCP speeds, not UDP. Bug me if you need setup help.

Another really simple test is ping. Just ping the other end of the link at the usual 1 second intervals. Run it for at least 5 minutes. Watch the latency numbers. If the numbers are a constant number of msec, you win. However, if the numbers increase erratically, vary radically, or show no response, then you are experiencing packet loss. The added latency is cause by packet retransmissions, which show up as additional time needed to send/return a ping packet. It will work with packet loss and increased latency, but you won't get full throughput. The usual cause is co-channel interference, but it can also be caused by reflections and varying signal strength.

Here's my wireless path to the neighbors. It's usually fairly stable, but I intentionally fired up my iPhone which provided the necessary interference.

C:\>ping -t 192.168.1.105 Pinging 192.168.1.105 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=182ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.105: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=64

I suggest you look at Ubiquiti products instead.

I favor devices with external antennas (i.e. Bullet)

but the build in antenna variety also works well. If you expect interference on 2.4, think about 5.7GHz.

If you can get a reliable 48Mbit/sec association, while moving traffic, without any interference, it's possible to extend your

There are power line networking bridges (i.e. ferrite transformers) that will take care of that problem. More common problems are interference from other HomePlug users and interference from motor and switcher noise.

ah, screw it all.

Yes, plaster, from the 1920s; "bone dry" at this point.

Running a trade station, moving data. No lags or errors.

Thanks.

At this point, my question is "how" to configure the pair of 600mw devices, one to the Actiontec WAN port, the other to the Sonicwall WAN port.

Which UBNT device? AirRouter or AirWire?

Start with with your FiOS Actiontec MI424 router. You only need one router in this system. The wireless bridge can bridge more than one MAC address, so forget about the unspecified model Sonicall. All you need is an ethernet switch at the other end of the like.

"How" depends on the maker and model of the radio. A bridge is nothing more than a wireless 2 port ethernet switch. Everything happens on OSI Layer 2. All the complexity of router (layer 3) configuration goes away because there is no router involved in bridging. Define a common channel, SSID, encryption method, and you're done.

Neither. Think bridge, not router.

Since you like high power:

If you don't want to mess with antennas, use:

Those are kinda pricy, so a cheaper solution is a nanostation:

The SonicWall SOHO is there serving as hardware firewall, but also to NAT the fixed IP 192.168.116.X network. (The Actiontec router delivers DHCP on the FiOS network at 192.168.1.X)

OK. Thanks. So the Nanostation LOCOM2 g/n units looks good.

The SonicWall SOHO is there serving as hardware firewall, but also to NAT the fixed IP 192.168.168.X network. (The Actiontec router delivers DHCP on the FiOS network at 192.168.1.X)

OK. Thanks. So the Nanostation LOCOM2 g/n units looks good.

The pair of Nanostation LOCOM2 units arrived.

I'll physically connect one to the Actiontec MI424 WLAN port (performing DHCP, gateway IP = 192.168.1.1), the other to the SonicWall SOHO3 WLAN port (fixed IP = 192.168.168.1, doing NAT for the fixed IPs behind a a pair of 8-port switches).

Then what? (The documentation on these units is not just sparse, it's largely non-intuitive.)

Objective is to set up a bridge from the ground-floor FiOS network to my upstairs what is presently DSL network, where bridge replaces DSL.

So do I establish a WDS-mode SSID at the FiOS end and associate the upstairs bridge-mode station with that SSID?

Sorry for the basic Qs; haven't used a bridge like this since a 900Mhz Proxim link.

Can multiple networks be defined on the Actiontec? What is the "WLAN port" you are describing? The data sheet shows a pretty typical home router with a built in 4 port switch and it doesn't seem to have the ability to have multiple LAN side networks.

One side is set to be an A/P and the other side is set to be a station. Tell both of them the same SSID and PSK.

Sorry, typo. WAN port on both Actiontek and SonicWall SOHO3.

Thanks.

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