Spanning two houses 1/3 mile apart

Yep. You just reminded me of Cisco Long Reach Ethernet (LRE).

That's the receiving end usually used with a Cisco Catalyst 29xx series LRE switch. I don't know if two 575/585 boxes can be used together as an ethernet extender or if a 29xx switch is required.

For my money, considering also you want to use it for a phone connection also, the wifi solution in a borderline environment will end up a little short on your expectations. Even with reasonable investment in hardware, basic absorption physics will slow it down to a level that may be basically acceptable for idle internet browsing and email only provided you do not mind the number of retries that will occur on the wifi link.

Others have indicated a copper solution and my own experience has shown the

Peter

i think the cisco stuff is end of life. No replacement.

"stephen" hath wroth:

Cool. EOL means I can probably afford to buy one on eBay. Yep.... there's a bunch of 295x switches for $200 to $300 and one 585 CPE transceiver for $120. I can't tell if the 295x devices have LRE capeability, but there's one 2924 switch with LRE for about $300.

Let's see how wired compares to wireless:

Wireless: 2 cheap bridge radios $140 2 24dBi dish antennas $160 2 PoE system $120 Assorted conn and boxes $150 ==== Total $570

Cisco LRE: 1500ft gel filled CAT5 $200 1 Cisco 2924 LRE $300 1 Cisco 585 CPE (new) $140 ==== Total $640

Hmmm... not so good. Maybe if the LRE switch can be found for less at auction instead of Buy it Now.

Well, if all else fails, we're back to the ethernet extenders:

A pair for $400. 1 mile, 2 wires, 16Mbits/sec.

Not sure why there'd be noise from 48V _DC_. I guess if its poorly rectified.

He has 550m to span doesn't he? Midpoint would be at 275...

You can run any low-voltage unit over PoE, no need to buy special hardware. I successfully ran a wireless router at the end of 30m of cat5 by just snipping the plug off its power cable, attaching this to the 4 spare cores, attaching the other end of the cores to the wall wart.

(snip interesting calcs)

Indeed, better than I expected.

Oops. Y'er right. 1/3 of a mile is 531 meters. At 100 meters per PoE run, that would be too far for 802.3af PoE from each end to work. Sorry.

No, the noise is from cross-talk and reflections; where noise is defines as any unwanted signal.

Ah, you mean noise in the signal rather than the power. Ok, I'm with you there.

I've noticed a lot of folks pushing copper and repeaters. Dunno why. Seems like a hell of a hassle. I'm gonna jump in and suggest fiber. Fiber to Ethernet transcievers can be purchased for $60/each (you'd need two) and 50/125 or

You'd need about 2000'. (they usually sell it in round numbers)

Cuz if it's a cabin, probably doesn't have power, so how you gonna power the fiber converter.. Even wireless, if there's no power, what you gonna do at the cabin end? If you do the direct burial power cable/utility direct burial cable, and networking over the power cable, you kill two/three/four birds with one stone (ie get both power network, and can even do phone and intercom etc) (he said there was a neighbors house about 1/3 mile away)

When I did mine I tried wireless first, but during the winter snow came (31 inches in the first storm, destroyed the fresnel zone), then spring came and trees/plants grew (wireless doesn't go well thru water/leaves), by summer I was looking for plan B, and the buried cable to do power/networking/phone/cable tv/intercom/etc made a bunch more sense..

Telephone lines for fax and voice, lines for an extension of your main phone system, dry pair alarm circuits, the list goes on of what needs a copper pair to work.

If you're going to run fiber, by all means run some copper while you are at it.

I assume there is some power, since he wants it for his laptop and vongage phone. Yeah, a laptop has batteries, but that's good for what? A couple of hours? Besides, they have these awesome things called generators :)

Never said the other ideas sucked, just said they seemed a hassle. Didn't even see your suggestion. I was just pitching a suggestion myself.

That'd work. No reason one can't lay down both. Fiber would just eliminate a lot of the hassle of ethernet repeaters or having to use a slower technology.