Having read with interest the high-gain (though illegal) parabolic
network sharing kind of thing I got to thinking.

As there are plenty of knowledgeable types Microwave comms etc I
thought about the viabillity(sp) of a home-shop link.

Might be flogging a dead horse but, here goes....

House is 80m ASL very close to the top of Hill but on the blind side so
no line of sight. The hill rises to 110m within about 500m then drops
off over the next couple of miles, with un-interupted path to shop.
Shop is 3 storey with posibillity of farly tall mast on top so clear
view to non-house side of hill.

Distance point to point is 8.5km

so... simple yes or no question....

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

I appreciate the practice would fall well outside of the law, but even a
10Mb connection to the works network which has a 4MB cable hook-up would
be a cracking utillitiy for the home office.
:¬))

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.

Cheers
Pete

GymRatZ wrote:
Having read with interest the high-gain (though illegal) parabolic
network sharing kind of thing I got to thinking.

As there are plenty of knowledgeable types Microwave comms etc I
thought about the viabillity(sp) of a home-shop link.

Might be flogging a dead horse but, here goes....

House is 80m ASL very close to the top of Hill but on the blind side so
no line of sight. The hill rises to 110m within about 500m then drops
off over the next couple of miles, with un-interupted path to shop.
Shop is 3 storey with posibillity of farly tall mast on top so clear
view to non-house side of hill.

Distance point to point is 8.5km

so... simple yes or no question....

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.

In article , GymRatZ
writes
Having read with interest the high-gain (though illegal) parabolic
network sharing kind of thing I got to thinking.

As there are plenty of knowledgeable types Microwave comms etc I
thought about the viabillity(sp) of a home-shop link.

Might be flogging a dead horse but, here goes....

House is 80m ASL very close to the top of Hill but on the blind side so
no line of sight. The hill rises to 110m within about 500m then drops
off over the next couple of miles, with un-interupted path to shop.
Shop is 3 storey with posibillity of farly tall mast on top so clear
view to non-house side of hill.

Distance point to point is 8.5km

so... simple yes or no question....

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

I appreciate the practice would fall well outside of the law, but even a
10Mb connection to the works network which has a 4MB cable hook-up would
be a cracking utillitiy for the home office.
:¬))

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.

Cheers
Pete

From what you say this looks like a no hoper. If you can't see it then
it ain't gonna go. If you are looking towards a hill that is some 110
and you are at 80 then even assuming that you add in your house, another
10 say that means you need an extra 20 metres above that to even see
over the hill. At the distance your describing unless you go up some
hundreds of metres at the shop end, this isn't going to fly!....
--
Tony Sayer

Ian Stirling wrote:

With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.

Sadly not.
It's already occupied by Portishead police "village" and a big comms tower.
Don't think they'd give me mast space for a domestic illegal LAN extension.

:¬(

I did consider sighting up a suitablly positioned large building in
S.Wales and reflecting the signal as both sites have a clear view across
the River Severn.

I think it's just going to have to be VPN and a slow as old chips DSL
connection.
But that's missing the spirit of adventure.
:¬)

Cheers.

Pete

GymRatZ wrote:
Having read with interest the high-gain (though illegal) parabolic
network sharing kind of thing I got to thinking.

As there are plenty of knowledgeable types Microwave comms etc I
thought about the viabillity(sp) of a home-shop link.

Might be flogging a dead horse but, here goes....

House is 80m ASL very close to the top of Hill but on the blind side so
no line of sight. The hill rises to 110m within about 500m then drops
off over the next couple of miles, with un-interupted path to shop.
Shop is 3 storey with posibillity of farly tall mast on top so clear
view to non-house side of hill.

Distance point to point is 8.5km

so... simple yes or no question....

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

I appreciate the practice would fall well outside of the law, but even a
10Mb connection to the works network which has a 4MB cable hook-up would
be a cracking utillitiy for the home office.
:¬))

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.

Cheers
Pete

Do you own the top of the hill ? If so it is possible to build a
passive reflector that can send the signal down the other side, though
how you go about designing one I don't know I'm afraid.

In article ,
GymRatZ wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.

Sadly not.
It's already occupied by Portishead police "village" and a big comms tower.
Don't think they'd give me mast space for a domestic illegal LAN extension.

The parabolic dishes, yagis, etc. aren't neccessarily illegal. The ones
we I've used in the past certianly aren't.

The coms tower is unlikely to be owned by the police - look at the base
if you can. A lot of them are owned by NTL, Crown Castle or Western Power
(in the SW)

However, the price rises exponentially the higher you go - start at 4K
pa for 10m off the ground...

:¬(

Indeed.

I did consider sighting up a suitablly positioned large building in
S.Wales and reflecting the signal as both sites have a clear view across
the River Severn.

You get problems with wave bounce in the fresnel zone.

I think it's just going to have to be VPN and a slow as old chips DSL
connection.
But that's missing the spirit of adventure.

Yes, but it does work... If you are going down this route, get the same
make of router at each end... In theory, VPN protocolls are "standard"
but I've had problems with one vendors interpretation of standards
vs. another.

I've used Draytak Vigor routers to build multi-site VPNs recently with
good results, but that aren't the cheapest. Some units do have phone
sockets though, and although I haven't used them, I have a friend who
has setup a set of small offices using them and he says it's works great
and saves their phone bills...

Gordon

GymRatZ wrote:

Having read with interest the high-gain (though illegal) parabolic
network sharing kind of thing I got to thinking.

As there are plenty of knowledgeable types Microwave comms etc I
thought about the viabillity(sp) of a home-shop link.

Might be flogging a dead horse but, here goes....

House is 80m ASL very close to the top of Hill but on the blind side so
no line of sight. The hill rises to 110m within about 500m then drops
off over the next couple of miles, with un-interupted path to shop.
Shop is 3 storey with posibillity of farly tall mast on top so clear
view to non-house side of hill.

Distance point to point is 8.5km

You may need special kit, and it gets expensive.

so... simple yes or no question....

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

I appreciate the practice would fall well outside of the law, but even a
10Mb connection to the works network which has a 4MB cable hook-up would
be a cracking utillitiy for the home office.
:¬))

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.

If you arer on the same exchange, get a copper circuit from BT and stick
your own DSL kit on each end. This is the cheapest way to move about
1-2mBPS around a single telehopone exchange area.

Otherwise use ADSL and VPN.

I've done a bot of microwaving - its not cost effective really.

If you are in e.g. NTL cable areas, they may do you a nifty fiber limk.




Cheers
Pete

GymRatZ wrote:

Ian Stirling wrote:

With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of
hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.


Sadly not.
It's already occupied by Portishead police "village" and a big comms tower.
Don't think they'd give me mast space for a domestic illegal LAN extension.


They will rent you mast space for anything legal, but the cost is about
5 grand a year with rack space and power, plus they will charge you per
antenna to install irt all.

:¬(

I did consider sighting up a suitablly positioned large building in
S.Wales and reflecting the signal as both sites have a clear view across
the River Severn.

I think it's just going to have to be VPN and a slow as old chips DSL
connection.
But that's missing the spirit of adventure.
:¬)

Indeed.


Cheers.

Pete

Gordon Henderson wrote:

In article ,
GymRatZ wrote:

Ian Stirling wrote:


With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.

Sadly not.
It's already occupied by Portishead police "village" and a big comms tower.
Don't think they'd give me mast space for a domestic illegal LAN extension.


The parabolic dishes, yagis, etc. aren't neccessarily illegal. The ones
we I've used in the past certianly aren't.

The coms tower is unlikely to be owned by the police - look at the base
if you can. A lot of them are owned by NTL, Crown Castle or Western Power
(in the SW)

However, the price rises exponentially the higher you go - start at 4K
pa for 10m off the ground...


:¬(


Indeed.


I did consider sighting up a suitablly positioned large building in
S.Wales and reflecting the signal as both sites have a clear view across
the River Severn.


You get problems with wave bounce in the fresnel zone.


I think it's just going to have to be VPN and a slow as old chips DSL
connection.
But that's missing the spirit of adventure.


Yes, but it does work... If you are going down this route, get the same
make of router at each end... In theory, VPN protocolls are "standard"
but I've had problems with one vendors interpretation of standards
vs. another.

I've used Draytak Vigor routers to build multi-site VPNs recently with
good results, but that aren't the cheapest. Some units do have phone
sockets though, and although I haven't used them, I have a friend who
has setup a set of small offices using them and he says it's works great
and saves their phone bills...


Another thougfht. BT has a 'virtual ethernet' product that runs at
around 8-Mbps, using latest DSL type technology.

Gordon

GymRatZ wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

With megawatts of power, maybe, otherwise basically not.

I suppose there is no possibility of a mast to give you LOS to top of hill,
a box on the crest?
Power to the box would be nice, but solar could be made to work.

Sadly not.
It's already occupied by Portishead police "village" and a big comms tower.
Don't think they'd give me mast space for a domestic illegal LAN extension.

I did consider sighting up a suitablly positioned large building in
S.Wales and reflecting the signal as both sites have a clear view across
the River Severn.

The angle needs to be right of the building too, and the building needs
to be reasonably (+-5cm) flat over large portions of its surface.

Can you get LOS to the top of the tower?
Idly wondering.
Big dish pointing at top of tower on either side.
Hmm.
If a router does omnidirectional to 100m, then for 8Km you need 80 times the
range, or 640 times the directivity.
This means you're looking at an antenna on the 8Km link of about 1/40th of
a steradian, call it 1/7 of a radian.
So, you need a dish of around 12cm*7 = 74cm, if you got an omni antenna router
up the tower.
Or with a 1.8m dish, the signal would be 5 times stronger than needed.

Now, if you're 500m from the tower, and want to hit it and put all the beam
in a 5m diameter (assuming the tower has a 1m radius), you're looking at
a dish of ... Hmm.
I make it 12m.
I think they might notice that.

You don't even need an active repeater - a couple of 60cm dishes wired back
to back pointing in the right directions would make this so much easier.

Any nearby properties that might cut the corner for you, and also want
a broadband link?

GymRatZ wrote:

With a high gain parabolic dish at each end on as much height as I can
get, would the hill/houses obscuring Line Of Sight for a fairly short
distance attenuate the signal too much to make the "experiment" even
worth considering?

You need LOS or a cable (a single length go CAT5 can be 300m remember).
You could possibly get LOS in more than one step...

I appreciate the practice would fall well outside of the law, but even a
10Mb connection to the works network which has a 4MB cable hook-up would
be a cracking utillitiy for the home office.
:¬))

As long as you are not tweaking up the power of the output stages you
should be legal, high gain yagis etc. are only focussing the available
power more accurately.

ISTR Bob Cringly describing a setup he built like this to get over a
hill on a 20km trip to reach DSL. See if you can find it in the archive
he

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.

or several aggregated ones....




--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Gordon Henderson wrote:

I think it's just going to have to be VPN and a slow as old chips DSL
connection.
But that's missing the spirit of adventure.


Yes, but it does work... If you are going down this route, get the same
make of router at each end... In theory, VPN protocolls are "standard"
but I've had problems with one vendors interpretation of standards
vs. another.

I've used Draytak Vigor routers to build multi-site VPNs recently with
good results, but that aren't the cheapest. Some units do have phone
sockets though, and although I haven't used them, I have a friend who
has setup a set of small offices using them and he says it's works great
and saves their phone bills...

Yes, I HAve a Netgear thing at the moment but it frequently needs
re-booting, so I will certainly go the route of a Draytech at each end.

Having just been up on the roof of the shop (via handy Velux) The Line
of sight thing even to the comms tower is a total no-go scenario as
there's a bloomin' great big disused "grainstore" on the dock-side right
between us and the hill. so untill they knock it down and re-develop the
docks as a marina I'll give up on that venture.

Thanks to everyone for thoughoughly interesting info and suggestions though.

CHeers
Pete

--
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http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)

Do you own the top of the hill ?

I wish.
Think of how much I could rent space out for a comms tower.
:¬))

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

If you arer on the same exchange, get a copper circuit from BT and stick
your own DSL kit on each end. This is the cheapest way to move about
1-2mBPS around a single telehopone exchange area.

Differrent exchanges.
Plus the house DSL is too far from the exchange to currently get
anything more than 512Kb

Otherwise use ADSL and VPN.

Looks like the way I'll be going.

If you are in e.g. NTL cable areas, they may do you a nifty fiber limk.

Telewest at the shop, and no cable at the house.
:¬(

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)

John Rumm wrote:

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited to
348 Mb upstream from office.


Sorry... 384 Mb I mean

or several aggregated ones....

That would still be restricted to the single up-stream of 384Mb max from
my cable connection.
(I don't think I could blag 2 cable connections to the same premisis)

:¬(

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)

Pet @ www.gymratz.co.uk wrote:

John Rumm wrote:

other alternative is 1Mb DSL at home connecting via VNC but limited
to 348 Mb upstream from office.



Sorry... 384 Mb I mean

or kb even ;-)

or several aggregated ones....


That would still be restricted to the single up-stream of 384Mb max from
my cable connection.
(I don't think I could blag 2 cable connections to the same premisis)

You could probably add an ADSL one though...

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

You could probably add an ADSL one though...

Didn't think of that.

Any idea what the max. Upstream bandwidth is?
Could be the way to go..


--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)

Pet @ www.gymratz.co.uk wrote:

John Rumm wrote:

You could probably add an ADSL one though...


Didn't think of that.

Any idea what the max. Upstream bandwidth is?
Could be the way to go..

"Standard" ADSL is 256K uplink. Some operators are now rolling out SDSL
offerings (i.e. symmetric up and downlink). The DSL technology itself
will run to at least 8Mbs although BT currently only provide 2Mbs in
most cases (apparently they are now looking at going faster in the
near(ish) future).

An aggregating router could be used to front both your cable and DSL
connections giving a bigger total bandwidth, although obviously any one
connection would still be limited to the maximum single channel speed.

What application did you have in mind that will need a large uplink
capability?


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

What application did you have in mind that will need a large uplink
capability?

Currently it would be using the accounts package (Quickbooks) which I
can work around by either running it by using tight-VNC on a local
machine so the database is modified locally rather than on the remote
(home)machine (a stupid querk or the program as the database is now
90MB) but even just screen data is painfully slow using tight-VNC on a
remote station.
Or, I have to dump my current versions and purchase a 5 user licence
which would enable me to run the aplication on a server with up to 4
other users accessing the server aplication as they'd all have the same
serial number realtime acess using a VPN.

Hence again, local database modification so no data shuttling.

Besides which, If I could have done the Radio link thing, I would have
had access to the shops 4Mb cable connection F.O.C. for interweb surfing
rather than the 512Kb adsl line at the house.

I'm probabally just being far too greedy.
:¬)

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://gymratz.co.uk/hot-seat.htm - Live web-cam! (sometimes)