Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : How can a Wireless Bridge be setup between 2 remote offices?
I have 2 offices in "Bishkek" (Capital of the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia) that are approximately 1.5 miles (as the crow flies) apart and located in an urban environment. The main office is on the 5th floor of a new building and is networked by a simple LinkSys Wireless G that connects 5 laptops and 1 workstation. The second office location is on the 1st floor of a Soviet era building with very thick walls (2ft) and is also served by a LinkSys Wireless G connecting 2 laptops and 1 workstation. Transfer of data between the offices is made via USB memory sticks because network access to the main office is non-existent. What is the best method to “connect” these 2 locations? Because it is an urban environment, there is no line-of-sight between the two locations.
Because this is a 3rd world country, basic telecommunications and broadband infrastructure is poor. We connect in the main office to the internet via ADSL, which is the only available option other than dial-up. However, because the phone line at office number 2 is not digital, we are forced to use dial-up, making our work there unbearable. If it were possible to connect wirelessly to the main office, it would solve all our problems. I am not a “tech” and I understand very little about how to solve this problem. I have a tech in Bishkek that could setup whatever equipment is necessary, but products to interconnect the 2 offices are not available for purchase in the Kyrgyz Republic and if found, usually has to be ordered from another country.
I need help identifying what products I need to purchase and how to establish connectivity between the 2 locations. Can anyone help?
If the two sites are indeed 1.5 miles apart and you do not have clear LoS, I am sorry but creating a wireless link using 802.11 technology will be almost impossible.
I might suggest setting up a PPTP VPN. I realize that there is only dial up at one location, but a remote VPN client on the computer that is dialing out will at least get you connected to the other location. I suspect it might be faster than USB devices. Or another option is to use a service like LogMeIn. Check it out on their website.
umdivx
01-30-2007, 09:15 AM
The only other way is if you could find access to a roof top that has CLOS between both buildings you could do a "man in the middle" type bridge.
But as M/Q said since you don't have CLOS its nearly impossible to setup a good reliable connection between the two offices, unless you can find a building or roof top that DOES have CLOS between the two buildings.
- Josh
Thanks for the sugestions, but the speed of data transfer is very important. Man-in-the-middle may not be practical or possible.
Do any of you have knowledge/experience with SmartBridges (http://www.smartbridges.com/css/articles.asp?id=451) applications? Although this is not my particular problem, this article relates to CLOS problems and possible solutions. Our budget is not very large and I do not want to overdesign since the small office will not grow in size.
umdivx
01-30-2007, 02:55 PM
Thanks for the sugestions, but the speed of data transfer is very important. Man-in-the-middle may not be practical or possible.
Do any of you have knowledge/experience with SmartBridges (http://www.smartbridges.com/css/articles.asp?id=451) applications? Although this is not my particular problem, this article relates to CLOS problems and possible solutions. Our budget is not very large and I do not want to overdesign since the small office will not grow in size.
How do you think WISP's link their networks together? They do hops from town to town to town, a man in the middle type setup is extremely reliable depending on if its setup properly.
Hell I did an install where we did a 32 mile link from our main POP, to a 300 foot tower, where we had 3 back haul units shooting out from the tower to feed three towns.
So basically from our main office which as at the bottom of a hill/valley where we has our dual DS3 connections, we did a point to point setup from the roof of our office, to the 300 foot tower.
From there we did power over ethernet to a comm box to a managed switch. Then we ran three more runs of POE to the three other back haul units. Each unit was feeding a different town. Each of those were also point to point.
One was 25 miles, one was 35 miles and the other was 15 miles.
but basically we used the 300 foot tower to bridge the link from our main office building to feed high speed internet to the three towns.
So yes a man in the middle setup will work perfectly and depending on the equipment used you can easily sustain a full 100mpbs connection between the two offices, the only thing that would be effected would be latency, but if you doing basic file transfers and sharing an internet connection latency won't be an issue at all.
- Josh
hummmm... way beyond my techincal ability to understand :) the concept entirely, but i have a basic idea. The reason it may be not be practical is that we will have to negotiate with a property owner that may not be willing to accomodate our request.
If we are able to find a suitable location to mount the equipment, what sort of equipment would be needed to set this up?
What about the SmartBridges solution?