Laser Links

[Simcfc73]

Hi guys,

Anyone used Laser links to network buildings before.?? I've seen a base model which does upto 200m for less than £2k which would be way less than getting someone to dig a channel for fibre (if its possible).

I've heard horror stories about weather affecting the signal and stuff but theres going to be very little network traffic and most of it will be netowrk camera traffic transmitting back to the server.

[Geoff]

We've used WiFi bridges for a couple of buildings.

[Sirbendy]

I would have thought wifi...54meg a second should be OK..and it's cheap.

[Dos_Box]

Agreed, wi-fi and even directional wi-fi should be hellishly cheaper than the 'cheap' 2K 8O you think you need. 2K, what I could do wirelessly with that!

[free4440273]

while where on this topic, anybody have any views on what wifi models give the best results for this kind of thing. specifically, make and model - belkin, linksys, buffalo?

Yeh WiFi would be a whole lot cheaper, but.... How cool would it be to say your connected to your network via "laaaaaser" lol

[Geoff]

using a couple of 54g buffalo bridges here to link up a portacabin.

[Simcfc73]

Laser links does sound way cooler than WIFI. I may have a look at the new 802.11 ** whatever the standard is with the added range with a nice shiny external antenna. I have some really cheap DLINK wireless which I installed for our boarders to access the internet in their rooms a couple of months ago but they are way too weak to be any good and aren't configurable enough for my liking.

My last school had Cisco 340s and 350s which were pretty good but expensive. (25 of them around school ££££££££). you could configure them to the Nth degree but most of the time they had WEP and Sid enabled and the rest just looked after itself.

S

[E1uSiV3]

i have 10 Cisco Aironet 1200 APs, over 400 quid a pop but superb coverage, the usual cisco configurability (is that even a word? lol) but for a P2P, probably way too much money, jus a pair of buffalos as Geoff mentioned. Out of interest Geoff, how far is the air gap between the APs and what are the aerial specs?

[Geoff]

Just the standard internal areial. Distance is about 20ft.

[Dos_Box]

I use Buffalo for preferance. I had some D-Link, but they were flaky to say the least. Apparently D-Link have sorted themselves out, but once bitten twice shy etc.

[mark]

We trialled an infra red 115Mb link over a mile. Was absolutely chronic! Welsh valley - fog? sited through park with protected trees - summer? High winds would blow it out of alignment so muggins would scale the roof of the three storey building it [still] hangs off with a kid leaning out of a window below watching a machine pinging across it whilst I struggled to move the thing.

It's still there, doing nothing. The kids think it's a big security camera! Maybe ebay - hmmm

[sahmeepee]

Our LEA (and quite a few others out there, Bradford I think) use microwave dishes (not the pyrex type) to provide broadband. They do 64MBit over a few miles line-of-sight IIRC. Not cheap, however.

I reckon microwave sounds almost as cool as laser, but certainly miles cooler than crumby ol' wifi

[artram]

One school I work for recently installed a laser link. It seems to work wel but the lovely children keep kicking a ball at it and mis-align it. The installing company charge £600 to come and re-align it.

The school have now had a cage installed around it. I'm sure the little darlings will work out how to throw a blazer over it at some point.

[ChrisH]

Dont go giving them ideas