Wireless Network Solutions for a Metropolitan Area?

An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a company that is expanding into multiple buildings within the same office park. We have line-of-sight between the buildings and are looking into wireless alternatives. Does anyone have experience with products such as Proxim's Tsunami or Bridgewave's GE60 Gigabit wireless link? The point-to-point links will need to support the usual LAN traffic (SMB, HTTP, SMTP, etc.) as well as VOIP. The buildings are not large--up to 140 users, whose main network use would be e-mail, printing, and saving Excel documents to file servers, as well as the aforementioned VOIP). Are these connections any more secure and reliable than using something in the 802.11 family of protocols?"

Laser Link

[MBCook]

At one of the schools I once visited, I saw something cool while helping out with their computers. For some reason they had a point to point laser link. This was years ago. From what I could find it was token-ring and I assume 10 megabits. It wasn't working at the time (half the system was just on a desk).

Still, someone must make something like that today. It would fit your situation perfectly. First of all, it's not broadcast. You can't stand 5 feet from the thing and intercept the signal. Second, even if you did manage to intercept the signal somehow, it is much harder to mess with than if you use some kind of 802.11.

Point to point laser links may be your answer.

802.11 + Firewalls

[Mr. Sketch]

Since you control both sides of the network, your setup should look something like:
Network0 -- Firewall -- AP -- [AIR] -- AP -- Firewall -- Network1

Setup a VPN/Encrypted tunnel between the two firewalls, to secure the traffic. To secure the wireless network, your options are limited something with WPA/WPA2 as long as it has AES encryption would be a good start as long as you have good passwords on the AP and on the PSK (or use RADIUS instead of PSK for even better protection). This will prevent people from connecting to the APs and changing their passwords or something malicious like that.

3 words

[Neuropol]

Colubris. Colubris. Colubris. [colubris.com]

Why? Priced right. Feature rich. Linux under the hood. Capable of supporting 16 separate networks per AP/Controller. Radius authentication. Active Directory integratable. Etc. Switches, routers, full spectrum industrial wireless solution hardware provider.

ps. I work for a reseller/installer and I am versed in the support of the Colubris back end.

The wireless radio spectrum is full, go for laser

[MavEtJu]

At this moment we, an ISP in the Sydney centre, are replacing all our radio links (enterasys roamabout, tsunamis etc) with Lightpointe laser links.

Why? Because there are too many other users with radio links which interfere with our with our links. Don't get me wrong, they have served us well in the last seven years, but right now the game is over. There is only one radio link left, between the 62nd and 36th floor of two buildings, because the signal has to punch through a concrete wall which laser can't do yet :-)

And I like the speed improvement. Going from 2.2 - 5.5 - 11Mbps to 100Mbps is nice for the users :-)

Motorola Canopy

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the Motorola Canopy system. Point-to-point speeds up to 300Mbps available.

http://motorola.canopywireless.com/ [canopywireless.com]

Airaya and Redline gear

[Robbat2]

I previously worked for a Metro-level ISP, that had their network between approx 20 buildings using wireless gear.
Our preferred short distance solution was from Airaya - http://www.airaya.com/products/p2p.asp [airaya.com]
We used the AI108-4958-O model mainly. It comes with (50,150 or 300ft) of external grade CAT5e attached to the sealed unit.
Mount that sealed unit on the building or a tripod mount ($100USD in Home Depot and RadioShack parts for a decent DIY tripod). Run the CAT5e into one of your roof access areas (look at the top of elevator shafts, there should be airways that are usable). Put the POE injector there. From there, run normal CAT5e to your switch gear.

The Airaya units are rated to 108Mbps (realistically we did 30-80Mbps usable IP depending on distance and interferance), no additional license is needed for the spectrum, and they are well designed and NEMA outdoor rated. Not sure what the current price is, they were dropping a lot during the time that I used them, but probablly $1200USD/pair.

Since you say you have multiple buildings, you should look at some of their other gear - the most we ever did was three units in a set (two slave sites pointing to one master, and sending their traffic via the master if they needed to talk).

One of your other high-end solutions is Redline http://www.redlinecommunications.com./ [www.redlin...ations.com] We used a single AN-100 unit for a long-distance haul (~10km), got a reasonable 60Mbps out of it. Cost wise it's not a nice number, and they refuse to sell it to you unless you get a certified installer to handle it.

Re:Airaya and Redline gear

[Robbat2]

And one comment that applys to both the Airaya and Redline gear.
Due to the frequencies and power in use, do NOT stand in front of the units for longer than 20 seconds when they are powered on. You will get the most severe pounding migraine-level headache you have ever experienced.

Considered fiber?

[Spazmania]

Have you considered fiber? Consider it again.

You're entirely in a private office park you say. Less than 2 km between buildings, right? Has the telco laid any cable conduit? If so, its now a fixture of the property and belongs to the property owner. This means you can use it. Pick up some spools of direct-burial multimode fiber on ebay at around 20 cents a foot, pull it yourself and pay a fiber expert to come in and attach the connectors.

Even if there is no pre-existing conduit, you can use something like the $250 borit tool to get under the parking lot without disturbing the surface. http://www.borit.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=details& prodID=98 [borit.com] Digging yourself is more expensive than pulling through conduit but it could well be cheaper than a decent laser link and its a whole lot more reliable. And oh yeah -- it'll handle your bandwidth needs for the next 20 years instead of having to be replaced in 3.

Experience with 802.11b LoS Point to Point

[megabyte405]

I've worked with a point to point link with 802.11b kit (now could probably use g), and compared to a leased line from the telephone company (we're talking spanning a village here), the speed was a great improvement. We had the added advantage of a skilled wireless technician who had done this before and knew the tricks - antennae relaying the signal on high public structures, talking with local radio stations to put another two dishes on their tower, so interference wasn't a problem, etc. We used Enterasys Roamabout systems and some standard enterprise routers - it's secure, just turn on security, mac filtering, and put the wireless link routers on their own subnet. (Add a VPN over the wireless for bonus points) However, since a high-power antenna like the ones we used will restrict the signal beam to literally a "point", unless someone managed to find their way between two of our dishes, we were just fine.

Good luck! This project worked well for us and was a lot cheaper and faster than a leased line.