Hey, I have a weird off the wall question for a NA group. Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services. Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS. I'm also open to other options. Thanks, Nick Poulakos
20-60mbps is a tall order. I¹d say cellular.. Maybe you can pair together a couple of 4g cradle points and do load balancing on them? You are screwed for LOS microwave, 60mbps on a microwave hope requires real life engineering to function correctly. Frequency coordination, towers, AGL requirements. If you¹re looking for satellite, I can tell you for certain that a 60mbps circuit for a month would exceed 140k a month in your neck of the woods. That¹s just to start off, it can get higher as the link budget dictates. Is there any reason you need THAT much? Have you thought about using compression stuff at all? Are these people paying for it? On 3/26/14, 8:30 PM, "Nick" <nick@wiredmedium.com> wrote:
Hey,
I have a weird off the wall question for a NA group.
Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services.
Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS.
I'm also open to other options.
Thanks,
Nick Poulakos
Laser link, and pray for clear weather? Warren Bailey wrote:
20-60mbps is a tall order.
I¹d say cellular.. Maybe you can pair together a couple of 4g cradle points and do load balancing on them?
You are screwed for LOS microwave, 60mbps on a microwave hope requires real life engineering to function correctly. Frequency coordination, towers, AGL requirements. If you¹re looking for satellite, I can tell you for certain that a 60mbps circuit for a month would exceed 140k a month in your neck of the woods. That¹s just to start off, it can get higher as the link budget dictates.
Is there any reason you need THAT much? Have you thought about using compression stuff at all? Are these people paying for it?
On 3/26/14, 8:30 PM, "Nick" <nick@wiredmedium.com> wrote:
Hey,
I have a weird off the wall question for a NA group.
Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services.
Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS.
I'm also open to other options.
Thanks,
Nick Poulakos
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Yeah.. If you have an extra 10k per radio. Free Space Optics are everything but free. Lol And attenuation at 80ghz is going to be heavy.. When I say heavy.. I mean.. A fart will cause a fade if you’re close enough to the tx. ;) I would not recommend FSO for anyone with less than an ultra black belt in RF. They are such a bxtch to get lined up and running, you could be hanging out on site for a week trying to figure out why your path isn’t aligned. It is not for the feint hearted. Sharks with laser beams on their friggin’ head, probably. On 3/26/14, 9:02 PM, "Miles Fidelman" <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
Laser link, and pray for clear weather?
Warren Bailey wrote:
20-60mbps is a tall order.
I¹d say cellular.. Maybe you can pair together a couple of 4g cradle points and do load balancing on them?
You are screwed for LOS microwave, 60mbps on a microwave hope requires real life engineering to function correctly. Frequency coordination, towers, AGL requirements. If you¹re looking for satellite, I can tell you for certain that a 60mbps circuit for a month would exceed 140k a month in your neck of the woods. That¹s just to start off, it can get higher as the link budget dictates.
Is there any reason you need THAT much? Have you thought about using compression stuff at all? Are these people paying for it?
On 3/26/14, 8:30 PM, "Nick" <nick@wiredmedium.com> wrote:
Hey,
I have a weird off the wall question for a NA group.
Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services.
Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS.
I'm also open to other options.
Thanks,
Nick Poulakos
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Pay someone to worry about all this stuff, MaxWiFi has a good reputation in the UK at least. Stuff like the Ubiquiti Networks AirFiber can be good for getting from A-B over "relatively short" distances if you've identified another place which has really good connectivity which you can use, and if good connectivity is truly critical to the events. Obviously this involves masts, may involve permitting, and is a bit more complex than just a DSL line. It's usually possible to bond multiple DSL connections, and it's not impossible to get phone lines and DSL installed for short events either, although it does depend on the venue being willing to accommodate you. According to SamKnows the South Queensferry exchange (Dundas Castle) is supposed to have gotten BT FTTC capability from 1st March and some LLU (O2, TalkTalk, Sky) has happened, so again, talk to someone who specialises in this stuff and they'll be able to navigate "What is the least fucked up way to solve this for the event?". HTH, -Alex
I think the real problem here is the event is for 2 days and he requires a metric shxt ton of data (for wireless anyways..). Sure you could get all kinds of COOL solutions together, but do you think the (UK Version) LEC is going to run DSL/fiber/blah for a two day event? And who bears that cost burden? If this was an office, sure .. Go for it. A two day event, find something cheap or tell them to use smoke signals. (not to mention all of the venues I've worked with stateside either don't help, or want 15k for the "event" in question) And as a side note, as a die hard wireless guy (satellite, microwave, and cellular) I ask only one thing: Do not trivialize a wireless link.. It's not 802.11 and it doesn't act that way. If you just run an air fiber across and it works - great. But when it doesn't work, we're left to explain to the customer why the equipment neglected to work. Microwave is not 802.11.. Cellular is not 802.11.. 5ghz is not 802.11. They all act differently, and need to be designed properly to function in a less than suck capacity. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "Ewwww.. Satellite??" or "Ewww.. Microwave??" or "We'll use AT&T 4G for disaster recovery" and when you get into it the equipment didn't work because the office wireless guy (Todd, the only guy there who can configure the link sys router) couldn't get this POS 4k microwave radio to work. There are appropriate applications for all of these.. I'm usually the only guy in the room who can drop 100mbps into a field in the middle of Africa next week. It's all about choosing your poison and understanding how to handle it. It can be very beneficial, but it can also lead to you polishing your resume should it not "just work".. A pair of Air Fiber is like 3k USD, and at 24ghz you had better know what you are doing.. I don't know if you've ever pointed something with that narrow of a beam width, but if you have I imagine you'll appreciate what a shit show it is. Especially if you don't have guys at both sides of the path flashing or a pretty decent path analysis (which can cost upwards of 10k in some cases). My .02 :) From: Alex Howells <alex@howells.me<mailto:alex@howells.me>> Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 9:41 PM To: Warren Bailey <wbailey@satelliteintelligencegroup.com<mailto:wbailey@satelliteintelligencegroup.com>> Cc: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net<mailto:mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>>, "nanog@nanog.org<mailto:nanog@nanog.org>" <nanog@nanog.org<mailto:nanog@nanog.org>> Subject: Re: WISP or other options Pay someone to worry about all this stuff, MaxWiFi has a good reputation in the UK at least. Stuff like the Ubiquiti Networks AirFiber can be good for getting from A-B over "relatively short" distances if you've identified another place which has really good connectivity which you can use, and if good connectivity is truly critical to the events. Obviously this involves masts, may involve permitting, and is a bit more complex than just a DSL line. It's usually possible to bond multiple DSL connections, and it's not impossible to get phone lines and DSL installed for short events either, although it does depend on the venue being willing to accommodate you. According to SamKnows the South Queensferry exchange (Dundas Castle) is supposed to have gotten BT FTTC capability from 1st March and some LLU (O2, TalkTalk, Sky) has happened, so again, talk to someone who specialises in this stuff and they'll be able to navigate "What is the least fucked up way to solve this for the event?". HTH, -Alex
On 27 March 2014 05:09, Warren Bailey < wbailey@satelliteintelligencegroup.com> wrote:
I think the real problem here is the event is for 2 days and he requires a metric shxt ton of data (for wireless anyways..). Sure you could get all kinds of COOL solutions together, but do you think the (UK Version) LEC is going to run DSL/fiber/blah for a two day event? And who bears that cost burden?
Yes. Absolutely. Getting a phone line or multiple installed for 2 days is *completely* feasible, and depending on the length to the cabinet/exchange, the speeds he wants are also not too difficult (~20Mbps) through bonding. Both of the locations he has identified probably already have a significant number of copper pairs into the building. There are more than likely to be enough spare although the install process could be complicated if that is not the case. Typically speaking a line install costs from BT Openreach costs around £50+VAT, but you'd pay £145+VAT to get an expedited install appointment. In *theory* (never tried this myself) they should be able to install multiple lines within the same appointment, so four lines might run you £345+VAT or thereabouts although worst case you could be looking at £195+VAT per line. I believe it's possible to just cancel them immediately after the event, and that it's possible to avoid a 12 month minimum term, so you'd be looking at fairly minimal rental costs (£12+VAT per line, or thereabouts) to cover their rental for the 30 days covering your event. I am not trivialising the use of AirFiber in the slightest, however, if that's what it takes to get him the required bandwidth it's also not out of the realm of possibility for someone (i.e. doing it through MaxWiFi) to set up, for the required amount of money. I specifically stated it would be more complex than a DSL line. I think the OP was looking for solutions, not pages of text about how difficult or impossible his situation actually is ;-)
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 05:09:05AM +0000, Warren Bailey wrote:
It's not 802.11 and it doesn't act that way.
Actually most of the installations I've seen -- and my day job is working with community networks around Scotland that have built all manner of strange things -- the problems most often have nothing at all to do with the physical layer. More often they're related to doing things with spanning tree that we all learned in networking long ago to not do, or running many layers of NAT because IP routing is not understood. Things like that. The only common RF problem is leaving the channel selection on "auto". Which invariably means one radio, like an access point with a sector antenna, can't hear the point to point link coming in to the dish behind it and picks the wrong channel. Again, yes, you're right, you have to understand how this stuff works and think a little bit when you build, but your messages saying "It's really really hard" are coming across a little like FUD.
A pair of Air Fiber is like 3k USD, and at 24ghz you had better know
The AF24 are also illegal here. Or rather the lower channel belongs to the police, and the upper channel is limited to a very low output power. We have a pair of these, with a special non-operational license from Ofcom to put them through their paces. They do work, though they are a pain to align and subject to rain fade. They are on the West coast which is very rainy. Right now we're using them to measure rain intensity rather than to carry real traffic (which we can't do with a non-op license anyways). -w
I think the AF5 should be legal over here, at least, the lower bands are license free up to 1W transmit power. Not used the AF5 at all yet, it's quite new, and the only AF24 experience I have is only ~1000m worth of distance so comparatively easy to make work. Either way you latched onto the point, which is "Where there's a will, there's a way". In a lot of ways the UK is significantly more forward-thinking in terms of what can be done with DSL lines, the US LECs really aren't very imaginative. Who ever thought I'd be praising BT. On 27 March 2014 10:10, William Waites <wwaites@tardis.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 05:09:05AM +0000, Warren Bailey wrote:
It's not 802.11 and it doesn't act that way.
Actually most of the installations I've seen -- and my day job is working with community networks around Scotland that have built all manner of strange things -- the problems most often have nothing at all to do with the physical layer. More often they're related to doing things with spanning tree that we all learned in networking long ago to not do, or running many layers of NAT because IP routing is not understood. Things like that.
The only common RF problem is leaving the channel selection on "auto". Which invariably means one radio, like an access point with a sector antenna, can't hear the point to point link coming in to the dish behind it and picks the wrong channel.
Again, yes, you're right, you have to understand how this stuff works and think a little bit when you build, but your messages saying "It's really really hard" are coming across a little like FUD.
A pair of Air Fiber is like 3k USD, and at 24ghz you had better know
The AF24 are also illegal here. Or rather the lower channel belongs to the police, and the upper channel is limited to a very low output power. We have a pair of these, with a special non-operational license from Ofcom to put them through their paces. They do work, though they are a pain to align and subject to rain fade. They are on the West coast which is very rainy. Right now we're using them to measure rain intensity rather than to carry real traffic (which we can't do with a non-op license anyways).
-w
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 12:02:30AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Laser link, and pray for clear weather?
You'll have to pray really hard around here, especially in South Queensferry down by the water... We actually have an FSO link between two tall buildings in South Edinburgh. Only about 500m. It works pretty well except when the haar rolls in. Giant pain in the behind to align though, and given that the wind that comes over the top of these tall buildings can be 5x that at ground level, and gales happen several times a year, keeping them aligned is... interesting... -w
On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 03:35:20AM +0000, Warren Bailey wrote:
You are screwed for LOS microwave, 60mbps on a microwave hope requires real life engineering to function correctly.
Well now, really. Yes it needs engineering, but nothing spectacularly difficult. The upper bound on distance the OP needs is something like 10 miles which is peanuts. Any of your typical off the shelf 5GHz stuff will do that, you can even just eyeball the alignment. The upper 5GHz band is not very crowded around here. You do need line of sight which means spending a little time with a topo map. You're right that it isn't as simple as just putting up some antennas, leaving the kit at factory defaults and hoping, but that's not a very high bar.
towers
Rather conveniently there are lots of hills around here. A typical can easily be something made out of standard scaffolding not more than 2.5m tall. You try to build them at the top of steep bits so that people (and sheep) can't easily stand in front of the antennas.
If you¹re looking for satellite
Satellite is a last resort, and almost always unnecessary even in very remote places. It is also, as you point out, extremely expensive. Best, -w
There are plenty of Microwave products that produce that type of bandwidth and more, LOS and NLOS. I do not know if there is a WISPA counterpart in Scotland but you may want to reach out to WISPA to see if they know of an organization. You can also reach out to Cambium to see whom their partners are in the area. Dustin Jurman -----Original Message----- From: Warren Bailey [mailto:wbailey@satelliteintelligencegroup.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:35 PM To: Nick; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: WISP or other options 20-60mbps is a tall order. I¹d say cellular.. Maybe you can pair together a couple of 4g cradle points and do load balancing on them? You are screwed for LOS microwave, 60mbps on a microwave hope requires real life engineering to function correctly. Frequency coordination, towers, AGL requirements. If you¹re looking for satellite, I can tell you for certain that a 60mbps circuit for a month would exceed 140k a month in your neck of the woods. That¹s just to start off, it can get higher as the link budget dictates. Is there any reason you need THAT much? Have you thought about using compression stuff at all? Are these people paying for it? On 3/26/14, 8:30 PM, "Nick" <nick@wiredmedium.com> wrote:
Hey,
I have a weird off the wall question for a NA group.
Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services.
Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS.
I'm also open to other options.
Thanks,
Nick Poulakos
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 27/03/14 14:04, Dustin Jurman wrote:
There are plenty of Microwave products that produce that type of bandwidth and more, LOS and NLOS. I do not know if there is a WISPA counterpart in Scotland but you may want to reach out to WISPA to see if they know of an organization. You can also reach out to Cambium to see whom their partners are in the area.
Indeed - there's fairly local transit capacity (though it is via a BT exchange, so good luck actually getting a reasonable price off BTWC for a temporary line) and doing LOS on some temporary towers should be within the capabilities of some creative engineers. WISPA might be a good starting point, INCA can certainly put you in touch with the local crowd to advise. Either way it'd certainly work out a heck of a lot cheaper than sat. You can do 3G (DC-HSDPA) in that area on at least one MNO but probably want a decent directional antenna with some gain on it. That'd probably work out cheapest, but will be bandwidth limited and you'd be looking at a fair few devices bonded to get that much bandwidth. - -- Cheers, James -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJTNEvqAAoJENTyYHL8dmp9StIP/RnilFJ1SzfEqsQ5dkxMO+Hg jc7b4q41h7sNiWoWjRPbjc/nRsG0JNHIK/JicfuOKVzlrCIBdhO30B+EnR2DhZ+i roc09WwbJckwoGwTZjvXESm1qJE1bZTynr7nrrc7WFXak6HDN3MZqhHlkElShYAg i7Al5m5LjUFXKr+xorOam84w/DcmgFCi5SzAQOu5fTvQxbJ1gmiwb+n7q5V6xzRH /B+bRFBwaqW6mtTQ2Wh9lxxXaMoIRHWfo/AlI21Z8FyKANArypqBC3YNw0BSkeBP kN3dRy6AlbmhFQ3XaiOrYiHbx/vp4WV3VVe6S8/Suey2eKASmyglB3nfeCYvokOk kvMs4phfE8lTAntMm0HKykHtZHtPbUdwTOag4TyYCjlBtLZahBDqF9Q6TFwuhhxL e1Vi86PEpPgMGAGlim81DCHu9/BwWsvnp2R98/hAW5bMTanm6sBcAera0EYrAtKr MXYN5WOmAZzVxW/x1nbtxYBM8iNG2fY/w0lGDH+2Z7DgJxP/WQOVUhU3UCJcQYgi jkx9BSjBJJtyR6F/WKxKbDhIaTfZ58Y7qNqXpg27z1KuCxkz9HdpjYH2kuMO5icx Hq29kD4cJm5APCcBjyP8mlIyHG2GZqeNmJLaSfmCWYwhuf/XOKQQbgtOdfMLsoyS z3OJ0iuivtdirXz7RAoR =eyO1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Thanks for all the ideas. Right now, Im talking with Maxwifi. Go the route of letting them deal with everything. Im still exploring other cheaper options: A) 3G/4G wireless service. A Orange rep is building a data plan to support 160 devices and to find out data usage in the area and available bandwidth. B) Getting wireless service from the near by datacenter(~6 miles away in South Gyle). Can anyone recommended a good 3G/4G router? The follow link looks good. http://www.proroute.co.uk/proroute-4g-routers/proroute-h820-4g-router/ Would it be better to run one 4G route or bond many of cheap hotspot? Thanks, Nick Poulakos
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 10:30:27PM -0500, Nick wrote:
Does any have contacts in Edinburgh Scotland who can provide WISP service at the Hopetoun House and Dundas Castle. I would like to have 20-60mpbs to for 2 days of services.
There is a *chance* that we (http://hubs.net.uk/) can help. Our network in Edinburgh is mostly constructed for serving areas to the South -- the Lothians, the Borders, etc. and South Queensferry is to the Northwest. So one way of doing this would be to find an intermediate spot and make two links. Briefly consulting a map there are a few candidates, and for some, a temporary relay (the broadband wagon parked on a hilltop) might work. It also looks as though there may be line of sight to Scolocate in South Gyle which is a major datacentre where IX Scotland is -- unfortunately we don't have anything on the roof there at the moment. If the event is for some sort of not for profit or academic related thing other possibilities open up as well, it may be possible to use one of the universities' networks to get most of the way there. There are definitely possibilities, but it may well be too expensive for such a short duration. Send me a mail off list if you want to discuss in more detail.
Our company's event planner claims there are no good ISP options in the area and wants us to go with satellite internet which is pricy and has high latency. Its worth noting both locations have ~7mpbs DLS.
It would be interesting to talk to this event planner... Another option is bonded ADSL. I'd recommend Andrews and Arnold (http://aa.net.uk/) for that. It's a bit ugly, and any DSL or FTTx is very expensive for real use (BT Wholesale's tarrif for bandwidth on their DSL carrier interconnect for resale is something like -L-40/Mbps plus lots of other charges) but for a temporary situation it's not a bad option. Cheers, -w
participants (7)
-
Alex Howells -
Dustin Jurman -
James Harrison -
Miles Fidelman -
Nick -
Warren Bailey -
William Waites