Me…
creeping up on forty – married for twenty – strikingly handsome
- two kids – love beer – work in IT – saved by Jesus Christ – MMA fan -
not really strikingly handsome – martial arts – play guitar / bass
- skeptical of politicians – conservative – strong black coffee – fishing -
love to laugh – ideas – learning – computer games – garlic
- movies with stuff blowing up – tech books
bognet…
It all started when I moved from one town that was serviced by a cable company that offered broadband internet, to a town right next door that was serviced by a bankrupt cable company that didn’t. I didn’t realize that until my wife and I were sitting in what is now our dining room signing the purchase and sale agreement. My heart sank. It was our dream house that had only come within reach by providence. I couldn’t not follow through just because my VPN to work would suck and ping times in UT would skyrocket. So, we moved in.
The street is one of the oldest in town and the POTS lines (phone) are terrible. Dial-up access was proven unworkable immediately. I had satellite internet access installed soon after moving in. What a money pit! They should just advertise it as “when you’ve exhausted all other options…”. It was expensive, came with buggy software, and had unbelievable latency. Sure, I could check cnn.com. But VPN, console apps, remote control apps, and games were all unusable via this medium.
In researching other options, I stumbled across a couple companies offering wireless broadband via 802.11 – the same wireless protocol for access points used in homes and offices. Of course, none of these services were offered in my area. But it got me thinking and reading a bit about extending wireless networks. I read about people sharing internet access with friends down the street using cantennas. I also read about commercial applications pushing signals much greater distances using parabolic grid antennas. It wasn’t long before I started seeing this as a solution to my problem.
My house abuts a very large cranberry bog in southeastern MA. My backyard overlooks a very large and beautiful stretch of this bog. On the other side of the bogs, 2.5 miles away is the town in which I used to live – and enjoy broadband cable internet. The expanse pretty well provides what much smarter people than me call radio line-of-sight (LOS). The frequencies used by wireless network technology are not very forgiving of things being in the way and you really need a straight shot with no obstructions for it to work. The greater the distance, the more susceptible the connection will be to interference.
A little googling turned up a company in Boston that sold old 2.4 ghz parabolic grid antennas. I bought a couple from them and set out to create a test scenario. I ordered a couple pigtail connections to connect the antennas to a SOHO access point and wireless PC card. I setup a makeshift rig in my back yard and took a mobile rig to the parking lot of the cranberry company on the other side of the bogs. Even after all that trouble, I don’t think I seriously expected to get ping replies from 2.5 miles away – but I did! Woohooo!!!
The next step was the most important and the one to be exercised with the greatest care. The mobile rig in the parking lot was nifty, but obviously provided no internet access. I needed a willing accomplice. I thought of striking up a deal with the cranberry company to no avail. They were closing their doors. In looking at an overhead view (courtesy of Google Earth) that encompassed my backyard, the long stretch of bogs, and a few houses on the other side, it was clear that there was really only one house on the other side that was a viable candidate for the remote endpoint.
One evening soon after, I took my kids on a bike ride in the bogs. We rode all the way to the house of interest and I knocked on the door. The woman of the house answered and allowed me to give her a synopsis of my dilemma as well as a deal for them. I asked if she would allow me to put up an antenna as discretely as possible, and install some network equipment at my own expense. In return, if they agreed to this and to subscribe to broadband internet (if they didn’t already have it) I would pay for half the bill every month. Again to my surprise, she didn’t tell me to take a flying leap and instead said she would talk to her husband. She said the timing was good because she was going back to school and needed internet access.
Later that day, her husband called and I told him my story. He agreed to come over and get more detail of what I wanted to do and what it would take. A day or two later he came over. After a few cups of coffee, a how-to on wireless networking, and discussion of the Patriots, he agreed to the proposal.
I spent the next couple weeks putting together everything I needed and installing the equipment. The ease with which I got a workable signal with the mobile rig gave me unrealistic expectations for the permanent setup. The house was situated in such a way that placement of the antennas needed to be precise in order to avoid the cranberry company across the street. I would need to install the antenna and access point at the very end of my property – roughly 300 ft from my house. So I ran 1″ conduit and cat5 all the way out to the antenna and Linksys Wap11, which was sealed in a weather-tight box.
I left out some gory details about power-over-ethernet, aiming antennas that are miles apart, and lightning strikes. But bognet served extremely well for over 2 years until the cable company in my town offered broadband. The people on the other side of the bogs that helped me were the nicest people you could ever hope to have in an arrangement like this. The whole experience was very cool and very rewarding.