Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences
From: jseymour () linxnet com (Jim Seymour)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:17:15 -0400 (EDT)
"Kelly, Chris W." <ckelly () hsutx edu> wrote:
What he said. Although, don't completely expect a pair of nice expensive parabolic high gain dishs to completely give you secure and reliable communications. We had a link of about 5000' for a year and a half. It worked well for about 12 months, then slowly went to hell. We never did specifically ID a cause and replaced the link with a deicated T1 circuit and routers. Web/email was always good, Microsoft network applications so-so.
[snip]
From reading the rest of Kelly's comments, I'm guessing they had an
802.11<something> or otherwise so-called "unlicensed spectrum" microwave solution. Now I'm glad I didn't try that ;). We had two buildings, about 1/4-mile apart, to connect. I didn't want to pay the recurring monthly T1 charges and getting rights-of-way across all those intervening properties, plus crossing the street, was unlikely. We had a *licensed* point-to-point microwave system installed. This was something that would normally do up to 30 miles, LOS and with the proper antennas. They had to install negative-gain antennas in our application, because the transmitters couldn't be dialed-back far enough to prevent overloading the receivers, that close. It was a 10mb/s full-duplex system, IIRC. I believe my employer probably about broke even over the approximate three years the system was in place, as compared to a T1, and got 10mb/s, as opposed to 1.544mb/s. Security was somewhat of a concern. (The manufacturer insisted that the signal was so narrow, physically, that it couldn't be intercepted unless somebody stuck something up right between the antennas. I had an Advanced Class Amateur license, an FCC commercial radiotelephone operator's license, passed the U.S. Army's Advanced Strategic Microwave Systems Repair course with flying colours and taught Satellite Communications for two years. I knew better ;).) I mainly relied on it being proprietary technology, in a licensed part of the spectrum, and the power being so dialed-back. Basically security by "it's highly unlikely." System never gave us a *moment* of trouble. Ran day and night. Ran through driving snow and torrential rain. Never missed a beat. (Well, other than when a fuse in one of the radios unaccountably gave up the ghost.) The system was finally taken off-line when one of the two buildings was sold during down-sizing. The name of the company was Microwave Bypass Systems. When I search on that, all I come up with that's legitimate is Airlinx Communications, which looks like a reseller. Can't find a working on-line presence for MBS. The phone number I have for them isn't answered. All I get at Airlinx is a "we can't come to the phone right now" (which isn't encouraging at 10 a.m. on a workday morning). I suspect Microwave Bypass Systems is no more :(. Jim _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences Bruce Platt (Jul 19)
- Re: Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences franco segna (Jul 20)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences Kelly, Chris W. (Jul 21)
- RE: Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences Jim Seymour (Jul 21)
- RE: Radio Ethernet Modem Experiences Stewart, John (Jul 21)