connecting buildings best option?

Lex · 19 Oct 2006 at 08:55

i have about 4 buildings about 700meters apart.

What options are there? in relation to cables and wireless?

pdw8 · 19 Oct 2006 at 09:42

The best option would be fibre optic cable. It has no distance or speed limitations(real world) but is very expensive as it the kit you need to hang off it.You could use something like cisco 2950G switches in each bulding with one acting as the gateway with your routers and WAN facing kit.
You would not be able to use any other type of cable on those distances, CAT5/6 is good to about 90m.

What sort of scenario is this? A business campus?

The only other alternative would be a business grade wifi network but I have no knowledge of this type of kit.

Lex · 19 Oct 2006 at 11:53

pdw8 said:
The best option would be fibre optic cable. It has no distance or speed limitations(real world) but is very expensive as it the kit you need to hang off it.You could use something like cisco 2950G switches in each bulding with one acting as the gateway with your routers and WAN facing kit.
You would not be able to use any other type of cable on those distances, CAT5/6 is good to about 90m.

What sort of scenario is this? A business campus?

The only other alternative would be a business grade wifi network but I have no knowledge of this type of kit.

problem is there are lots of obstacles like car parks, different height buildings etc. What about if fiber was not an option?

what are the options:

- fiber
- wireless (what type?)
- line of sight? (is it the same as wireless?)
- other? (what else is there?

Musashi · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:18

I guess if you cant use fibre then as long as you have LOS then microwave would be your next option, or maybe laser or infrared. But it is expensive and requires specialist install.

Other than that you could go for either BT leased lines or SDSL. You havent said what your data throughput or bandwidth requirements are, how critical the data is, how secure it needs to be or what your uptime requirements are.
Do you require point to point networking or point to multipoint.

Persoanally I would contact a specialist installer such as http://www.kmhgroup.com/page/1/home.html

I am in no way endorsing this company, nor have I ever dealt with them. They came up after a quick Google.

I hope that this helps

bitslice · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:19

see old post about install notes for a really cheap wireless link I did
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17592983&highlight=wireless

other cheap options would be (google the text)

laser LAN link
IR LAN link
ISDN LAN link
Broadband VPN LAN link

then we are onto microwave £££ etc.

btw.
if you include a tiny weeny ickle miniscule bit more info in your post(s), you might get a more useful reply...

---edit: beaten to the post

---

.

pdw8 · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:51

Lex said:
problem is there are lots of obstacles like car parks, different height buildings etc. What about if fiber was not an option?

what are the options:

- fiber
- wireless (what type?)
- line of sight? (is it the same as wireless?)
- other? (what else is there?

Well fiber is usually laid underground in cable ducts which is partly the reason is so expensive.If it is all private land you can run it anywhere but if not you need authority from the local highways dept.

The whole question really depends on :budget, usage, bandwidth requirements etc.

Lex · 19 Oct 2006 at 14:36

bitslice said:
see old post about install notes for a really cheap wireless link I did
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17592983&highlight=wireless

other cheap options would be (google the text)

laser LAN link
IR LAN link
ISDN LAN link
Broadband VPN LAN link

then we are onto microwave £££ etc.

btw.
if you include a tiny weeny ickle miniscule bit more info in your post(s), you might get a more useful reply...

---edit: beaten to the post ---

.

I swear do you just watch for when i make a post? hehe

can u explain a little further on:
laser LAN link
IR LAN link

The land is owned by a large corporate company. I/We have allowance to dig up the roads. Although its roughly 700meters of road i'd have to digup to get to the parameter of the building. I'm asking what type of methods are there to allow for 'data' transfer? Yes it MUST be secure and it must be quick.

What about a 3G connection? anyone know about that? in regards to the pros and cons?

pdw8 · 19 Oct 2006 at 14:49

I know of a company that do a product that might be suitable, again, I am not endorsing them in anyway.

http://www.telabria.co.uk/products/campusmesh.html

a1ex2001 · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:23

Laser and IR basically works in the same way as your TV remote, both require a clean line of sight bettween transmitter and reciever and are good for speeds upto about a gig. You will require a pro to set it up and I'm not sure what the security implications are off the top of my head.

3G isn't really an option unless you only want to browse some basic websites or donload some text emails. It will really struggle with large files or multiple users.

If running the cable really isn't an option than IR/Laser might be you best bet. Failing that if both buildings have decent/spare BT lines you could hook both up with SDSL or cheaper but lower performing ADSL and set up a quick VPN bettween the two

bitslice · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:54

Lex said:
Yes it MUST be secure and it must be quick.

large corporate company + secure + quick = big budget
....all points to a solid Laser link I reckon:

for around £6K pair for 100Mbs
or around £20K pair for 1000Mbs

if there is an easy <50m trench route for fibre between buildings, do that for the sake of easy network management later.

Wireless is more of a choice for 100-200m hops, or lots of buildings. It also requires an intial survey of existing wireless interference.

.

paul@ · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:37

BT Kilostream/megastream

Laser is very expensive, fibre is ££, get BT to do the dirty work for you.

bitslice · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:53

paul@ said:
BT Kilostream/megastream
Laser is very expensive, fibre is ££, get BT to do the dirty work for you.

Installation cost is the killer on 3rd party stuff, for us it was around £10K for a 2mb. :eek:

(the actual rental was relatively low). Laser is just capital outlay and depreciation.

Of course, it depends if Lex is now going to redefine "quick" as 1Mbs or 1000Mbs....

But as this is a Lex post, it will probably just quietly die in the corner from lack of feedback....

.

pdw8 · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:12

The BT services will probably cost more than building a fibre LAN. They have to PoP your building with their own fibre and that may incur them running a fibre from the exchange or at least the nearest fibre cabinet.

The benefit of running fibre is that is pretty much future proof and will last for years.Its a large one time cost that will save money over the long term.

bigredshark · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:18

well, fibre is by far the best choice, laser would be the second choice and is reasonably secure but can be very flaky at times, we've replaced all our laser links with BT LES100 circuits now...

Really, assuming you're looking for high bandwidth, the choice is between DIY fibre and getting BT to do it (LES circuit)

If you can deal with less bandwidth, a high grade wireless setup might work, a company with a lot of experience in the field would be your best bet here, though a company i worked for had one of these links and have since replaced it with fibre.

as has been pointed out, fibre is very expandable, you could upgrade to 10gigE on the same fibre, or run CWDM to get multiple links over 1 fibre pair.

bigredshark · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:20

pdw8 said:
The best option would be fibre optic cable. It has no distance or speed limitations(real world) but is very expensive as it the kit you need to hang off it.You could use something like cisco 2950G switches in each bulding with one acting as the gateway with your routers and WAN facing kit.
You would not be able to use any other type of cable on those distances, CAT5/6 is good to about 90m.

What sort of scenario is this? A business campus?

The only other alternative would be a business grade wifi network but I have no knowledge of this type of kit.

just to note, if it was me laying fibre I'd try and connect each building to 2 others, so you had some resiliency, then have a router in each building and route traffic onto the fibre, essentially making it a core/distribution layer

FordPrefect · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:41

bigredshark said:
well, fibre is by far the best choice, laser would be the second choice and is reasonably secure but can be very flaky at times, we've replaced all our laser links with BT LES100 circuits now...

Really, assuming you're looking for high bandwidth, the choice is between DIY fibre and getting BT to do it (LES circuit)

If you can deal with less bandwidth, a high grade wireless setup might work, a company with a lot of experience in the field would be your best bet here, though a company i worked for had one of these links and have since replaced it with fibre.

as has been pointed out, fibre is very expandable, you could upgrade to 10gigE on the same fibre, or run CWDM to get multiple links over 1 fibre pair.

I'd also go with the LES circuit as its means that if you have problems BT fix it for you instead of you having to sort that out as well. May very well end up cheaper in the long run. I believe tho that LES circuits are no longer available but have been replaced by something similar Ethernet Extension Service instead of Lan Extension Service.

bigredshark · 19 Oct 2006 at 19:26

FordPrefect said:
I'd also go with the LES circuit as its means that if you have problems BT fix it for you instead of you having to sort that out as well. May very well end up cheaper in the long run. I believe tho that LES circuits are no longer available but have been replaced by something similar Ethernet Extension Service instead of Lan Extension Service.

Really, i could swear we were still ordering them up with regularity, though as long as they do the same thing (end to end l2 fibre) then I don't care what BT call them.

EDIT: of course you won't get CWDM or 10GigE over a LES circuit.. :rolleyes:

bitslice · 20 Oct 2006 at 10:38

(after much firckling I found an old quote)

about six years ago, we looked at putting ~ 150 metres fibre between two buildings (I think it was to provide a redundant link, we didn't do it though)

I think the trench cost worked out at (finger in the air guesstimate)
about £115/metre = £17250

That'll mean for Lex about £80K for 700m ? :eek:

Does anyone have more up to date figures for trench laying ?

.

NickR · 20 Oct 2006 at 11:14

BT LES now renamed EES (Ethernet Extension Service)

EES 100 or 1000 will be your best bet

bigredshark · 20 Oct 2006 at 12:17

BT might be your best bet, that quote seems high (although i wouldn't bother with fibre-copper convertors, just put it straight into a switch, less to go wrong...)

The usual pricing for LES/EES, is, in my experience (which is linking sites a few kilometers apart in london) about 7k for installation and 3k yearly, bearing in mind we probably get preferential pricing, but it still looks cheaper than digging...