Wireless T1?

[Wolff]

A neighbor down a couple houses from me has a dedicated T1 in his house (he's one of those rich IT people). I'm good friends with him, since we both are interested in each other's jobs. Another friend of mine told me about some wireless stuff where if you are 200 ft or less away from a dedicated connection, you can share the connection without any noticible latincy. I'd like to know the following:

>Is this actually true?
>What hardware/software do I need to do this?
>Any known side-effects about this?
>Are you kidding? [If so, you jerk!]

Thanks in advance.

Wolff

[The Wraith]

To answer your questions...

"Is this actually true."
- Yes, there are several wireless LAN options available on the market today. However, none of them have a thouroughput of a T1. The most I've ever seen in a wireless solution without needing line of sight, is 11mbps up to 300 feet indoors. There are some line of sight wireless (two towers have to be able to see eachother) that can get a bit faster.

"What hardware/software do I need to do this"
I would recommend the Cisco Aironet 350 product. (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/witc/ao340ap/) To establish a connection to your neighbor's house he would need the base station. You would need the wireless network card. This is also assuming he has some sort of home LAN to connect his base to. You can find complete instructions on how to setup this equipment at the URL I posted above.

"Any known side-effects about this?"
Probably causes cancer, most crap does. Honestly, none that I know of. There are two downside concerns you may want to know about. The Aironet product operates on a frequency that the 900Mhz cordless phones will screw up. If you have one of these phones and use it while using the wireless network, you're going to screw yourself up. Additionally, they operate on a spectrum of power from 2.400 to 2.497 GHz (depending on the regulatory domain in which the client adapter is used) - which is very, very low. It's easy to disrupt both accidentally and purposely. I could build a 2.5Ghz transmitter, place it outside your house...and it would complete hose your connection. Being wireless, you could also create a device to intercept data. Although, Cisco reports the data is sent/received using Triple DES encryption. But, in a lab, I was able to capture data, decipher it, and disrupt it. If you want a secure network, don't go wireless.

"Are you kidding?"
Nope.

[[AK]Goob]

Well I guess you could get a 3com wireless access point (wap) and a wireless nic card. You would plug the access point into his network the make the connection from your pc. I think it only has a 300ft range, but I am sure you could stretch it out a little. I am pretty sure they work up to 10MB so you shouldnt have a problem with downloading and such. The only question would be the latency you would get from that type of connection. I have never worked with with the 3com stuff but I have worked with wireless in my old job (used it on a manufacturing floor). I will ask my buddy to do some pings on his and see what he gets and post it back here.

-Goob

[Zorro]

Ahem...a T1 is only 1.536MB/sec (24-64k channels)...

In addition the Cisco Aironet stuff ain't cheap. As I recall the lowest cost for the wireless bridge stuff is about $1500 per side...and then you have to buy antennae for reliable reception. I did a couple of installs and they're quite cool, but, like I said, they ain't cheap.

Given the distances involved, some of the cheaper home networking stuff might work well. The 3Com gear is pretty economical. If you wanted to be fairly nutty, you could try some of the powerline networking stuff. Works great over normal powerlines as long as you operate off the same transformer. Kind of like DSL over electricity...very cool...

[AK]Zorro

Chief Operations Officer
AugustKnights.com WizOp

[The Wraith]

I know a t1 is on 1.544, I didn't say otherwise.

WHOOHOO! - HTML enabled!

Regards,
The Wraith

[SlAuGhTeR]

Anyone know what the pricing is on a t1?

------------------
SlAuGhTeR
slaughter@wolfteam.com
SlAuGhTeR [aYg]
'The slaughter fest has begun, punk.'

[The Wraith]

No reasonable person can afford it at home. You have to pay for the T1 from the Telephone company to your house. You have to pay for the T1 from the Telephone company to your ISP. You have to pay line install and maintenance charges. You still have to pay the ISP.

Depends on where you live, but around here each leg of the T1 (2 needed) are about $400 each.

Regards,
The Wraith

[SlAuGhTeR]

dang... that sucks. I wonder how much DSL xost around here. I've heard that its about 170 a month here, but i don't know what thats for. I know its offered to small businesses. and I'm a small business

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SlAuGhTeR
slaughter@wolfteam.com
SlAuGhTeR [aYg]
'The slaughter fest has begun, punk.'

[Wolff]

Lucky me. My neighbor has a T1 of his own, and my school has two of 'em linked together.

If I remember right, the T1 connections cost about $1000 per month here in MN.

Wolff