Sonic.net

Hello.

I am looking at the feasibility to setup a local network across multiple cabins in the forest.
It's longer than 100 m so ethernet cable is not an option.
I don't think fiber would be a good idea as I am not familiar with it and it seems difficult to ensure a tree won't fall on it requiring regular repair.
I am looking at wifi repeaters or mesh. I have also been thinking at using DSL modems.
These modems https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BOD8C9W would probably work fine over a pair of twisted cable (so 4 per cat6 wire)

@dane I was wondering whether sonic would have some banks of modems that they are junking --now that most of their customers are moving to fiber-- they would be willing to give or sell for cheap.

Thanks

Have you thought about coax cable? Run some RG-6 around the property and put MOCA adapters at each location. They're not too expensive and work well over fairly long distances. I took a pair of adapters and put them on two ends of a 1000' spool of RG-6 and was able to get nearly gigabit speeds out of it. You can put multiple adapters on a single coax branch.

Personally, I like the mesh idea best, second would be fiber. A non-copper connection in a forested area would remove all possibilities of nearby lightning strikes from frying the equipment. Even surges in electrical power levels between buildings has been known to be a hazard to networking stuff.

Bill

We already have some tv wires as we used to have a private cable tv system (but it burned and some of the trees fell so it will need repair.
I am a little uneasy with fiber optic and repairing it if a tree falls.

Doing wifi with repeaters instead of mesh allows us to use generic devices, instead of proprietary.
I am a big fan of engenius and we can usually find some good deals on older generation units for a good price on ebay.
Thanks for the idea of using RG6 cabling.

I was curious since a friend may be interested in something similar.

There are some simple VDSL bridges like these:
https://smile.amazon.com/StarTech-com-1 ... B002CLKFTG

But also Gigabit Ethernet over Coaxial like this:
https://www.startech.com/en-us/networking-io/eoc1110k