The only internet available to me is wireless unless I go with satellite or cell towers. Ive have the wireless for over a year and it is very reliable but only 1.5 mbs and there are 5 of us on the tower sharing a total of 6 or 8 mbs, it usually stays above 1 mbs for me.

According to the phone company the DSL line comes to my neighbors houses. One is 0.8 mile away, the other is 1.5 mile away, we all live on hills with good clear line of site.

What would getting DSL at my neighbors house and beeming it to my house involve? A modem, power source, and directional antenna at the neighbors house and an antenna and router at mine? What antennas would I need?

Im not sure what it would require for that to work but if you're getting ~1.5mb/s down now, DSL 'beamed' .80 mile probably won't be much better. My "3/1" DSL barely gets over 2MB/s down wired.

The phone company employee said 8 mbs. Right now its not too bad if the neighbors aren't on it. If they are nexflix freezes up.

Edit: by neighbors I mean the ones on wireless.

The company i work for does Wireless canopy internet using cambium APs and Subscriber modules. I get 20/3 easy we have about 40 customers on some aps most of them 12 or 18 meg customers. you could set up Ubiquitis to shoot internet from your neighbors to your house.

The wireless system I'm on uses canopy.

Am I correct in that I would have a modem and Ubiquitis at my neighbors and a Ubiquitous and router at my end? Which set of antennas should I use? Would I get the full 8 mbs at my house if that is what is coming to the modem?

I have two nanostation m2s at my house shooting internet to my man cave, the rocket m5 is good though you I read some guy was getting 60 meg at 6 miles. The m2 throughput is good we use them alot here at work not too sure about the distances though.

And yes you would set one up on your end and plug it into your router and the one at your neighbors would be plugged into the DSL modem.

I saw an article a while back where a guy was using 18" satellite dish to pick up a wireless signal. He showed what was needed and how to make your own LNB it looked pretty straight forward.



edit to add: Here is the link  http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/

For as little as they cost you really need to consider the Ubiquiti Nanostation's

I have installed quite a few of them and all work beautifully.  Below is a picture of a 3/4 mile link that I've had up for a couple years.   It supports 10 IP cameras in the shorter link and 2 workstations.   The longer link has 4 cameras and allows me to login to a access system to manage users.  The RX side of the AP rarely sees under 20 Mbps 24/7/365.   The part that blows my mind is that even in a all out down pour rain they still work.    

I had 2.4 Gig radios (another manufacturer) prior to these and started to have issues with all the urban traffic on that band. Since I had good line of sight I went to the much less congested 5 gig band and have not regret doing it.

Is there an existing phone company cable buried to your house (for a landline phone)? Try getting a phone company engineer to verify the cable length, to confirm that you are actually ineligible for DSL. The sales people go by existing cable distance records, but they can be overridden if the engineer finds you are within spec for DSL.

It's 18k feet.  He could have problems.

True. At that distance he would probably be less than 1 mbps on DSL. We could get about .768kbps at 15,000ft on a single pair with AT&T.

Good thing about DSL:

Not to hijack the OPs post what is the good and bad when it comes to fiber. The reason I ask is the phone company is getting ready to run fiber right up to the box on the house.

For the price, around 50 bucks or cheaper, you cant beat the nanostation m2s with a bat.

These guys sell this stuff cheap and can answer questions too (better support than amazon): https://www.flyteccomputers.com

Where are you finding NSM2's for $50 or cheaper? Best price I found recently was $77 each with shipping on top of that.


For the OP, as others have stated, Ubiquiti Network products makes this super simple. Nanostations are a good choice. When 2 nanostations are connected to each other in bridge mode (Point-to-point wireless bridge) they act just like a LAN/Cat5 cable stretched between whatever they are plugged into. IE, DSL modem connected to your Bridge Access Point @ the neighbors house and your wireless router connected the Bridge Station at your house.

~$80 each for the 2 nanostations, ~$10-20 for the special shielded & grounded CAT5 cables (Ubiquiti warranty is void if you don't use the grounded cables), and you're done...

The Ubiquiti products are actually top-notch. Lots of pro features at a home-user type price-point. IE, they have a built-in spectrum analyzer, not only can you analyze the wireless spectrum where you are, but you can then specify a specific channel (in order to use a less-congested area of the spectrum), then change your channel width to increase power spectral density (more distance/punch through obstacles) at the cost of speed, or more speed at the cost of less ability to punch through obstacles. Not many products at that price point give you those options.


As far as which nanostations there are several options and it depends on your setup. Loco M9, 900 Mhz pierces trees and other LOS obstacles better but shorter range on the Locos, M5, 5Ghz for better speed but less able to punch through trees etc, or M2, 2.4 Ghz for a compromise between the previous 2, but the 2.4 band is more likely to be congested leading to performance issues.

I've been on fiber for about two years, and the only downside I see is the cost.  But even that's a bit misleading... my ISP of course offers different speeds for different prices, and if you choose a rate comparable to DSL or cable throughput, I imagine prices are comparable.  But I splurge on symmetrical gigabit for $99/mo - because it's there.  

Honestly, if you have the option for fiber, I can't see why anyone would even consider other technology.

I not going to have a choice they are getting rid of the wire and going all fiber. They ran some to my friends house last year it was about a 1/2 inch in diameter.

Thanks for the replies. I'm still considering this. The phone company advertises 6 mbps but actual speed is closer to 7.5, the cost is $39 a month plus $25 for a phone line. I spend $50 a month for wireless through the same company. There are five customers on thr tower right now, last night a speed test showed .9 mbs, sometimes I get 1.4 mbs.

The downsides would be:

-Spending money on hardware.
-Not having immediate access to the router if it needs to be restarted.
-$15 more per month.
-If the power goes out at my neighbors house internet goes down (We were out for 4 days in Nov. and 6 in Dec. due to ice storms)

The upside:
- Netflix won't freeze up.

The main reason I may not do this is because I dont want to lose internet during power outages, but I really want something faster.

Reponses in red above. Seems to me you're trying to justify why NOT to do it. If you're happy with what you have then why did you ask? It can't get anymore easy or cheaper that what we've suggested to you.