broadband over fiber on large property

[jzadroga]

?Hi, I have a client that has a main house and guest house. The main house has Comc ast service but the guest house does not. It is about 300 feet away with a conduit run. We are trying to bring CATV service to the guest house by fiber or wireless but I'm not sure what the choices are that handle broadband service. Is there a wireless solution or a fiber solution anyone is aware of?

 

[__dan]

Yep, something from these guys. Point to point wireless. Some of their stuff uses proprietary wireless protocols which makes it hard to snoop with another wifi device.

http://www.ubnt.com/

 

[hurk27]

?Hi, I have a client that has a main house and guest house. The main house has Comc ast service but the guest house does not. It is about 300 feet away with a conduit run. We are trying to bring CATV service to the guest house by fiber or wireless but I'm not sure what the choices are that handle broadband service. Is there a wireless solution or a fiber solution anyone is aware of?

I would run RG-11 and not worry about it, with miles of runs between boost amplifiers out on the pole 300' would not be a problem unless your trying to get out of digging the trench?

I do not know of a wireless that would handle the whole cable TV spectrum which about covers the lower RF spectrum, but as far as for Internet there are a few methods for that.

Edited to add it would almost have to be a microwave link or something up in the upper Ghz band to have the bandwidth. second I doubt it would be allowed or even legal as cable companies take a very dim view on re-broadcasting their signal over the air where others could maybe hi-jack it for their own use, for just a 300' run I would not worry too much about using a good grade quad shield RG-11 or larger cable of course DB listed, unlike analog digital signals pass through cable much better then analog does and it doesn't take much signal level to still get the video through, we used to say "its clear or it's not there", the only two options with digital.

This kind of thing can make satellite a good choice because it doesn't matter where you put the receiver, install another dish dial it in and your up and running, I know a few people who have a summer camper out at a camp ground miles from their home, and all they do is take one of their receiver's from home and hook it up to a dish on their camper and they have TV again.

But a good quality RG-11 should go 500+ feet with no problems, from each end you should have no problems dropping down to a RG-6 as long as you use very low loss connectors, and even if you do have a little more signal loss then you expect then you can install a bi-directional broad band amplifier to bring it back up to specs, just get one with an adjustable gain so you don't over drive the receiver.

 

[zbang]

I would run RG-11 and not worry about it, with miles of runs between boost amplifiers out on the pole 300' would not be a problem unless your trying to get out of digging the trench?

Same here, if you can run cable, just do it. (I assume by 'braodband' you mean Internet.)

Since you mention fiber, if you're trenching and dropping in pipe, run a couple of RG11 and a 3-pair multimode fiber, and maybe some twisted pair, at the same time. Cable TV over the coax, ethernet over the fiber, and telephone/intercom over the twisted pair. Maybe not all initially, but the cost of the materials can be buried by the cost of the trenching and pulling.

 

[hurk27]

The biggest problem is if this guest house if fed from a different service you might have a problem with parallel neutral currents on the cable shield if so then pick up a 75 ohm isolator which is nothing but a 1 to 1 transformer that breaks the direct electrical connection of the shield, but make sure it has a 3 to 5Ghz band pass or it could attenuate the signal in the upper frequency range.

I have seen RG-11 runs over 1000' from the street to houses that sit way off the road, with no problems, but also the cable installers can adjust the output gain of the tap which is another suggestion and then install inline attenuators in the main house to keep from over driving the front ends of its receivers.

There are a few methods of doing this but I think the RG-11 route will show to be the lowest cost method, fiber can be a great choice to keep from haveing the problem of parallel neutral paths between the two buildings if the guest house is fed from a differant service, but installing 75 ohm coax isolators is very low cost anyways, I think about $10.00 for each one.

 

[fmtjfw]

If you are just interested in shipping the internet broadband, you can get inexpensive twisted pair Ethernet to fiber adaptors and run twin fiber to the other building.

 

[__dan]

Yep, I read it too fast. I was thinking internet only and not CATV. CATV would be a wired solution. I'm not aware of a wireless CATV system. I don't have cable and use an OTA broadcast HDTV tuner, which plays in the computer monitor.

There are TV solutions over internet, streaming from providers, and there are home media server systems. Don't know the details but I've wired for them. All the points connect with cat 5 and the house TV's plug into that. Service to the house was, I believe, ultra high speed fiber, and someone wanted a basement router, patch panel, and said all the TV's would run from the home media server. I did not see the installed equipment package, but it was definitely for connecting the house TV's over cat 5.

 

[jzadroga]

Thanks for the replies. Yes we are trying to get CATV service as well as internet to the guest house. They are served by different services on different utility transformers. Sounds like rg-11 of fiber is the way to go. Can anyone give me more info on the isolators. Maybe a link?

 

[Rampage_Rick]

I'd pull RG-11 and let the cable installer handle the rest. Not much else you can do with broadband, since that will likely be 5-750 MHz QAM. Around these parts the cable guys will often give you coax for free because it's not worth their time to chase down signal issues with inferior cable.

If you're going to install RG-11 you might as well string an outdoor rated CAT-5E cable for phone/intercom/etc. 300-feet is a bit tight for an ethernet network, but from the sounds of things the guest house will have it's own services.

 

[zbang]

300-feet is a bit tight for an ethernet network,

Only for twisted-pair ethernet, it's fine for ethernet over coax (which nobody uses anymore) or over optical fiber. With the right drivers, you can get 20+ kilometers over fiber...