YeOldeStonecat
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 6,687
- Location
- Englewood Florida
Just hoping someone will think outside the box and pitch in a fresh idea....I'm struggling with coming up with conventional methods to remotely manage this.
Some of you probably remember a post I made not long ago about a long distance wireless project. A school out on an island needs faster internet than the current phone company on the island can give them via the DSL which is beamed out to the island via a little local cable ISP on the mainland..that little 44 meg Motorola Canopy pipe is spread across the whole island via DSL.
So the school said they have a grant for $XX,XXX.XX if they can get at least a hundred meg internet connection. So I came up with a plan to snag a Comcast 150 meg biz account...and beam it over there using Ubiquiti hardware.
I'm set on using Ubiquiti AirFiber 5 units. Will support over a gigabit ultra low latency for over 100km. I only have to push 150 megs (now..will upgrade to 300 megs by next spring) about 8 miles.
The school already has a 30' tower on the roof.
I figured I'd find a spot on mainland. I know the current small ISP uses a tower from a local town police department which is up on a hill. So I reached out through some people and lined up a meeting with the guy that heads up the towns emergency communications system..he manages the tower. Below are pics. So I'm going to lease a space on the tower and the police departments little data center...have Comcast run in a 150 meg pipe, install a COM rack...and get those two AirFiber 5 units connected and give the school some nice bandwidth.
My question that I'm wanting ideas on. The Comcast connection will be their usual modem/gateway..the SMC/Netgear unit that is a combo modem/router, that I usually flip the public IP passthrough mode on. I'll get a full static block.
So the AirFiber units are controlled by the AirOS which is embedded in the firmware, accessible via browser on an IP interface (much like a typical broadband router). So I have to admin them from a local presence. You can hit them via the private IP on the NIC...or they have a second ethernet interface for out of bandwidth management. Which is what is recommended to be used.
So I think what I'll do...for the police station...is have a little mini desktop I remote into, behind the Comcast gateway..sitting on that 10.1.10.xxx address..and I'll have the out of bandwidth management port of the transmitter AirFiber unit plugged into that also..so it gets a 10.1.10.xxx address. I just need to find a little stable small PC to remote into....something that can run for months on end without issues. Makes me think not a Windows rig...but ideally would like something I can remote into from N-Able. I can at least setup alerts and I guess I'll just set a maintenance window to reboot it monthly.
I also plan on having a WattBox there....(a managed surge strip that I can remote into ..has an ethernet interface) and power cycle things plugged into it).
Now for the other end...the school, I'll have it's recieving AirFiber 5 up on the roof...and it will plug into one of the WAN ports of the NG-100 Untangle appliance I have out there, as a secondary connection. Passing the public Comcast IP to it. This part stumps me more...how can I have an interface along the way there? Need to connect something to that out of bandwidth port of the AirFiber....to connect to some device which I can connect to from the internet if the AirFiber link is down.
I will probably have the school keep their DSL connection...so if for some reason Comcast is down, and/or the AirFiber link is down...something over there can still be connected to the internet through the islands DSL connection. Maybe I can get a little mini PC over there similar to the one on the mainland...and plug it..and the out of bandwidth port on the AirFiber...to a 3rd or 4th interface on Untangle and bridge them. Or I can VPN in from Untangle via the DSL backup and get in. Hmmmm...anyways..below are pics of the tower and little server room at the police station.
Some of you probably remember a post I made not long ago about a long distance wireless project. A school out on an island needs faster internet than the current phone company on the island can give them via the DSL which is beamed out to the island via a little local cable ISP on the mainland..that little 44 meg Motorola Canopy pipe is spread across the whole island via DSL.
So the school said they have a grant for $XX,XXX.XX if they can get at least a hundred meg internet connection. So I came up with a plan to snag a Comcast 150 meg biz account...and beam it over there using Ubiquiti hardware.
I'm set on using Ubiquiti AirFiber 5 units. Will support over a gigabit ultra low latency for over 100km. I only have to push 150 megs (now..will upgrade to 300 megs by next spring) about 8 miles.
The school already has a 30' tower on the roof.
I figured I'd find a spot on mainland. I know the current small ISP uses a tower from a local town police department which is up on a hill. So I reached out through some people and lined up a meeting with the guy that heads up the towns emergency communications system..he manages the tower. Below are pics. So I'm going to lease a space on the tower and the police departments little data center...have Comcast run in a 150 meg pipe, install a COM rack...and get those two AirFiber 5 units connected and give the school some nice bandwidth.
My question that I'm wanting ideas on. The Comcast connection will be their usual modem/gateway..the SMC/Netgear unit that is a combo modem/router, that I usually flip the public IP passthrough mode on. I'll get a full static block.
So the AirFiber units are controlled by the AirOS which is embedded in the firmware, accessible via browser on an IP interface (much like a typical broadband router). So I have to admin them from a local presence. You can hit them via the private IP on the NIC...or they have a second ethernet interface for out of bandwidth management. Which is what is recommended to be used.
So I think what I'll do...for the police station...is have a little mini desktop I remote into, behind the Comcast gateway..sitting on that 10.1.10.xxx address..and I'll have the out of bandwidth management port of the transmitter AirFiber unit plugged into that also..so it gets a 10.1.10.xxx address. I just need to find a little stable small PC to remote into....something that can run for months on end without issues. Makes me think not a Windows rig...but ideally would like something I can remote into from N-Able. I can at least setup alerts and I guess I'll just set a maintenance window to reboot it monthly.
I also plan on having a WattBox there....(a managed surge strip that I can remote into ..has an ethernet interface) and power cycle things plugged into it).
Now for the other end...the school, I'll have it's recieving AirFiber 5 up on the roof...and it will plug into one of the WAN ports of the NG-100 Untangle appliance I have out there, as a secondary connection. Passing the public Comcast IP to it. This part stumps me more...how can I have an interface along the way there? Need to connect something to that out of bandwidth port of the AirFiber....to connect to some device which I can connect to from the internet if the AirFiber link is down.
I will probably have the school keep their DSL connection...so if for some reason Comcast is down, and/or the AirFiber link is down...something over there can still be connected to the internet through the islands DSL connection. Maybe I can get a little mini PC over there similar to the one on the mainland...and plug it..and the out of bandwidth port on the AirFiber...to a 3rd or 4th interface on Untangle and bridge them. Or I can VPN in from Untangle via the DSL backup and get in. Hmmmm...anyways..below are pics of the tower and little server room at the police station.