Point to Point

[YeOldeStonecat]

Todays (and yesterday) "point to point" and "point to multi point"....are very low cost alternatives to "trenching"...and perform darned well.

That 6.2 mile point to point I did....barely 85 feet above sea level...added from 1 to 2 ms to the hop. In really foul weather, maybe 3-4 ms.
Pretty darned good to feed internet to a 125 device network. It was a school. They had VoIP phones too! Classrooms doing streaming video, etc.

Even the super low cost old (legacy) nanostation m5's (they were like 75 bucks each)....they were as good as having a 100 meg switch with ethernet cable connecting two buildings.

Lightening hit zap one? Dirt cheap to replace. Feed your "external devices" from a lower cost Unifi POE switch...in case it gets taken out too. For high storm risk environments...Ubiquiti sells ethernet surge protectors....dirt cheap, properly grounded they work well for the small stuff. A major direct hit of course will still cook nearly everything. But to be honest, I stopped using those surge protectors in most cases....since the P2P radios are so dirt cheap to replace, and it made for a cleaner connection.

 

[HCHTech]

I wanted to keep it as simple and as dumb as possible. Injectors are cheap and easy to replace if needed.

There is a lot to be said for this philosophy. Well done!

 

[HCHTech]

Trenching is easy

I think it's like most things. If you have already developed a relationship with a vendor for this job, it suddenly becomes an option when needed. If you don't have this, then it just isn't one of the possible answers when you are faced with the question of how to get networking from A to B.

We have a residential client with a giant house where the basement ceiling is all finished in drywall - even in the mechanicals room sans a tiny corner. Couple that with poor planning during construction where they ran only a total of 5 network runs (in a 5,000 sq. ft house with 6 bedrooms!), and suddenly trying to make wifi work is big project. We have one room that just doesn't get a signal, after trying a meshed AP in various positions near that room and failing, we're going to trench a cable from the basement out through the wall and around the back perimeter of the house, then back in to the problem room. Way less disruption than poking a dozen holes in the walls & ceilings to do it inside. My wiring guy has a vendor, we're probably looking at $1K all in for this one job, not bad, I suppose - the client said "just do what you have to do" so I guess the money isn't an issue.