Networking → Networking between buildings

I am working with a camp that is looking to expand their LAN. Refer to the image for following.

Internet is coming into the Welcome Center. They have a a wireless router that broadcasts to the entire Welcome Center and has spotty coverage to the Inn and Main Lodge. They are looking to stretch the internet all the way out to the Chapel and have better coverage at the Inn and Main Lodge.

I have been testing the Open-Mesh technology and have had great success with it. I don't think I will be able to push wireless internet through the forest though. We are right up against our 100 meters with Cat5. By the time we run the cat5 through the trees, I figured that we would be exceeding our 100 meters by too much. I have been considering Fiber as a result.

Is it easy to bury Fiber or Cat5? I live here in Iowa so we would probably have to go down about 40 inches as well. I would be putting switches on either end and then extending it all the way out to the chapel where I would install wireless infrastructure.

The final thing that I need to consider is cost. They have a pretty good maintenance crew on hand and could probably bury the cable. Are there any sites that I could see approx cost of direct bury fiber?

Any comments / feedback would be very appreciated.

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Direct buried fiber should be buried below the frost line. Fiber in conduit can be above. Both fiber and cat5 can be trenched, plowed, or directional bored. I wouldn't even consider cat5 in your case since you're so close to the limit. Fiber can go much farther and you don't have to worry about lightning protection. However the cost is higher for the cable and equipment.

Get a quote from a professional, and have said professional do it. Nuff seid.

Regards

Have you looked into some of the Ubiquity NanoBridge M wireless product lines? Small groves of trees should be ok if you stick to 2.4ghz or 900mhz. It looks like you could even shoot from the welcome center -> to Inn -> main lodge to get good line of site around the trees. I'm using this setup to shoot about a mile between sites with a small tree grove with great signal and 100mb link. The units run around 70-80 bucks per side.
Also avoid the Cat6 as you can run into grounding imbalance between buildings. We run fiber if we have the budget and right of way and wireless the rest of the time.

I am prepared to say 900 Mhz hates fog and trees

Correct any h2o is going to absorb RF including Fog/Rain and Leaves. The 2.4 and 900 are effected less than say 5ghz. At the distances his buildings appear to be, fog/rain fade could be accounted for. It also looks like the trees could be avoided mostly. If wireless is still a consideration he might want to open up a topic in the wisp forum as those guys do it for a living and are much more knowledgeable about it than I.

If you are willing to trench. You will need to use conduit. Rigid PVC or better quality.

To keep the cost down, use cat 5e 350 mhz at least. Cat 6 is, of course, better.

Now to connect the buildings together. I would use VDSL2 Technology and specifically use Zyxel P871M VDSL2 Modems. Each have a button on them to set one as the C/O and the other as the CPE. I installed these last year to run over cat 4 telco wiring at 1850 ft. apart and they just work beautifully. Just make sure the firmware on these are updated.

In my situation, they connect to the Lan at 100 mb and 50 to 55 mb VDSL. The C/O is connected to the main equipment and the CPE connects to a HP 2520-8-PoE Switch (J9137A) which powers AP/s in the remote location. Not bad for a low cost solution.

Fiber would be my first choice. My second choice would be VDSL2 (which may also require trenching if you can't patch through existing copper).

Third choice would be point-to-multipoint wireless, and I can tell you from experience that even 5 GHz can be made to work through a limited amount of trees, over a limited distance. I have a 600m PtP link going through 70m of aspen, and never a hiccup in two years. Both ends are Ubiquiti Bullet M5 on a 28 dBi dish.

As is always with the case with DSL and wireless, your mileage may vary, and fiber is still your best bet if you can do it.

Thanks guys for the responses. Lots of good info here.

Fiber:
If I was going to go the fiber route, would it be recommended that I use 4 strands instead of 2? This is the route that I am headed. The maintenance crew could probably get me down about 18 inches in the ground or so. Suggestions on conduit at that level? I would still get the burial cable, but put it in the conduit as an extra level of protection.

VDSL2
I have never done any work with VDSL2 so that would be new to me. Not really sure how it would tie in.

Wireless:
Wireless is almost out of the equation. I'll open up a forum like MK101 said and see what those wireless guys say. One of the bigger selling points to the camp is the ability to get it all the way out to the Chapel. I assume most individuals know how much technology in a chapel needs a network...

VDSL2 is an LRE (Long Range Ethernet) solution.

VDSL is over a pair. You can use blue and blue/white connected to RJ10 connectors. That simple. Low effort if a person can crimp tip and ring.

The cleaner the wiring, such as less impedance etc., the better chances to get the 80/40 you will want from the modems mentioned.

If you are going to bury fiber, the minimum I would put in is 4 strands. Even more stands if possible 8-12 would be better. If you put in conduit, leave a pull string in place to pull more fiber in the future if needed. Remember, you need one fiber per direction. And yes I know you can get special SFPs for bidirectional transmission, but why limit yourself to the extra cost and reduced selection by going this way.

As far as fiber type, you would probably be better off with multi-mode as it will go the distances you want and should be a little cheaper. Single mode could go a greater distance, plus you can run higher speed optics over it a greater distance. If you thought you may ever want to run 10Ge sppeds across this network, I would put in the SM fiber day one. You may have to find someone local to splice the connectors on to the fiber. Alternativly, you could get the fiber already conectorized and just direct bury vs try and pulling it through conduit.

Get a pair of Ge switches that support SFPs and you should be good to go. You may as well light a second pair and enable LAG across them if the switch supports two SFPS which a lot of them will. It would be a cheap investment for the extra reliability. The extra capacity is just a side benefit. Another advantage of the switches is that you could setup VLANs to keep the customer and owner traffic/networks seperate.

A generic SFP can be found for ~$60-$70 at a lot of locations.
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Alternatily, you could get a couple of these media converters, »www.provantage.com/tp-li ··· K00N.htm, and a SFP for it »www.provantage.com/tp-li ··· K02W.htm an use cheap unmanged switches on each end. A these prices, I would probably buy one or two of each as a spare as they would have to work in pairs. I have no clue as to the quality of any of these parts.

Before I would purchase the fiber from ebay, I would go to a US supplier an make sure you have everything worked out as far as connector and and fiber type/size before you place any orders. I grabbed this site as an example from a Google search. I don't know anything about them nor am I recomending them.

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Me personaly, I would just buy an 8 strand pre-conectorized armored SM direct burial cable of the appropriate lenght and hire someone to trench a 48" deep route, drop the cable in it, ground the cable, verify it works and cover the cable.

I have to agree with everyone here. Fiber is the best option you have, but it is not the cheapest. You haven't mentioned a budget so I am going to assume that fiber is going to be ok with you.

Make sure you price the equipment out. Terminating the fiber is going to be the most expensive portion of this project. By terminating I mean the equipment you use to terminate it at both ends.