Internet and IPTV in a cottage: a difficult but successful experience

Hello!
I dreamed of living in a private house for a long time. There are plenty of pluses, but in our city, cottage villages are greatly deprived of telephone communications and, especially, the Internet. Nowadays, without the Internet, life is not life: neither shoot you with friends in L4D, nor watch VKontakte movies. 3G modems take too much time, and the promised LTA mayor from Yota has not gone further than news on sites. Sadness. Of course, there are providers that distribute the Internet via wi-fi, but somehow it’s not comme il faut to pay 1000 rubles for each Mbit of speed per month. After thinking, I decided to independently arrange for myself a wi-fi bridge, on the other end of which there should be an affordable regular wired Internet with good speed.



Mounted annette of the bridge on the roof of my house


Luck was with me: in five kilometers in direct visibility a relative lives in an ordinary ten-story building, in which it was possible to connect as many as two providers!

Meanwhile, the issue of high-quality television has not been resolved either. The installed satellite dish gave out a signal of unsatisfactory quality, the picture crumbled into heavy clouds, and the image itself entering the TV through the “tulips” was not pleasing to the eye. Sadness. Choosing a provider for the Internet, I found that Beeline, in addition to good megabits, also distributes television over the same ethernet! The prefix is ​​modern with an HDMI output, and even a hard drive that allows you to pause the broadcast, record programs, immediately gives out a TV program in the form of a network diagram, video rental, social services, in general, saliva went and did not let me sleep now.

Googling, I did not find the exact answer how much speed is necessary for the normal operation of IPTV, Beeline technical support has perplexed such a question. I found out that the 1080p video stream comes at a speed of 24 Mbit / s - which means that I need to lay so much in the characteristics of the bridge + 10 Mbit / s for the Internet.

The point is small: to establish a bridge and enjoy life. A short call to Kazan firms made it clear that no one was interested in such a task, and if they did, they would rip off three skins. Sadness.

It’s good that the Internet is at least at work. There, quite a budget solution was found for my case. Only to install and configure all the equipment was to be independently. The eye fell on the American manufacturer Ubiquiti for an affordable price, promises of simple settings and a speed between antennas of 150 Mbps. Model AirGrid M2. The issue price is 8 thousand rubles with delivery. Two days and equipment came from Moscow.

A little worried about the issue of frequency rental for my bridge. The legislation seems to say that 2.4 GHz can be occupied without approval for equipment with a transmitter power of not more than 100 mW. To calm my soul, I got through to the communications department, where I was redirected to my strange questions about ten times, then I found an uncle who is responsible for this area, but he was on vacation. Uncle after vacation (maybe the good one was in this regard) answered me that for a private user you do not need to register anything, do not torment your head. Well, I hope that this is the case, but the fine for an uncoordinated device of 1000 rubles for individuals can be experienced.

The next step was an agreement with Beeline for connection. We arrived at a relative, connected, set up. Slightly strained by the fact that the connection was organized through a VPN connection, PPPoE is somehow more familiar and simpler. Well, God take off. The television worked perfectly, connected to an ordinary brainless switch, a kmop connected to it, and only one ordinary twisted-pair cable was brought into the apartment. Wow!

On the same day I caught in the basement of the house the representative of the housing and communal services and asked for a key to the roof, where it was planned to establish an access point. Having pre-configured both devices, one Access Point in Bridge mode, the other Station in the same Bridge mode, climbed to install the first antenna on the roof. A screwdriver, two anchors, a screwdriver and pliers, fifteen minutes - the first antenna in place. The cable was thrown along the wall (it was too lazy to push it into the mine), through the window into the room, pressed and then into the PoE (Power Over Ethernet) block, the incoming cable from the beeline was stuck in the same block. This side is done. I went home to do the same operation. He took the mast from the shovel by the mast, screwed it to the wooden part of the roof with self-tapping screws. It seems to hold on. Moment of truth: turn on the bridge.

To my surprise, both antennas found each other, and the signal level was at a decent level of -68db. And what about Beeline? But nothing. Initially, the access point was conceived as a router, i.e. I had to authorize myself with the provider, and then distribute IP to my home devices. But a VPN connection was not implied in my bridge software. Moreover, it turned out that Beeline equipment supports only a few models of routers, which are not the most successful in my opinion. Sadness.

I still got one model in the store, it turned out to be the Asus WL-520GC, which, moreover, had to be reflashed as well.

I asked for it, turned it on, the Internet worked. Happiness is somewhere nearby.

I connect the IPTV prefix, it works for five seconds then the picture freezes. I switch the channel, it works for 5 seconds, then it freezes. WTF? Beeline technical support gives unintelligible advice, such as checking the connection of the router to a power outlet and can not help, especially since I am not telling them that the signal is flying through the radio bridge - I’m afraid that they will send it right away. Russian forums just don’t discuss the settings of my equipment, and at the American forum everyone laughs at the idea of ​​sending IPTV over such a bridge. The solution came, as always, by typing, while reading the instructions for the equipment. There is such a mode of operation of the WDS bridge, which allows two access points to communicate with each other. Those. the second antenna can be either a station or an access point. In this mode, the bridge becomes transparent, I don’t know what this gives,

Looking ahead, I’ll say that six months ago I upgraded the bridge by installing the equipment of the same brand - NanoBridge M2. The whole charm of this device is that it has two transmitters at once, one of vertical and the other of horizontal polarization, i.e. bandwidth is twice as high.

During operation, many questions arose for which no answers were found either in Russian or in English. I decided all of them and consider it appropriate to voice this in case someone will also break their brains.



Radio Connection Setup Page

1. For the IPTV stream to flow through the bridge, you must set the Access Point WDS mode on the Station WDS access point on the receiving device. I think this applies to any equipment, if there is a desire to let IPTV through the bridge.
2. For more efficient functioning of the bridge, it is necessary to achieve the same signal level of vertical and horizontal polarization. I had to go to non-standard frequencies (2607MHz), at which the signal level became more or less the same and strong. I think this is due to the low cost of the equipment and its poor-quality adjustment, because in the usual range from 1 to 12 channels (2402-2483 MHz), the difference between the level of reception of the signal of vertical and horizontal polarization reached 7db.
3. It is also important to correctly set the maximum speed of the bridge. If you force the speed of 300 Mbps, the antenna will freeze and stop responding to external stimuli. It is likely that you will have to climb onto the roof and rezet. It is best to entrust speed control to automatic mode. But, the less you set the speed manually, the more stable the bridge will work and the less the number of lost packets (Transmit CCQ indicator on the main page of the web interface).



Advanced Settings Page

4. And most importantly: on the Advanced tab, in the Advanced Ethernet Settings, in no case do you enable Enable Full Duplex. This will greatly reduce the rate at which packets are exchanged between the access point and the external network. I don’t know why, but I haven’t removed this checkmark, I’ve broken my head, why the speed of the bridge is decent, and the speed of downloading files is none. This checkmark spoiled everything - an infection.

Here is the main page of the device’s web interface. Here, all indicators are “normal” and can serve as a model for tuning:



Home page


Today, the bridge gives a very reasonable data transfer rate. I think the real transfer rate (true test) of 105 Mbps is a good result for the Wi-Fi standard at a distance of 4 kilometers. Of course, scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory were ahead of me, but they have a distance at which they reached a speed of 2.5 terabits / sec, just no more than a meter, and then 4 kilometers !!! (It’s always nice to measure when you have more).



Here she is! Here it is - the speed of my dreams

The picture on the TV is much higher quality than via satellite, F1 racing in HD quality is especially pleasant. Enjoyment:



Picture Quality Example

The file download speed is also at a decent level of 4-5 MB / s: I



am very pleased with the results. There was even an idea to cover our entire village, to create an internal social network where it would be possible to discuss urgent problems on the improvement or public services of residents, but somehow it wasn’t easy. Yes, and in this case, you will definitely have to get a frequency permission, as this prospect does not please at all. Therefore, I am content to secretly.

The next project, most likely, will be the organization of video surveillance on the site and inside the house. I want to try using IP cameras. If it works out, I will unsubscribe.

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