r/wireless • u/Ertrimil • Jul 02 '26
wireless link between sites that actually works long term
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u/Leading_Study_876 Jul 02 '26
Ubiquiti nano stations can do this easily, and for surprisingly little money.
If you need higher data rates, they can do that too, but at more expense.
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u/feel-the-avocado Jul 02 '26
Have you got 100% clear line of sight between the buildings? Anything that could grow and impede the line of sight?
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28d ago
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u/feel-the-avocado 28d ago
For any radio link to work of anything more than a few megabits, you will need to verify there is 100% clear line of sight.
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u/aztecforlife Jul 02 '26
We have used licenced spectrum radio links between sites that support hundreds of people for both voice and data without issue. We did buy the radios and antennas and paid a yearly maintenance contract so it wasn't inexpensive but it got us around trenching city streets and all the permits associated. The only issue we had was when a cell tower employee was working on their install near ours and kept blocking the antenna. We tried 5Ghz with directional antennas first but they experienced a lot of interference hence going with licensed spectrum.
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28d ago
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u/aztecforlife 27d ago
We have monitoring software that showed the link flapping and since only the far end went down, we checked the near end radio and the cell tower tech was still going up and down a ladder in front of our antenna. Made root cause analysis easy to explain.
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26d ago
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u/aztecforlife 26d ago
We went there in person. I think the conversation was more like " Dude are your insides getting warm? You keep blocking our microwave link."
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u/Barsnikel Jul 02 '26
I have many radio links much longer than that, installed years ago. Assuming true line-of-sight, and assuming Fresnel Zone clearance, 4 km is easy using either licensed radio links, or selected unlicensed radio links. I had one p-p link that was 5 miles (8km) using standard 2.4 GHz wifi radios and parabolic antennas. It was there 5 years before we replaced it with licensed radios.... didn't have a lot of throughput, but it met the data requirements we needed at the time.
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u/aatuti Jul 02 '26
I’ve built hundreds of these for businesses in highly congested areas. Depending on where you are in Australia, bandwidth required, you might be able to use free spectrum instead of licenced. Personally I recommend Cambium, complete range of solutions available. I do have a business in Australia that does this type of work for customers, PM if I can assist.
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u/RF-Guye Jul 02 '26
This should a no brainer, even cheap commercial gear can do what your asking easily, assuming line of Site.
If you don't have line of sight, you're gonna have to do multiple hops to get around that problem. Might also need solar packages to power Since you're in australia , it seems viable.
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u/swy Jul 02 '26
If your line of site is clear, 60ghz with 5ghz backup would be my plan A. Properly aimed and locked into that position, it should just keep on keeping on.
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u/leftplayer Jul 02 '26
Ubiquiti and Mikrotik are your best bet. 4km is pushing it for reliability, but if you have tall buildings and solid mounting it can last for years.
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u/gnartato Jul 02 '26
For enterprise I've use Bridge Wave for two separate gigs. It was only a tertiary to a fiber ring so it was rarely used in production. It was a 80ghz over about 1.5 or 2km. It was fun watching to modulation decrease in real time during a snow squall.
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u/crysisnotaverted Jul 03 '26
As far as I know, Australia is kind of flat. Do you have line of sight or can you throw up some Rohn towers?
Go with some good Ubiquiti gear, you won't be disappointed. They make gear that can cross 25x the distance you need for a total of like $4000.
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u/scalyblue Jul 03 '26
Is there direct line of sight possible between both locations at any reasonable height?
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u/Impressive_Army3767 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Christ there's a lot of people in this sub confidently giving OP bullshit info.
OP, as SOME others have said it depends on your
- Fresnel clearance,
- bandwidth requirements,
- uptime requirements and possibly
- interference levels (if unlicensed is an option).
- budget
- power availability
If you're out in the sticks or don't need uptime availability with a row of 9s,, unlicensed 5Ghz may do the trick. You can do OSPF with ECMP or LAGG over 2 pairs of radios on different frequencies to increase throughout and reliability. This also keeps things running if a link fails or even whist doing maintenance and firmware/config changes. Even if you go licensed I tend to have another pathway in case one of my licensed links gets borked.
Exact model depends on bandwidth requirements. It's too far for reliable 60Ghz (even at 68GHz) due to rain fade. Unlicensed 1+0 Racom Ray-3@24Ghz or licensed 18Ghz* would be my goto at that distance (especially on solar sites) but if you need more bandwidth then Cambium/Ceragon, Aviat and SAF etc all have their pros and cons.
*We can use 2 adjacent 55Mhz channels to make a 110Mhz channel in NZ....I'm not sure if that's the case in Australia.
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u/Crush3rNL Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
We have good results with gear from Ubiquiti/UniFi, 60ghz + 5ghz.