Well, reddit, I fucked up and I could use your help. I run the network at a fairly affluent private college. There is a field on campus where they frequently pitch tents for events, parties, etc. They want wifi there. I looked at point-to-point bridges and found the ever-popular Ubiquiti AirFiber system. We also thought it would be good to get one to experiment with wireless backhaul in case of fiber cuts, DR, redundancy, etc. The price was good, so I bought an Airfiber 5 kit with two units. I didn't look at the size. Holy crap, this thing is 3ft tall and 35 lbs. Mounting is going to be a nightmare. Plus, we'll be shooting to the middle of the field to a cart and people will see this massive antenna array and start to wonder how much cancer they're going to get from it. Plus, with how they worry about building aesthetics here, I wonder if they would even let me hang this off a building at all. I have enough problems with my little outdoor WAPs. I wonder if I should just return it.
So I may need a different solution or to argue that this is the only one feasible. Requirements are here:
- Will connect a half mile away at at least 150 MB/s throughput.
- Small, discreet antenna. I think I can get away with something the size of an Aruba outdoor AP because I have before. Those are about dinner plate size.
- PoE powered.
- Directional antenna. If it is point-to-point I want to minimize the broadcast area. This will send a private vlan that only connects AP's to the controller, nothing else, so it won't be useful to anything else.
- No 2.4GHz. I don't trust it. Too much noise, and I don't want to make more.
Any thoughts? Should I look into using Aruba gear with a Yagi or dish antenna? Thanks in advance.
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