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Hello Guys

We are an internet service provider situated in a remote area in Nigeria, West Africa. We will like to setup a wide area network and wireless LAN. For some intending customers, given internet access from our end, we will like to know if you can advice on the best equipments to procure for this purpose and how to order them. I am attaching a sketch to this letter for you to have a clear picture of what we are trying to achieve.

Below is a brief explanation of what we are trying to do:

Our Base
We just got connected to Gilat satellite using a 2.4m dish, Shiron modem as gateway and we are currently running on 128/256 kbps bandwidth. We have 4 corporate intending customers that are scattered 360 degrees around our office; these intending customers are between 250m - 200km away from us.

1. Medical Centre: They are 250m away from our office, and intend to get a connection from us to serves 10 computers using a wired LAN.
2. Nasarawa University: They are 2km away from our office; they intend to get a connection from us as well which they intend to serve all the offices on their campus wirelessly. (You will find a sketch attached, explaining what they needed). They have another campus on the other side of our office and they intend to have a connection there too and deploy the same wireless technology there as well.
3. Akwanga: This also a university 80km away from us, and are also getting a point from us whom they also intend to serve all offices on their campuses wirelessly. (Hills are likely to be in between).
4. Lafia: They are 200km away from us, and they intend to setup an internet caf???? with the connection they are getting from us. (Hills are likely to be in between).
5. Mobile users: Lastly we have a lot of intending mobile users; they will be getting their connection from us directly using laptops, so we will require a hotspot (access point) that can go as far as 1.5km radius of our office.

Below are the 2 sketches I was able to come up with, I hope you will find them useful, and I will like you to advice on the best solution for our setup and what devices to purchase.

Thanks

250 meters and 200 kilometers (124 miles). Would that constitute a near far problem? :) Sorry, had to make a quick joke. Your question is very complex and probably is a bit extensive to be answered in a reply. I can say that for your 200km link... I don't know if a link of that distance (even with repeaters) has ever been done is a real live environment. It would need to be repeated, at least several times. As you may know, every time you repeat a signal your throughput drops in half (at least). I guess what I am saying is the 80km link is very possible with one repeater as long as the Fresnel zone is accounted for on each link. The 200km link is a different story. Without a topographical map, it would be almost impossible to answer. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but 200 km is a long, long ways. Feel free to post back with any other thoughts.

GT Hill

Hi,

For Lafia and the internet caf???? which is 200 Km away, you can use direct connection from satellite used shared bandwidth, and you can rent the link & equipments to the internet cafe owner to rid yourself from big headache.( I can supply every think to you).

250m, 2 km and 80 km is not big affair, the question is how many customer you have to link with your wireless network ? is it worthy or not ? any way I have good plan for you just send me the sketches to my e-mail : amer@alsamarraie.com

We have already decieded to connect the users that are above 50km diretcly to the satellite via dish. And those within 5km wirelessly using wireless antennaa and access points. What i will like to know now is the best way to go about it.

Thanks

Ademola