Route 19

With my wife on maternity leave I’ve been putting my work-from-home mobility to the test by spending January and February living in rural Cape Breton. Broadband access is limited, and the government-initiated rural wireless network is still unavailable at my in-law’s house.

The solution was a 2 hop wireless bridge, for a combined 3.3 km virtual link to a neighbour’s broadband connection. Their source location has a Ubiquiti NanoStation 2 mounted on a radio antenna. It’s pointed at a house on a hill 1.3 km away with a Ubiquiti Bullet 2 and a directional antenna, giving them free access. The final link is 2 km south of there, where another NanoStation completes the circuit.

We’re still tweaking the antenna placement, but speeds should be a reasonable 1.5 Mbps, without much latency. Not bad for about $500 CAD worth of equipment and no monthly fees. Considering the cost of broadband access, that’s recouped in about 6 months between the two locations.