[lug] Wide Area Network Technology

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 08:29 -0700, Stephen Queen wrote:
> We are trying to build an instrument that will have data collection
> nodes spaced at varying intervals of up to a kilometer. The individual
> nodes have an ethernet interface. We want each node to be able to
> communicate with a central controller. We will use wireless where it
> is feasible, but will also rely on some sort of connected protocol as
> well.  The instrument will only be in place for a few days.
> 
> What sort of networking equipment or technology would lend itself to
> this application?

I've never used these myself, but it looks like ethernet extenders might
be an option.  These apparently allow the use of ethernet over longer
distances than the usual 100m standard distance.  There are copper-based
and fiber-based solutions that I found via google.  A purely randomly
chosen example that is copper-based and can extend distances up to 10km:

http://www.patton.com/products/pe_products.asp?category=160&MiDAS_SessionID=0d5a2fd931444e4490fa45cab093dc2b

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE-T
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_extender
http://www.google.com/search?q=ethernet
+extenders&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Senior Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
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