It’s July, and wouldn’t you’d really rather be reading this by the pool? Go ahead. I promise nothing but summertime fun in this edition of TechTalk!
First of all, I want to update you on my experience to date with photovoltaic solar power. Since I wrote about the process of adding solar power to our home in the April issue of NorthBay biz, we received our first bill from PG&E. Delightfully, it showed “No Payment Due”—in fact, we had a credit of $7.64.
On a sunny day, my 36-panel, 6-kilowatt setup generates nearly 50 kilowatt hours of electricity, much of which gets fed back into the power grid for use (credited to us at high daytime rates). At night, of course, we draw electric power from the grid (at lower nighttime rates), but our net electricity usage has been less than zero. Very satisfying, and much simpler than trying to live completely “off the grid.”
Do yourself a favor and call one of the many North Bay solar providers to investigate the solar options for your primary business or residence. The main downside to solar is the capital expense, but in a world of $200-a-barrel oil, it’s becoming less and less of an obstacle. And, as they say, financing is available.
Wiring the guest house
After living in our home for 18 years with dogs and kids, our hardwood floors needed refinishing. So, we’re currently living in a charming little guest house on a friend’s property.
I have two teenagers, who view lack of Internet connectivity as a serious parenting failure and, to their chagrin, the guest house is too far from the main house to pick up the 54-megabit/second (Mbps) WiFi signal from our host’s Apple Airport Extreme (which will only maintain a full-speed connection within 50 feet). What to do?
There are at least three ways to solve this problem. The first is a really long Ethernet cable. A 100-megabit network (the common standard) will support a single run of cable as long as 100 meters (328 feet), so it’s certainly doable. It’s also relatively cheap. Amazon charges about $15 for a 100-foot cable, so you’d probably spend about $50 for three cables and some couplers.
The second approach is powerline networking, which transmits data over your home’s electrical wiring. You can think of it as an Ethernet cable that runs between any two electrical outlets in your house. Although it sounds suitably high-tech, it’s nearly infallible. A typical kit is the geekily named HDBX101 from Netgear (available locally at Best Buy for $200 or on Amazon.com for about $50 less). The box contains two little cubes, which look an awful lot like AC power adapters without the wires. Each cube has a pair of electrical prongs, 3 LED indicators and an Ethernet socket (technically, a female RJ-45 connector).
Plug one cube into the wall near your DSL/cable modem or router, and connect it to the modem or router with the supplied Ethernet cable. Plug the other cube into an electrical socket where you want a network connection (in our case, the guest house). When you plug in each cube, the green power indicator will light up. When the two cubes hook up over the electrical wiring (it takes about 30 seconds), the blue powerline indicator comes on. The third indicator shows network traffic.
This solution would have been perfect except for one tiny detail: The guest house has its own electric meter. That’s a short way of saying its wiring is electrically isolated from the wiring in the main house, which rendered powerline networking useless.
Which brings me to the third and final approach for getting Internet connectivity in the guest house: a wireless bridge. A wireless bridge is very much like powerline networking, but without the wires. It’s a little box with a rubber antenna (and one of those pesky little AC adapters that every device seems to require). Set one in a window of the main house with a view of the guest house, and one in the window of the guest house with a view of the main house, and voila! Internet connectivity! Replace the rubber antenna with a highly directional antenna and, with a clear line-of-sight, the two ends of the “bridge” can actually be several miles apart!
Many wireless bridges, like the Linksys WET54G, use the same 2.4 Gigahertz frequency as the Airport Extreme in the main house, so I can get away with only buying one (for the guest house end of the bridge). There’s just one problem. My friend’s home office, site of the cable modem and Airport wireless router, are on the corner of the main house away from the guest house (meaning the line-of-sight pretty much doesn’t exist).
The solution I ended up with was to relocate the Airport Extreme as close to a window as possible, minimizing interference to its signal by walls, furniture and the like. On the guest house end, I replaced the standard antenna of the WET54G with a more sensitive antenna (it’s an omnidirectional antenna, which is cheaper but less effective than a directional one). At long last, we have Internet connectivity in the guest house, and I’m at peace.
A note to those who are interested in using networking: It comes in several flavors. The original powerline ran at 14 Mbps, which was fine when most networks ran at 10 Mbps. An intermediate version upped that to 85 Mbps. The very latest version runs at 200 Mbps and is suitable for streaming video or game consoles. The corresponding Netgear models are the XE102, XE104 and HDX101. As with most technology, buying the latest and greatest is more expensive.
These same three solutions can apply to businesses that need to extend their networks inside or between buildings—not just to someone trying to wire their guest house. The important thing to remember is, most connections will be slower than advertised and will get even slower with distance and/or poor line-of-sight. If speed is essential, consider getting another Internet connection at the remote location.
