One network across several buildings, without trenching a foot of fiber

A client who owns several commercial buildings on the same side of Anchorage asked a simple question: can the buildings share one network? Tenants were on four different internet accounts, the owner was paying for four modems, and the cameras at one building could not be watched from the office at another. The obvious answer, fiber between the buildings, involved a trench, a permit, a contractor, and a number with a comma in it.

We did it with radios instead. This is how that project went, what we chose, and what we would tell anyone with the same problem.

The layout

Four buildings within about a mile of each other. Clear line of sight from the tallest building to two of the others, and a partial view to the third through a stand of birch. Each building already had power on the roof or a wall where a radio could mount. None of them had conduit between them.

The owner wanted three things: one internet connection feeding everything, one Wi-Fi network that worked the same in every building, and cameras and door readers on the same system so he could manage them from one screen.

Why not 60 GHz

The first design on the table used 60 GHz point-to-point radios, the ones marketed as “wireless fiber.” On paper they are perfect: gigabit-class speed, cheap, easy to aim. In Anchorage they have two problems. Rain and heavy snow attenuate 60 GHz badly, and foliage stops it cold. That birch stand would have taken one link down every summer, and a wet October storm would have taken the others down for the afternoon.

We went with 5 GHz point-to-multipoint on Ubiquiti’s LTU line instead. One base station on the tallest building, one small client radio at each of the other three. 5 GHz punches through weather and light foliage, and a single base station serving three clients is simpler than three separate point-to-point pairs. The trade is speed: a few hundred megabits per link instead of a gigabit. For offices, cameras, and door readers, that is more than enough.

How it went in

• Survey first. We stood on each roof with a phone and a compass before buying anything, and modelled the links in Ubiquiti’s planning tool. The tool’s own estimate for a 60 GHz link through the trees was the number that killed that idea.
• Base station and three client radios. Mounted, aimed, and aligned in an afternoon. The alignment step matters more than people expect: a few degrees off and you lose a third of your throughput. We aim until the signal on both antenna chains matches within a decibel or two.
• One VLAN per building. Every building rides the same wireless backhaul, but each has its own network segment. A tenant in building B cannot see the cameras in building C. The owner’s office sees everything.
• UniFi inside every building. The same access points and switches everywhere, managed from one controller. A phone that connects at the main office reconnects automatically at any of the others.
• Cameras and door readers on the same stack. UniFi Protect for the cameras and UniFi Access for the doors, so the person who runs the network runs those too. No second vendor, no second portal.

What it cost, roughly

Hardware for the radios and mounts ran a few thousand dollars. Labor was about two days across survey, install, and cutover. Compare that to a fiber trench between four buildings, which starts in the tens of thousands before the first fitting goes in, or to four separate internet accounts forever. The owner’s monthly internet spend dropped to one business connection, and the link has been up since the day it was aligned.

What we watch afterward

Wireless links drift. Mounts loosen, trees grow, a new building goes up. The radios report signal strength and throughput to our monitoring, and if a link’s signal drops more than a few decibels from its baseline we get a ticket before anyone notices slower Wi-Fi. That is the difference between an install and a managed link.

If you own more than one building

You do not need fiber to act like one campus. If your buildings can see each other, or nearly, a properly designed wireless backhaul gives you one network, one Wi-Fi, one camera system, and one bill. If they cannot see each other, that is a different conversation, and we will tell you so up front.

Tell us what you have and what is bugging you. We will say whether radios are the right answer before anyone buys a radio.